Farewell to the Girls

I’m doubly ashamed to be writing this entry. First, as ever, I’m embarrassed about how long it’s been since I came up with a Lens. But far worse than that, the only thing I have to say for myself is that I miss The Girls Next Door.

For those of you fortunate enough to have escaped this pop culture phenomenette, The Girls Next Door is – or rather was – a reality series on the E! network. Once a week viewers got a marginally-candid look at the daily lives of Hugh Hefner’s three girlfriends. During the show’s four-season run, we got to see Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson do just about everything from travel to exotic places to pose for Playboy to just bum around the mansion.

In truth I ought never to have gotten started watching it. The first two seasons went by without capturing my attention at all. Then somebody at The Soup noticed that Kendra had a really obnoxious laugh, so the show started running clips of her braying in order to make fun of her. Somehow or another that managed to pique my curiosity, and the rest is history. I figured the show would be nothing but a cheap excuse to show some nudie chicks with their good parts blurred out, cheap amusement for the pubescent boy crowd and a lure for lonely men to check out the un-blurred version on DVD. And to an extent of course that’s exactly what it was.

And in a sideways way, that cuts to the heart of the attraction. Back in the 50s and 60s, Hugh Hefner represented everything that was wrong with society. Playboy preached a gospel of sexism and materialism, and he sold it to the masses (well, half of the masses anyway) by sugar-coating it with titillation.

But Hefner’s brand of pornography was rendered dull by his more explicit competitors decades ago. In a world where footage of anybody doing anything to anyone else is instantly available at the click of a button, Playboy’s playmates and bunnies are at best quaint and at worst downright boring. That’s a big part of the charm here. Compared to Jenna Jameson and Russian sex slaves pretending to be horny housewives, Hefner’s girlfriends really are cute, old-fashioned girls next door.

I’m certain The Osbournes came up at the pitch meeting for this show, because it’s the same general idea. Here’s a guy who’s been demonized – largely at his own behest – in the mainstream media. But when the curtain is lifted and we’re admitted to his private life (however carefully orchestrated it might be), we find out that he’s actually a harmless old guy with a family and everyday problems just like the rest of us. Well, just like the rest of us if we all had enough money to indulge our every whim, but still given the circumstances fairly normal. In any event far more normal than one would expect.

I’m going to miss this show, just as I missed Ozzy when they took him off. If nothing else, The Girls Next Door had become part of the Sunday ritual around the Lens house, part of the mopey transition between the weekend and another working day.

Now, I understand that E! may try to keep the series alive with Hefner’s new squad of paramours. But I’m not going there with them. For starters, two of the replacement droids are twin sisters. I don’t know what that’s called in sunny California, but around here that’s incest. But even if the “ick” factor wasn’t there, the new girls just wouldn’t be the old girls. In fact, I’m still waffling about whether to try the new Kendra solo series. Though I may give it a look, I’ve got to be prepared for disappointment. There was a gestalt to the trio, an entertaining whole greater than the sum of its parts.