I missed the first episode of MTV’s “Ke$ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life” last week but if the second episode, which aired Tuesday night is any indication, I missed nothing.
As we catch up with Ke$ha in this six-episode “documentary” culled from footage shot by her brother Lagan Sebert over a two-year period, it”s June 2011. This immediately begs the question, “Why on earth would we care about seeing footage that”s two years old?”
She”s headed to play at Glastonbury and she”s lost her voice, but even more trouble looms as one of her two tour buses breaks down en route to the British festival. The “essential” personnel from bus 2 hop on Ke$ha”s bus, while others, like her mother, are apparently left by the roadside to fend for themselves. Oh, the inhumanity!
But it gets worse! The Glastonbury field is so muddy, there”s no way to load in all her production, so Ke$ha has to scale back her show. Her peppy guitarist Max tries to get her to cheer up and it”s a good thing that Ke$ha is resting her voice and not speaking, because otherwise she”d probably fire him on the spot.
“My voice is everything,” she declares, as we go into a montage of her on stage at Glastonbury (interestingly, we never see more than a few seconds of her actually performing), and yet she seemingly relies on every trick in the book on stage to distract people from her vocals.
The crowds love her, but she”s bummed because she hasn”t made out with any hot guys yet, so she resorts to watching “penis movies.” She”s lamenting her months-long dry spell, as she declares she wants “a beard.” Hmmm, that clearly means something different in Ke$ha”s world than what it means to the rest of us.
And so it goes for 30 minutes, with lots of commercials thrown in every four or five minutes because MTV knows it”s hard to watch more than a few minutes of this drivel at a time. Lagan may have had 24-hour access to his sister, but he doesn”t seem to know what to actually do with that and how to create any kind of story arc out of the footage.
Ten minutes in, I”m wondering what Ke$ha had to promise to MTV to get the cable outlet to air this. This feels like someone”s very boring, bad home movies. She”s touring Europe and there”s not even any pretty scenery to distract us. There”s no way this series will help her sell records and there”s certainly no way it”s going to get good ratings for MTV.
“In 2009 The New York Times names Beirut the top place to visit,” her manager tells Ke$ha, as they sit on Ke$ha”s bed in the Lebanese capital. It”s almost impossible to calculate the cultural divide between Ke$ha and the New York Times. There seems to be a great deal of security for Ke$ha who worries that she”s driving down the same road where the Lebanese president was assassinated a few years ago. It”s this fake sense of drama-trust me she”s in no real danger-that makes the show even more asinine. Not to mention the fact that she goes from worrying about getting kidnapped back to moaning about not having a boyfriend in about 30 seconds flat.
Her European tour over, she returns triumphant to Los Angeles. Next thing we know she”s at “Conan” complaining to fellow guest Pauly Shore (doesn”t that tell you everything you need to know) that she can”t get laid and that her mom, who is along for the ride for no discernible reason other than to irritate her daughter, is a horrible wingman. Shore looks like he”s torn between suggesting that he help Ke$ha through her rough patch and knowing he”s going to get shot down if he even hints at that. (Conan O’Brien wisely isn’t seen on camera at all)
In a move that can”t end well, Ke$ha picks up one of her crew members and hangs out with him and eventually gets laid…and no one seems to think it”s weird and that this guy couldn”t say no since she”s his boss. She nicknames him “Baby Spoon” for reasons that I can”t quite figure out because she”s explaining it while riding in a car to someone we don”t see and the sound is so bad. Plus, by now I don”t care if she calls him “Grown Up Spork.”
The show is frenetic and horribly edited and, worst of all, boring. It”s not even that Ke$ha is unlikeable, because she isn’t, she’s just nothing; an endlessly yammering voice. I wish that she were unlikeable; that would make for more interesting television. She”s just there and the camera never stops long enough to focus on any of her thoughts for more than a nano-second. Oh! Ke$ha has lost her voice! Oh! Ke$ha”s bus breaks down. Oh! Ke$ha wants to get laid! Oh! Ke$ha picks up a boy in her crew! Oh! Get me out of here.
Ke$ha”s second full-length album, “Warrior,” hasn”t come near the success of first album “Animal,” and maybe the series was seen as a way to goose sales, but all this will do is get people to change the channel. I”ve dropped in on “Ke$ha” and I won”t be back. If you decide to watch the rest of the series, you”re on your own.