Embarrassingly enough, Paula Abdul’s Spellbound was my first non-Disney related cassette tape. So whenever I see her slur her speech or clap like her nails are wet, I just think of my time spent singing along to “Vibeology” and it’s too hard to judge. Besides, Paula Abdul is a fairly innocuous kind of crazy. She doesn’t have any children, she’s too old to be considered a role model and there are people in her life to make sure she doesn’t operate heavy machinery.
Her new show, Hey Paula, is not as entertaining as you might imagine, given her penchant for public meltdowns. It follows in the footsteps of celebrity documentary-style shows of past, with one glaring exception: Paula is really busy. The funniest reality shows have always chronicled those with excessive downtime, and Paula’s schedule only allows her to really ham it up for the camera during car rides to and from the airport or while she’s getting her hair done. She shows how truly detached she is from contemporary culture by making jokes about the Clintons’ sex lives and Joan Rivers’ plastic surgery. Its been a long time since Paula knew what was really going on.
Conventional format aside, the real copout of Hey Paula is the show’s poor attempt to pass off her drunken/drugged incoherence as the effects of “insomnia.” Her patient manager, a less deviant version of Anna Nicole’s Howard K. Stern, just sighs when Paula makes a fool of herself and says what a horrible time it is for her lack of sleep to catch up with her. I’m inclined to at least pretend to accept this excuse. If posting clips of Neil Patrick Harris’s imitations on YouTube has taught me anything, it’s that Paula fans (while largely illiterate) are one of the most fervent and spiteful groups out there today. And I don’t want to cross them.