By the end of last season, I was ready to sign off on this whole abominable franchise. I had watched - as I imagine many had - due to the curiousity factor. Coming at the tail-end of the celebrity-reality craze, this show promised to be an amusing fish out of water roasting of the Hilton-Ritchie axis, but instead, it felt mean and stagey. These girls didn't want to truly learn about the simple life, nor did they want to challenge their comfort zones. They just wanted to have fun at everyone's expense. Paris and Nicole managed to embarrass everyone in the process, including themselves. The rich looked dumb for producing such obnoxious spawn. The poor looked dumb for putting up with it. And the viewers looked dumb for actually watching this.

Aside from the harridan stars of the show, one of the major undermining factors of the entire season was that every interaction, situation, and conflict felt pre-fabricated. We thought we'd be in for a fly-on-the-wall experience, but instead we got a big Potemkin village of a fakeout. At least this time around, the show's pretensions have lowered from Osbournes to Road Rules standards. With the girls going from job to job, The Simple Life makes no qualms about being a structured and pre-planned adventure-type show anymore, which makes it, dare I say, slightly more palatable. And when I say "more palatable", I mean I only want to gouge my eyes out with a fork, not a shotgun.

But I'm being way to academic for this show. Let's get down to what we really care about, sort of, not really: Paris and Nicole. Continuing to bring shame to their families, the rich girls provided us with a few semi-entertaining moments in the premiere. We first reconnected with banana and pear in South Beach, Miami with the two prancing around on a shopping spree. They babbled about being ready for the road trip, but I wasn't really listening because I was too distracted by Paris's oversized George Burns sunglasses. I'd like to think that she was trying to assimilate with Miami's blue-haired cataract surgery crowd, but sadly, these sunglasses are actually becoming the rage in Los Angeles.

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