I have to admit that I was a little curious about “The Simple Life” when it started airing in 2003. Of course, after actually watching a couple episodes in its premiere season, I quickly realized that Paris Hilton’s other video debut was much more interesting and better acted.

Letting my life go dark on “The Simple Life” only worked for so long. Soon, I was sent the DVD of the fourth season to review. By then, Paris and Nicole had been feuding and no longer were BFFs. However, to continue their contractual obligations, the two rich girls continued the show with a twist. Instead of swooping in on Middle America together, they came as two plagues on separate weeks.

The theme of this season was to show the girls what it was like to be a dutiful wife and mother – as if this would ever come to fruition in either girl’s life. They visited a woman in her third trimester of pregnancy, a single dad raising two kids, a lesbian couple tying the knot and a Pakistani family to learn about a different culture.

All disasters. Nicole ends up bringing the pregnant woman’s husband to a strip club, Paris ends up bathing with a toddler until he poops in the tub and Nicole offends everyone remotely Pakistani by brushing their beliefs aside like a pool boy asking her if she really needs another drink.

In the candid interviews with the family, there’s a definite message that many of them actually thought they were in this to teach the girls something. I’m not sure what planet they grew up on that made them think that Paris Hilton or Nicole Richie would have any desire to learn from what they easily consider the dregs of humanity, but they brought this pestilence upon themselves.

Still, I found myself with very little pity or remorse for these people and their lives. After all, they invited Paris and Nicole into their homes – major screw-up number one. This is worse than going on an episode of “Wife Swap” and making your family endure a week of hell. When the rep from “The Simple Life” calls you up and asks if you want Nicole and Paris to infect your home with the virus of their being, what other response is there but “Hell no!”

Sadly, much of the focus of these families is to inquire why Paris and Nicole “broke up,” so to speak. However, when the girls have a party lifestyle and ultimate competition to see who is hotter, who really cares. If you ask me, Paris enjoyed having a rich friend who was chubby so she wouldn’t steal her boyfriends. Once Nicole lost the weight and became so thin she looks like Kate Moss on the Atkins Diet, Paris got jealous. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt the cause that Nicole is a whack-job arrest record waiting to happen.

I do think that there is a purpose for “The Simple Life.” It should be played constantly for patients in intensive care. After all, when they see how pathetic the stars and the families are in this train wreck of a show, they are bound to find a will to live. Anyone’s life if better than those on this show.

The best thing about “The Simple Life 4” is that it runs a short ten episodes. That means you will waste less than four hours out of your pathetic life seeing how daddy’s little girls make complete fools of themselves in the pseudo-real world.

There are no special features on this disc, which is fortunately in the sense that we only have to endure Paris and Nicole through the episodes proper. In fact, the only special feature I would find remotely interesting is an unending loop of Paris getting stabbed in the head during her “serious” acting debut in “House of Wax.”



Specifications: Dolby Digital 5.1 Stereo Sound. Full frame (1.33:1). Spanish language track. Spanish subtitles. English language subtitles for the hearing impaired.