The SmarK DVD Rant for Flavor Of Love: The Complete Second Season
“Woooooooooowwwwwwwwww”
– Flavor Flav
The Show
As a recovering Jerry Springer addict, trash TV is a dangerous thing for me. Much like Flav himself, you feel like you hate the drama, but just can’t look away. Such is the case with the second season of the biggest guilty pleasure on TV (and the highest rated show in VH1 history), chronicling the rather hapless quest for love that poor Flav puts himself through in the name of ratings. Although the first season seemed to spawn a wonderful romance with Flav and winning Hoopz, he got another woman pregnant over the summer and she was revealed as just another wannabe actress who was using the Flavor-man for her own career, necessitating a second season. I’m sure VH1 was broken up over that development.
To give you an idea of the kind of thing you’re getting into with this show, I present the Top Five Things I Learned About Relationships From Flavor Flav:
1)Always keep it real with your man Flav, know what I’m saying? It doesn’t matter if you’re a porn star, but for god’s sake don’t lie about it. Of course, you’ll likely be eliminated later on anyway.
2)Jealousy is bad. Flav has no time for women who can’t understand why he shouldn’t be able to make out with several chicks at once.
3)If your man Flav invites B-list rap stars to his house for a big party, it’s probably a good idea to actually know the words to a rap song if asked.
4)Trying out for a part on a highly-rated reality show to further your own career is WRONG. Unless you’re Flavor Flav himself.
5)Above all else, don’t shit on Flav’s floor.
So as we learned from the first season of Flavor of Love, this is a show that is like The Bachelor stuck in a blender with Jerry Springer, and god bless it for that. Flav’s show gleefully breaks all the rules of reality TV, using realistic-looking women who talk like real people (well, most of them do). Better still, you’re not limited to one elimination per week. Flav’s cuts ranged from 1 person to 5 people per week, depending on which petty trait annoyed him enough to get rid of them.
I think that’s what’s so fundamentally charming about the show and Flav himself — it takes great delight in throwing our expectations of this kind of show back at us, from challenges where Flav screws with the heads of his women (all of whom declare their undying love after one or two days in the house!) in humiliating challenges, to oddball moments of real emotion from a guy who is considered one of the biggest clowns in music. Sure, it’s a trainwreck, but like the best wrecks it’s loud and violent and never boring.
Even more brilliant was the twisting-the-knife from the producers midway through the season, when irritating season one finalist New York returned from the reality TV graveyard to rejoin the competition. This is not only an unheard-of move for the genre, but gave the show a great, polarizing villain for the audience (and the other women) to rally against in a season lacking any huge antagonist. From the moment she screeches back into Flav’s life and immediately begins lying and bringing the drama, you’re waiting for her uppance to come, so to speak, and in a nice dramatic touch she puts the figurative nails in her own coffin at the end of her gloriously trashy run on the show. Sure, she seems to be playing a cartoon version of herself for much of the season, but when all her rather fiendish planning comes crashing down around her because of one stupid “did I say that out loud?” brainfart, it’s truly a satisfying end for her character. Is it real? Who cares, it’s great entertainment.
The show is divided into 11 episodes, which lull a bit in the beginning, hit critical mass with the addition of New York halfway through, and then turn into a war of attrition between booty-full Deelishis and New York for the remainder of the show.
Disc One:
– Somethin’s Stinking In The House of Flav. The first episode introduces our cast of ghetto trash and wannabe actresses, and immediately we get two brain surgeons brawling over rights to a bed and loud-mouthed contestant Somethin accidentally leaving a little housewarming gift on Flav’s floor when nature calls. A nice twist to start the season sees producer Bonnie joining the cast as a spy for Flav to make sure no phonies make it past the first show, but sadly Flav’s years of drug use leave him unable to remember any of the advice. 5 of the girls go home right away.
– Flav Is Blind. Flav tries speed dating and fancy eating at the same time, and neither one works very well. Another bunch gone, as personalities start to emerge in form of front-runners Krazy and Bootz.
– She Works Hard For Her Money. A restaurant challenge at a soul food place brings Bootz to the forefront again, while shitting sensation Somethin’ gets fired, both from the restaurant and the show. The other half of the contestants get humiliated by cleaning Warren G’s house after a particularly disgusting party, which gives lisping idiot Nibblz the spotlight for a bit. Drama galore here as the feud between Deelishis and Krazy starts to build.
– Jelly On The Telly. The remaining nine have a dance-off, which is supposed to be sexy but just ends up getting edited into looking trashy by the producers. Buckwild’s role continues to increase, and her goofy black/white act probably could have carried things for much of the show had things not progressed as they did later on. The big drama sees Toasteee getting on the bad side of Nibblz, and learning about what happens when you don’t keep it real with your man Flav.
Disc Two:
– Famous Friends and Strangeness. Flav organizes a pool party with such luminaries as (some of the guys from) G-Unit, The Ying-Yang Twins, and Three 6 Mafia in order to assess his women. Nothing like a bunch of rappers to see the real truth of people. More drama with Krazy, who was being positioned as the lead villain of the show but seemed unwilling to lower herself enough to be truly hated. And show concludes with the return of New York in a move that skyrocketed ratings for the rest of the season.
