The Nick and Jessica Variety Hour
ABC

Nick Lachey, formerly of boy band 98 Degrees, and Jessica Simpson, a B-grade pop singer of the Spears genus, recently starred in their own primetime ABC special, "The Nick and Jessica Variety Hour." Most notorious for their MTV reality show "Newlyweds," (the site of Simpson's infamous confusion about the type of meat contained in a can of Chicken of the Sea) the couple has become a sort of shorthand for the MTV generation's narcissistic inanity.

As with most MTV "personalities," Simpson and Lachey are so vapid that their images are endlessly malleable to the whims of their handlers. The producers of "Newlyweds" not only designed a vehicle for holding Simpson up for ridicule, but created a strangely classical narrative from the couple's marital tension. The teen audience laughed at Simpson's refusal to eat buffalo wings (she won't eat buffaloes) like they did at the Osbournes' cursing; the rest of us were attuned to the underlying strain in their relationship.

The basic theme of "Newlyweds" is that 30-year-old ex-boy bander Lachey is essentially raising his 23-year-old wife. Simpson, who lacks any real-world skills, refuses to learn to do her own laundry or pick up after herself, choosing instead to batter Lachey into succumbing to her every whim. Lachey gamely stands his ground, thinly veiling his true contempt for the woman, it seems, he barely knows and can hardly believe he married. Though Lachey plays the adult to Simpson's teenager, he's far from unassailably mature. He rebels against her by hanging with scantily-clad dancers, like a middle-class husband tucking dollars into a stripper's G string.

Now that the two have exposed their repressed animosity toward each other, there's an added layer of drama and intrigue to their public personas. In public, the two smile through it all, ready for In Touch photo interviews and music video shoots at a moment's notice, but the couple's contempt for one another is documented by the ever-present MTV cameras. What's odd is that the two seem so unnatural at home (Simpson's struggles with laundry and spills, Lachey's terse explanations of tuna) that they seem more in-their-natural-habitat onstage. That their onstage schtick seems to celebrate their own shallowness is all the more compelling. "The Nick and Jessica Variety Hour," would simply be a throwaway collection of lame skits and flat singing if it didn't document the impending tragedy of the Lachey/Simpson marriage, foreshadowing a fall of operatic, Sonny and Cher-like proportions.

The producers for this one-hour special weren't interested in drama, per se—they just wanted to throw one clean punch. And it lands. "The Nick and Jessica Variety Hour" takes the icons of Generation Y vapidity and seamlessly inserts them into a '70s-style variety show, directly confronting the parents of its target audience. The parents of MTV "'tweens," many of whom were apparently tuned into this blatant plagiarism of '70s variety shows with their children (helping propel it to a mind-boggling top twenty finish in the ratings), will have to answer to this: Look at how stupid the crap you grew up with is! Where do you baby boomers get off ridiculing Simpson and Lachey when you were complicit in the success of "The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour?"

If you are going to judge today's teenagers by Nick and Jessica, what exactly should be said for the generation who cultivated Sonny and Cher, Donnie and Marie, and Vickie Lawrence and Tim Conway? Really, what the hell did the '70s variety show genre contribute to the national debate that reality TV hasn't? It's equally as maddening, with isolated moments of brilliance ("Survivor's" satire of corporate relationships is to reality TV as "The Carol Burnett Show's" mild political satire is to variety).

This is the only explanation for the ludicrousness of "The Nick and Jessica Variety Hour." If ABC were serious about making Lachey and Simpson the Sonny and Cher of the new millenium, there would have been more duets with Babyface and Jewel. Instead, they dust off poor old Kenny Rogers to perform a duet of "Islands in the Stream" with Simpson in the Dolly Parton role. Why else have the couple interrupt Kermit and Miss Piggy's rendition of "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart?" Or drag out Johnny Bench(!) for a slapstick, Conway-esque sketch? And why show, in the single most profoundly bizarre moment in this century of TV, Nick Lachey crooning "Just the Two of Us" with KITT, the talking car from Knight Rider?

The presumed audience for this show, the 'tween market, couldn't possibly give a damn about any of this. Kenny Rogers, Johnny Bench and KITT the car mean nothing to them. This madness must be directed at their parents — the same irony-jaded adults that boosted "Newlyweds" from MTV popularity into cultural zeitgeist. The Johnny Bench sketch gives it away: Johnny shows Simpson how to hit a baseball, which he plunks into the crowd, bonking some middle-aged fat guy in the forehead. Then Simpson unleashes Bench's bat into the crowd, whacking three three middle-aged fat guys in the head.

Aside from the generational satire, Simpson and Lachey's disconcertingly souless "I Got You, Babe" finale begs the audience to consider more closely the Sonny and Cher parallels. Has anything on TV been more awkward than the "Sonny and Cher" reunion show, aired after Sonny's solo show bombed and Cher's show was on the rocks? At the time, the duo had been through an ugly public divorce (the last episode of their original show was filmed just hours after Sonny filed the divorce papers), Cher was carrying Greg Allman's baby and was again single. Sonny became a pathetic sap, hemorraging fans, while his ex-wife offended the networks by showing her navel on primetime TV. Even though ratings were low, The most soulful moments of any of their four variety shows was the beginning of "The Cher Show," in which Cher would sit alone at a piano, spotlighted on a dark stage, singing to herself, the audience feeling her pain. But for reasons known only to them, Sonny and Cher decided to revive the old show, engaging in wacky variety show banter right there on national TV, all the pain and anguish barely concealed behind fake smiles and nervous laughter. When they brought little Chastity out for sketches, the show took on a desperate and tragic edge. Finally, Sonny and Cher's show, and relationship, completely burned up under the heat of the studio lights.

It's not a matter of "if" Lachey and Simpson will implode, but rather "when" and "how ugly." One wonders what a middle-aged Lachey will remember of his KITT duet, or the dog costume he wore for a banker skit whose punchline was "It's a knick-knack, Paddywhack, give the dog a loan!" The fake laughter piped in to augment the ridiculously contrived jokes (like Jessica's working woman sketch set to "She Works Hard for the Money" in which Lachey, as President Simpson's Chief of Staff, says that negotiations have broken down with the Chinese, to which she replies with a wink, "Well, let's order Italian!") is a shot at the '70s variety show, but it's also a metaphor for the Lachey/Simpson marriage. Lachey spends much of the show looking completely baffled by Simpson, as if he's mentally recalculating what her virginity cost him in terms of lasting happiness.

Tragically, Simpson's devotion to her husband (she serenades him with "Take My Breath Away") doesn't seem to be repaid in full, which can only lead to resentment and heartbreak. Lachey looks like he's watching his life spiral out of control, while Simpson seems convinced that as long as she's smiling, she's happy. The relationship's future can be summed up by the one genuinely funny sketch in the whole "Variety Hour": Simpson, playing a saloon girl with boobs spilling out of her dress, engages cowboy Lachey in some double-entendre banter at the bar. He stares right into her cleavage; she responds by breaking a fake-exploding whiskey bottle on his head. He takes his shirt off, generating catcalls from the girls (and, strangely, the cowboy extras in the skit), and it ends with everyone crashing whiskey bottles over each others' heads.

Perhaps Jessica Simpson will never win an Oscar, and maybe Nick will never become Congressman Lachey, but because they've allowed us to share their lives — empty as they may be — we still have a stake in what happens to them. We just have to hope for the best when their show is cancelled and those are real half-empty whiskey bottles being hurled.

— Stephen Himes (stephenhimes@hotmail.com)