First Impressions: Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School

The Surreal Life has to hold the record for most spin-offs. It is directly it is responsible for Strange Love, My Fair Brady and The Surreal Life: Fame Games. Strange Love itself gave us Flavor of Love which then spawned I Love New York (which my sources tell me will get a spin-off of its own) and the latest generation to The Surreal Life family tree, Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School. And what a premise the show has, take thirteen of the most outrageous Flavor Flav castoffs, including the porn star, the spitter, and the fighter and teach them proper etiquette. Although after taking a look at the cast, you can’t help but wonder how the girl that did her business in Flav’s hallway didn’t get on the show.

A closer look at the show, though, gave me some reservations on how good the show could be. First it ended up being a competition with weekly vote offs which means the most unrulely, i.e. most entertaining, would leave first making the latter episode uninteresting. Second, having Mo’nique as a Charm School judge would be like letting Paula Abdul judge a singing competition (um, yeah). Then as the show begins Mo’nique does the unthinkable, she burns the nicknames that Flav gave the girls instead opting to call the girls by the names on their birth certificates. I have enough trouble distinguishing Bootz from Buckeey as it is, now I have to figure out whom Larissa and Shay are.

But with all the reservations, Charm School lived up to all expectations. It doesn’t take too long to realize that Charm School isn’t going to help any of these girls and it didn’t take too long before the girls started fighting (over a blog at that) and crying. And as fake as some of them try to be in front of the judges, the claws come out during the interviews. And for the girls to stick around, they have to stick to The Ten Commandments of Charm School including 1) Check Thyself before Thou Wreck Thyself. Yeah, because when I think of proper etiquette, I think of Ice Cube lyrics.

Throughout the series, it looks like they will put the girls though a series of challenges that will make kissing Flavor Flav look like a cakewalk in comparison. The first being to rough it at a campsite which included a two hour walk which took the girls four hours to complete. Then the following day, the girls were split into two team and competed in an obstacle course stolen from Celebrity Fit Club. Naturally the team with Like That, err, Darra lost and were up for expulsion from Charm School. At elimination we get to better know the other judges including an editor for Essence and someone who works for the Miss California pageant who is your token mean-spirited judge. And if anyone knows where I can bet on when the dude gets slapped and by whom, please let me know. In the end, some random chick gets the boot.

Verdict: This will be either the greatest or worst show in the history of television. I leave it up to you to decide which one. As for a prediction, I saying that Goldie, oops, Courtney wins. Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School airs Sundays at 10:00 on VH1.