– Photo Shoot To The Death. The defining episode of this season sees New York, elevated from annoyance in season one to full cartoon supervillain here, throwing her small amount of authority around like Mussolini and getting caught in every one of her lies, resulting in several near-meltdowns and a couple of near-fistfights. Real or act, New York knows how to promote herself and milks every second of the camera time she gets for the maximum effect, influencing Flav to send two girls home and then driving off a third one when Flav invites New York back to the show full-time as a contestant. Gloriously trashy and obnoxious television! This one also provides my favorite quote for the season, “Hold up, can I ask you something….where the f*ck did your accent go?!”
– Boxin’ Each Other Out. With only five girls left, New York shows that she’s actually quite smart when she wants to be, brilliantly sublimating former queen bitch Krazy and simultaneously convincing her that they’re allies. Obviously she’s watched a lot of reality TV and paid attention. Meanwhile, the babyface side of things sees Deelishis positioned as the obvious favorite with henchmen Bootz and Buckeey beneath her, and a clear showdown emerging. The verbal fistfight between Deelishis and New York in the bathroom is EPIC, like the UFC of trash-talking, but although New York backs down from that fight, she gains revenge when it ends up two-on-two at the end of the episode.
– Steppin’ Out Flav Style. Flav takes each group of two on separate dates for some “one on one time”, which again results in absolutely masterful mindgames from New York, as she obviously had Flav wrapped around her finger the whole time. However, given that almost none of the girls gave in to Flav’s affections and yet Flav clearly had sex with New York three times during the course of the second season, you have to wonder who was playing who, really. Bootz makes what was probably the most shocking revelation for this show here, and it costs her a spot in the final three.
Disc Three:
– Family Flavors. It’s time for Flav to meet the parents of the remaining contestants, and it’s at this point where Krazy is revealed to be as fake as everyone kept accusing her of being. This one shows why New York is the way she is, as her mother is just as big of a drama queen, if not more, to the point of faking a terminal illness to keep her daughter away from Flav. The elimination is hardly in doubt, as New York’s return clearly set up the logical showdown for the finals the moment she arrived and everything else was just working towards that goal.
– Oh No She Didn’t. A clip show and collection of unseen moments to catch up those who missed the first nine episodes and needed a refresher before the finale. Doesn’t really fit on a DVD set, however.
– Flav Belize In Love. The big finale sees Flav going on 24 hour dates in the tropics with both New York and Deelishis, and New York immediately bringing the drama. Deelishis is worried that Flav is just following a script for TV, throwing his own mantra about “keeping it real” back at him, but he seems to believe he’s doing this for love. New York, meanwhile, stupidly tells Flav that she’ll take control of his life and handle the decisions, which gives Flav visions of New York’s mother and pretty much makes the final decision inevitable. His shocked “Bitch, are you f*cking kidding me?” pretty much sums up what had to be going through everyone’s mind when she buried herself like that.
Sure, it’s not high art, but it doesn’t claim to be. It’s vulgar (although the DVD still censors any vulgarity that’s related to sexual acts, therefore “Fuck you!” is acceptable but “I f*cked him” is not) and silly and all very melodramatic and contrived, but it’s car crash mentality applied to people who wouldn’t normally get a shot at their 15 minutes of fame, and a defy you to look away once you’ve started watching. It’s certainly not as cynical and navel-gazing as a show like Big Brother became, and viewed as the spoof that it is, I think it was a nice shot in the arm for the genre.
The Video
The low-rent nature of the show is apparent in the video quality, as the main portion of the show looks, I dunno, low-resolution and just very video-like, whereas the confessionals shot outside seem to be done with a higher-quality film camera that has better colors. The garish wardrobe and ugly mansion seem a bit muted here, which is a real shame because if ever there was a show where over-saturated colors and sharp contrasts were a must, it’s this one. Doesn’t look any better than if you’re watching it on TV, basically.
The Audio
Plain old Dolby 2.0 stereo. The lack of subtitles really bothered me, because if ever there’s a show that needs them, it’s this one. Between Flav’s incoherent mumbling, Nibblz’s lisp and Buckwild’s patois of trailer park English and ghetto Ebonics, it’s easy to miss entire chunks of the scintillating conversations.
The Extras
Never mind what happened to Buckwild’s accent, what happened to the reunion show? A highlight of the first season set, this set was apparently rushed to the shelf so fast that they didn’t have a chance to put it on there, I guess. Instead we get about a half-hour of deleted footage, most of which was left out for good reason, like Krazy singing a duet with Flav (complete with sounds of screeching animals and people committing suicide dubbed in by the wonderfully snarky editors) and more wisdom from New York. A list of the footage, each running about 2 minutes, is as follows:
Somethin’ Left Over
Girlz Gone Flav
Adventures of Toasteee
Booty Shakin’
Casting Madness
Pimps Make The Call
Call Of The Wild
Songs That Make You Scream
Token Shower Scene
Flav’s Filosophies Part 2
NY Hospitality Part 2
Highlight here is Saaphyri’s demented analogy about people either being sponges or strawberries. Not much else of note in all this, to be honest.
The Ratings
The Show: ****
The Video: **
The Audio: **
The Extras: *1/2
