Paris and Nicole Return From Rumspringa

Arizona and New Mexico: you suck. At least that’s what The Simple Life finale suggested. After who knows how many episodes in Texas, the show quickly zipped over 1,200 miles worth of Southwest territory, conveniently omitting any sort of silly drama that might ensue in AZ or NM. What’s with the snub? Were there not enough kooky people willing to participate in a staged reality spectacle? Surely in Roswell there were a few looneys up for fun. Think of the possibilities! That sound editor would have had a new array of theremin tones to fool around with instead of the usual violins and boings. And let’s not forget the crazy desert insects. We know Paris and Nicole have problems with moths. Just imagine them with scorpions and tarantulas and lizards. Oh Bunim/Murray. How could you have squandered this golden opportunity?I guess I will have to content myself with happy memories of Paris and Nicole being terrorized by non-lethal insects. During the second part of tonight’s finale, when a moth fluttered into their pickup, the girls screamed like they had been besieged by a family of psychos. It was sort of like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets a bug zapper. Now if that moth actually had some sort of mini moth chainsaw, that would have been awesome. I don’t think those are on the market yet though.

Honestly, I could have watched a full episode of Paris and Nicole running from bugs. The pure fear on their faces is priceless and infinitely more entertaining than staged skits like the one that capped off this one hour finale. As the girls finally returned to their plush LA digs and woodenly recited their catchphrases (“loves it” yammered Nicole who seems desperate to enter something, anything into the pop culture lexicon), a fake shipping service ushered in Billy, a cow they had saved on a working ranch. Thankfully, the bovine creature represented the animal kingdom well by jabbing the bikini’d Paris with its horns.

Animals sort of had it rough on this show. Paris and Nicole’s dogs learned the meaning of gravity the hard way when Paris gunned it over the backroads of Texas. Tinkerbell and Honey were literally sent flying across the airstream trailer, and if “There’s Something About Mary” taught us anything, it’s that little dogs getting tossed around is always funny. Later, it was cows who bore the brunt of the Paris and Nicole dude ranch experience. Paris, the occasional animal activist, objected to branding cows; so she suggested a less painful substitution: lipstick. The two girls marked the ranch symbol onto the bovine population with bright red colors that surely made the cows the trampy delight of the slaughterhouse. By the way, did anyone else find it odd that after putting up a whole big fight to save Billy the cow, Paris and Nicole sent the rest of the cows off to their deaths with nothing more than a casual “Bye guys”? Thousands of hairy PETA folk are slapping their foreheads as we speak.

Paris and Nicole managed to ruffle feathers in the human world too. At the Click ranch, the girls tried to help their host, Bob, reintroduce some romance into his marriage. Yeah, okay, um, Bob, just so you know ” and I’m just saying ” Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton might not be the best people to rely on in this situation. I won’t say anything else except that green night vision is not romantic.

Luckily, the girls didn’t propose anything too scandalous. Instead they became reacquainted with poetry, no doubt inspired from last week’s Shakespeare in the Trailer Park debacle. Nicole wrote a silly little poem that seemed to be one long quote from the rhyming dictionary. It wasn’t very offensive, but there was some word at the end that clearly was so awful that Fox had to dub it over with “Booyah” instead of the usual beep. Shame on Fox for trying to fool us. We can hear an audio cut a mile away, thanks to years of piecemeal statements on Bunim/Murray’s other masterpiece, The Real World.

While the girls weren’t playing Cupid, they were embarrassing law officials across the land. Some dumb police department actually consented to making the girls deputies for the day. The only explanation I can think of is that Fox agreed to pay thousands of dollars to the local police benevolence association. Unsurprisingly, the law at the hands of Nicole and Paris is quite chaotic. Nicole took to turning the police prowler into a burp publicizer as she belched countless times into the car’s PA. It may have been a mockery of the police force, but it was funny. I especially enjoyed watching the girls pulling people over for no apparent reason except to shower them with “That’s hot”. Of course they didn’t spend the entire time on the road. Paris and Nicole were kind enough to serve meals to prison inmates, pleasantly informing them that the weather outside sort of sucks so they’re better off in the slammer. Yeah, rain’s a real downer. Anal rape is much better.

After finishing up the love poetry and the police enforcement and the cattle herding, the girls finally made a bee line to LA – the Spider Club specifically ” where celebs like Simon Rex welcomed the duo back to the civilized world. It was an overwhelming moment, and I must admit there were tears in my eyes… but that’s because I got an eyelash stuck in there. And dammit, it’s still there. A fitting end to a summer trifle.