'Carnie Wilson:
Unstapled,' dull, too
GSN celebreality series doesn't reveal anything new
By Tom Conroy
Jan 13, 2010
The good news is that Carnie Wilson doesn’t embarrass herself in her new reality series, “Carnie Wilson: Unstapled.” The bad news is that she doesn’t entertain us.
The show, which premieres on GSN at 8 p.m. tomorrow night, is an all-too-typical celebreality vanity production. Those details of Wilson’s life that match the genre’s template are downplayed, while the clichés are highlighted.
Wilson comes across as likable and levelheaded, but the premiere gives us no other reason to want to tune in again.
One of the reasons that this show isn’t particularly embarrassing to Wilson is that the principal awkward details of her life are public knowledge already. Her downward career trajectory has taken her from singing in a multiplatinum-selling pop group, Wilson Phillips, to hosting GSN’s new version of “The Newlywed Game.”
Wilson’s weight problems are also old news. While she was in Wilson Phillips, she says in voice-over before this show’s opening credits, “I was known as the fat one,” adding, “C’mon, you know it’s true.” She lost a lot of weight after having gastric-bypass surgery, which was shown live on the web, but she has since gained much of it back.
Viewers looking for further revelations — either deliberate or not — will be disappointed. Most of the show is set up to present Wilson as just like almost every other title subject of a celebreality show; the action sets up the usual celebreality story lines.
In the premiere episode, we meet her nebbishy husband, her unglamorous personal assistant and — the biggest cliché of all — her gay best friend.
And, also typically, we see her working on a new professional project: in this case, turning her love of baking into a business. “Being the breadwinner in this house,” she says to the camera, “this has to succeed and bring in the dough.”
The drama in the premiere centers on whether a sweet shop will buy Wilson’s line of cheesecake treats. She also has an emotional moment with her personal trainer, a former pro wrestler named Dallas Page who helped her lose weight before the birth of one of her two girls. He tells her that he was hurt when she stopped calling him. Fighting tears, she explains that she had been having money problems and was afraid to talk to anyone.
Wilson introduces her personal assistant as “my wacky aunt Dee Dee.” Besides exhibiting questionable taste in hats, Aunt Dee Dee doesn’t live up to the billing. Wilson also shares that her husband, while a “hands-on” dad, hasn’t had his hands on her in a long time.
Probably the most interesting person in Wilson’s life, her father, Brian, the eccentric head songwriter of the Beach Boys, is nowhere to be seen in either the premiere or the perfunctory “coming attractions” montage at the end of the episode.
That montage indicates that in future episodes Wilson is going to try again to lose some weight and will have problems while working on “The Newlywed Game.” Again, few viewers will be surprised or intrigued by that news.
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