‘Being Bobby Brown’ is disgusting

Crude comments, insufferable ego drag show down

Carl Posey / AP

Bobby Brown's daughter, La Princia, is just one of the family members featured on his new reality show, "Being Bobby Brown."

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REVIEW

By Barry Garron

Hollywood Reporter

updated 4:28 p.m. ET July 7, 2005

LOS ANGELES - There’s no point beating around the bush. “Being Bobby Brown,” the reality show spotlighting the R&B singer whose rap sheet might be longer than his catalog, is undoubtedly the most disgusting and execrable series ever to ooze its way onto television.

And when you consider the competition from the celebrity reality genre alone, that’s says something.

What gives “Bobby” that dismal distinction?

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Is it the lionizing of a lowlife convicted of failing to pay child support for his out-of-wedlock kids, drunk driving and a cocaine-related parole violation? (And let’s not forget his spousal “slap-boxing” arrest.) Is it his insufferable ego (he calls his son, Bobby Jr., “special to me because he carries my name”)? Is it his constant crude comments (he tells wife Whitney Houston to “bring that ass in quick. I’m going to show you what I’m going to do with it.”)? Or is it just his disgusting persona as, in the second episode, he speaks of removing excrement from his wife’s derriere? (No, I’m not going to quote him.)

It’s all that, and then some. If the eight-part series was intended to improve Brown’s image, it fails miserably.

Not only does it reveal Brown to be even more vulgar than the tabloids suggest, but it manages at the same time to rob Houston of any last shreds of dignity. She alternately shies from the camera and performs for them.

At one point, she asks the offscreen crew of this so-called reality show, “What are we supposed to be doing here?” It’s also a question for anyone who tunes in.

"Being Bobby Brown" (Thurs. June 30, 10-11 p.m., two episodes, repeating 11-midnight, Bravo