Oxygen debuted as a network in 2000 using the tag line, "Television for Women." Clearly, women don't buy enough products. Now the network throws political correctness to the wind to reinvent itself as "The New Girls Network." Leading the Wednesday night charge are two women who haven't been girls in decades.
At 9 p.m., Lisa Rinna, formerly of Dancing with the Stars and Days of Our Lives, headlines a new reality show called Tease. Two garden-variety hairdressers compete with dueling hairstyles, created on camera. The winner then takes on a "master stylist" in a celebrity lookalike makeover challenge. Three judges and a studio audience preside over these shenanigans, providing totally superfluous blow-by-blow-dry analysis. And although the word gay is never mentioned, the men who tease, fluff and spray their way across the screen are clearly cut from the Queer Eye oeuvre. This show, however, is strictly DOA. It's just about as interesting as going to the beauty shop with your mother and being forced to sit and wait for her bouffant to emerge.
At 10 p.m., the loathsome Janice Dickinson, a surgically enhanced, aged, former supermodel, returns for the second season of her reality show, The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency. Uber-bitch Dickinson continues to browbeat her hapless business partner Peter Hamm, while alternately berating and cheering for the models she selects to work in her agency. As executive producer, star of the show, and director of the modeling agency, Dickinson has little time for anyone other than Janice Dickinson. She is, however, as watchable as a train wreck. It also helps that her offices are filled with wannabe supermodels, both male and female, under the age of 25.
The second season of Dickinson's show features much more nudity, with some amazingly hot guys cavorting in the all-together and vying for the affections of their boss. Dickinson's son, Nathan, a cute but exceedingly dim and damaged young 20something, is also part of the cast. He's sort of a male Eve Harrington — a guy with a little ambition, unfettered by any particular talent beyond his unfortunate birthright. Dickinson has previously acknowledged she was doing a lot of drugs in those days.
Dickinson's modeling agency is located in Hollywood, in the incredibly tacky Kodak Center. When visiting the center last summer with a friend, I happened to walk by the offices of The Janice Dickinson Talent Agency, where the show is filmed. At the time, the doors were locked, and there wasn't a soul in sight. Clearly the agency was the brainchild of several media whores who saw the television potential of nubile young flesh colliding with a surgically enhanced crone. It has proven to be an idea with legs — long, thin ones. The show manages to combine elements of Project Runway, Real World, and America's Top Model, all forced through the strainer of Dickinson's witchery. It may not be likeable, but it's definitely watchable. Note to Tyra Banks: watch your back.
Tease and The Janice Dickinson Talent Agency debut on Oxygen on January 10.