Where’s the remote?

REALITY CHECK Recently found a new reality show on Bravo: Party Party, a show where two groups of people are followed while planning parties and working out all the family drama in the details. This is no Laguna Beach or Sweet Sixteen (MTV productions) where the richest, brattiest, kids plan the fêtes so fabulous in such a nauseating way you end up watching in the hopes everything goes completely wrong. Party Party takes a departure—the families involved are regular working folk with houses bearing ’70s shag carpet and drooling kids. Also featured: younger daughters who dance more provocatively than their 18-year-old sisters, moms spending the whole time trying to figure out how to sneak alcohol in to the revelers, and lack-luster dads issuing vacant threats and fending off the cops. Don’t these people know what was put out there on those airwaves can never be taken back? Oh, the humanity.

JACK OSBOURNE’S BIG ADVENTURE OK, I had to find a decent reality show to counter the badness that is Party Party, and was shuffling through the channels the other day when I caught The Jack Osbourne Project—Adrenaline Junkie on the Travel Channel. At first glance at the end of the third installment (where I first came in) I saw this sinewy dude with a fuzzed-out buzz cut cresting Yosemite’s El Capitan, I thought it must be some other Jack, until the scene cut to Sharon and Ozzy on the valley floor, cheering and freaking out over this death-defying feat. “We could never do anything like that, even when we were in good shape, right?” Ozzy sputtered to Sharon, who squawked and fumbled with her Walkie Talkie. Jack lost 70 pounds in six months training to climb the 3,000-foot sheer wall, running through the desert, kick-boxing in Thailand and climbing in the Alps, assisted the entire time by Britain’s famous rock-climbers, Mike Weeks and Bean Sopwith. Check out his adventure on the re-run.

HE’S BAA-AAK! Just in case you missed it, Jack’s (Kiefer Sutherland) back, and Fox’s 24 blazed its way across Sunday and Monday night primetimes for four hours of macho thrill. Right off the bat, former President Palmer is assassinated and Jack Bauer, considered dead at the end of the last season, comes out of hiding to assist the usually annoying agent-savant Chloe (Mary-Lynn Rajskub). Then we see Tony and Michelle, the shmoopy CTU (Counter Terrorism Unit) couple who have been with the series since the first season, in their on-again, off-again courtship. Within moments of their entrance, Michelle is killed by a bomb placed in her car, and Tony (Carlos Bernard) is once again seriously injured. President Logan (Gregory Itzin) is still in power, ugh, few TV personalities inspire violence in me, but I always just want to punch that guy, right in his aggravating Nixony-mug. With more bombs, moles, torture, hostages, high tech communications and explosions on par with the most popular video games out there, 24 gives you the best bang for your buck of any show on the networks.