The Real Housewives of Orange County

These Housewives know that their job is to be ostentatiously rude in too-tight designer clothes.

The obsession with appearances and materialism - from cars to houses to Botox to breast implants - makes "Housewives" a case study for everything that is shallow and pathetic about our society. Of course, that's also what makes it so entertaining. [20 Mar 2006]

A persistently diverting journey by producers and camera crews in search of the glib, the flippant and the ostensibly hip of Southern California.

Highly watchable. ... The show, an obvious riff on "Desperate Housewives" and "Laguna Beach: The Real OC," is less glossily executed than those but also, for all this, trashier and more believably grotesque. [21 Mar 2006]

Entertaining in the way the problems of the rich often are. [21 Mar 2006]

The show isn't entertaining, exactly — it has none of the wit or style of "Desperate Housewives." But like so much reality TV, it's both educational and grimly fascinating, and leaves you feeling much better about your own life — if for no other reason than that you would never be so stupid as to appear on a show like this.

If you're fascinated enough by their boorish behavior to return for more, you have a stronger stomach for tacky TV, and people, than I do. [21 Mar 2006]