(Newser)
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If you already hate Bristol Palin, be prepared to hate her even more after watching tonight's premiere of her new Lifetime reality show, Bristol Palin: Life's a Tripp. The critics hands-down pan the debut, and many agree that it may remind you of another obnoxious reality show family:
- The show is supposed to be about a young single mom struggling to raise her son, "but the setting and trappings in the first few episodes—an Italianate mansion in Beverly Hills that belongs to a friend of her mother’s, designer sunglasses, and lots of clubbing—instead scream 'Kardashians of Wasilla,'" writes Alessandra Stanley in a scathing New York Times review. "The Teen Mom poignancy is undercut by the palatial surroundings. Bristol gives Tripp his bath in a marble bathroom fit for a Roman emperor."
- Most of the show revolves around Bristol and sister Willow, whom she brought along to Hollywood so she'd have a built-in babysitter, "shopping, squabbling, and engaging in vapid conversations. In other words, the Alaskan Kardashians," writes Lori Rackl in the Chicago Sun-Times. Oh, and there are also moments like the one "where Bristol has to teach Tripp things like the difference between a bidet and a water fountain. No one said being a single mom was easy."
- In one scene that stuck with Robert Lloyd in the Los Angeles Times, Palin—who is volunteering with a Los Angeles charity—is given a tour of a decidedly less ritzy area. "What is Skid Row? I've heard of it before," she says, and later, "I have never in my life ever seen or experienced something like that, so I was just completely blown away." Writes Lloyd, "Possibly, in a future episode, she will get out of the car."
- In the Washington Post, Hank Stuever amusingly calls the mansion Bristol inhabits "redolent in its Bachelorette and Simpson-Lachey decor, smelling faintly of failed enterprises, pool chlorine, and compromised souls," and strongly advises you not to tune in: "Even if you have a lasting grudge against all things Palin, there’s no payoff here. It’s a new low for anyone who makes the mistake of watching."
