TV Shows

Denise Richards seems to come across as a nice and likeable person in her new show so why would we want to watch her new reality show if there is nothing dramatic about it? She labeled her new show ‘It’s Complicated’ and because of that we assumed that it would be full of her dramatic life. We were highly disappointed.

Dina Lohan, mother of Lindsay and Ali Lohan, doesn’t come across as particularly pleasant. Against all the laws of reality TV, her show, “Living Lohan,” is even less interesting. Since “reality” TV is littered with tyrants, psychotics, neurotics and irritating self-promoters, Richards scores points for having a happy family and a realistic sense of her own life.

Dina Lohan is more in the familiar reality pocket. She’s here mostly, one imagines, because her older daughter Lindsay has spent the last year or two screwing up her life in public situations. Lindsay’s missteps don’t reflect badly on Dina or Ali. But neither do they automatically mean either one is going to be fun to follow around.

The Lohan story line tonight has Dina and Ali trying to find the right songs for Ali’s first CD. In the process they often sound whiny and annoyed, which one imagines is how almost every singer sounds at some point in that process. The high drama comes when a producer named Jeremy, who has delivered a song Ali likes, gives an interview in which he suggests he might have some kind of relationship with Lindsay and that the family loves him.

Since Dina reads everything she can find about herself and her family, let’s call that interview a bad decision by Jeremy. In any case, if Jeremy doesn’t grab you, you’re out of luck with “Living Lohan,” because that’s as good as it gets. Richards, despite her own tabloid résumé, comes off as much less tightly wound than Dina.

Recently divorced from Charlie Sheen, she’s a single mother of two. Her own mother just died, after which her father moved in with her. Unlike most reality show relatives, her father seems quiet and pleasant.

Denise is probably more celebrity than actress, and she seems able to work with that balance. During one of her good-natured ruminations on her lack of a current boyfriend, she remarks, “What’s normal? Normal for me is a movie star or a rock star.”