Get This Party Started

Where "Party" goes awry is by trying to be an hour. That's twice as long as it should be. There's more fat in it than a Popeye's biscuit.

Uninspired and flat.

Something feels wrong about a TV "reality show" team swooping into the hotel where a displaced Hurricane Katrina family has been living since September and carting two girls out to Las Vegas for a fancy birthday party.

In television terms, a program like this can be produced for pocket change, which explains, at least partly, its presence on the UPN schedule.

[It] leads the league in overreactions and on-cue hugs, making it seem just too phony to have any real impact.

A do-good reality show that makes a big deal about how morally superior it is.

You can practically feel the IQ points leaking out your ears as you watch.