“It makes Jessica and Nick look like Mensa candidates,” Variety said of Britney and Kevin: Chaotic, which chronicled the pop star’s courtship and wedding to a previously unknown backup dancer named Kevin Federline. The UPN series premiered in May 2005 — just as tabloids began dissecting Federline’s rapidly expanding brood (he left a pregnant fiancée to wed Spears, who got knocked up shortly before Chaotic aired). The ill-fated pair shot the footage themselves in 2004 — “It’s a documentation of love,” K-Fed mused — featuring Blair Witch–style nostril-and-night-vision cinematography. The dialogue wasn’t much better: “I had sex three times today!” (Britney) and “They look like boobs, but they’re not. They’re my knees” (also Britney). Mercifully, the “series” was only five episodes long.
If your boyfriend is a liar or cheater, don’t dump him — send him to VH1′s Tool Academy, a reform school–themed reality show in which tools learn how to be upstanding gentlemen. The show’s nine contestants thought they were competing for the title of “Mr. Awesome,” only to discover that their girlfriends had “enrolled” them in the Tool Academy to make them stop being jerks.
The tattooed and frequently shirtless contestants embody all the bad-boyfriend stereotypes: the cheater, the slacker, the party animal, the guy who puts down his lady. Each episode features some sort of “relationship challenge” (assemble a bed, guide each other through an obstacle course, raise a baby pig) designed to teach the tools about the building blocks of a healthy relationship (patience, teamwork … raising a pig?). But the highlight of the series occurs in the second episode, when Shawn (a.k.a. the loud-mouth tool) is confronted by a second girlfriend (of six years!) who kicks the first girlfriend off the show and takes her place.
And, of course, the couple that wins gets married at the end.
Richard Dawson, the wisecracking British entertainer who was among the schemers in the 1960s sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes” and a decade later began kissing thousands of female contestants as host of the game show “Family Feud” has died. He was 79.
As we prepare for the Game of Thrones finale, we recognize Joffrey and nine other baddies who showed us that terrible, horrible things can come in small packages
