Editor’s Pick
JANUARY 24, 2011 5:40AM
Kardashians Take NY, but Can NY Take the Kardashians?
By ANDREA HIGBIE
As sure as night follows day, as spring follows winter, it's a brand-new week and there's a brand-new Kardashian reality show to greet it. This one is called "Kourtney and Kim Take New York," like a "Muppets Take Manhattan," but much hairier.
And their momager, Kris Jenner, is the puppet master.
This second spin-off from the 2007 mother ship, "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," had its premiere last night on E! (10 p.m., E.T./9 p.m., C.T.). In essence, it is one big commercial, with the occasional distraction of stilted dialogue and supposedly climactic speeches delivered in the rushed, staccato tones of someone memorizing a chunk of unfamiliar thought, and spouting it out as unconnected words.
The sisters make the pilgrimage to New York from Calabasas, Calif., their big, blended family homestead and site of their boutique, Dash, to open a third Dash in SoHo. What about a second Dash, you wonder? Wonder no more.
The second Dash was opened in the first season of the first "Keeping Up" spin-off, "Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami," in 2009. (And there's more! Khloe Kardashian and her husband, Lamar Odom, the Los Angeles Lakers forward, are doing their own reality show, "Khloe and Lamar.")
Like an endlessly regenerating Hydra, the Kardashian empire continues to amaze and terrify with its ability to do so much with so very little. Or, in Kim's case, so much with so very much. Just when it seems there's nothing more this family can do, out from nowhere pops yet another new show, another new clothing store or clothing line, another new ad campaign.
A new Skechers Shape-Ups commercial featuring Kim and Kris Jenner -- who ever pines to be part of the act -- will be broadcast during the Super Bowl. Meanwhile, the contract with Quick Trim paid handsomely in dollars and lost pounds (generating even more publicity), and Kim showed the world the most sensual way to devour Carl's Jr. hamburgers.
Rob Kardashian, Kim, Kourtney and Khloe's brother, and half-brother of Kris and Bruce Jenner's daughters, Kylie and Kendall (now training to be a model), has been offered $45,000 to pose in Playgirl, as Bruce Jenner had, a lifetime ago and for a lifetime's less money.
Kim, like her mother, also has producing credits on E!, with "Spin Crowd," about her now beholden-for-life friend Jonathan Cheban's public relations company and all the people he antagonizes in his every waking moment), and, oh yes, she took part with her sisters in their autobiography, "Kardashian Konfidential."
No flies on any of them.
It's all happened in such a short time, since 2007, when a certain sex tape featuring Kim and Ray J found its way to infamy. Since that time, layer upon layer of wholesome deeds and words have just about extinguished its negative impact.
Kris Jenner runs her family/company as tightly as another tough matriarch, Rose Kennedy. Their children have had enormous impact on the country, though, of course, in different arenas. Still, success is success.
One sex tape and a purposely tasteful Playboy photo spread later, Kim Kardashian has, in the years since, been emerging as a sane and moral voice. She rarely, if ever, drinks. She doesn't smoke, and she doesn't use drugs.
She has come forward to caution girls against idolizing "Teen Mom." While her peers have treated Lindsay Lohan as a lost cause or a joke, Kim Kardashian has been respectful and supportive of her.
Mentions of other Kardashian products are duly noted. Kanye West makes a walk-on appearance to remind everyone out there that Kim has a new singing career, thanks to him, along with a music video, as we learned a few weeks ago while she was also busy dazzling and baffling the masses by wearing cornrows.
West does a better job expressing himself in heated situations (like awards nights and other tantrum-provoking events) than he does with simple, calm statements uttered in the company of adults.
It was Kim who was irate when she read recent items linking her romantically to West. She is flirtatious, however, Kourtney says to the cameras. "Kim's just the most boy-crazy girl I've ever met," she said.
Kim put it a different way: "I could be boning a white guy in the middle of the street, and no one would even take a look."
Not quite, though gracefully put. Just minutes later, Kim is even more annoyed after discovering news items linking her and the only man she has ever, ever asked out on a date (he looks like Taylor Lautner, what else could she do?).
That bit of news -- especially after having had that lovely ice cream date with him at Serendipity just moments before -- came when she returned to the Smyth Tribeca, the home away from home while getting Dash going in New York. (Yes, yes, I did see, I could not fail to see, the hotel's name, all the many times the cameras showed it.)
There in the lovely penthouse Kim is sharing with Kourtney and her baby, Mason, who had barely been seen or heard all episode, she let loose and whined about privacy. That she can't even go out on a date, the only date she's ever asked a man to go on, especially a man so reminiscent of Taylor Lautner, without drawing unwanted attention -- that's just not fair.
"This is why I can't date," Kim complained, fuming.
Right. It's called a trade-off.
Kourtney's relentlessly foppish Baby Daddy Scott Disick had been staying just down the hotel hall, in a separate suite (until he weaseled his way back into Kourtney's affections, and her room; when will she learn?), and fortunately, for him, he was on hand and ready for his close-up to deliver the moral of the week, the lesson learned. Luckily, he planned ahead and wore his pink jacket for his moment.
"You have to live your life for you," Scott counseled Kim, in a rushed, uncertain way, the words rolling uncomfortably around his tongue. "Because if you don't, you'll never find the love that you want."
Unfortunately, he didn't stop there, but turned full on, facing the camera. "I gotta say, I'm doing pretty good here in New York," he said, basking in himself, the camera all to himself, and he wasn't even punching walls or brawling or stuffing $100 bills into waiters' mouths.
"Kim and I's relationship is doing unbelievable," Scott summed up, about what is important in life, what lesson to take from all this, comfortable at last in his own words.
Sometimes, you just need a good puppet master.
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