'Confessions of a Teen Idol' on VH1
TELEVISION REVIEW
Reality show shows just how far fading stars -- Christopher Atkins, Jamie Walters, Jeremy Jackson, David Chokachi, Bill Hufsey, Eric Nies and Adrian Zmed -- will go.
Watching the premiere episode of VH1's "Confessions of a Teen Idol," it's difficult to know whether to laugh or cry. The "refreshingly honest" (see VH1 promo notes) hook of this show is that fame is an addiction that drives many young stars onto various paths of self-destruction, and this show is going to help a group of them, now adults, find it again.
Presumably, VH1 will also be sending cases of Champagne to their local AA meetings.
Of the eight former teen idols showcased on the show, the best known is the host, Scott Baio, who recently recharged his career on VH1 with the reality show “Scott Baio Is 45 . . . and Single.” Still, he manages to use his former Chachi pinup status to express brotherhood with the seven actual participants while remaining safely aloof from the bachelor pad crucible in which the real "action" takes place.
There, the term "teen idol" has been granted the sort of elasticity one might suspect would be necessary to cast a show like this one. The still rather dreamy Christopher Atkins (he of "The Blue Lagoon"), Jamie Walters ("Beverly Hills, 90210") and Jeremy Jackson ("Baywatch") may have been bona fide teen idols, but the rest -- David Chokachi ("Baywatch"), Bill Hufsey (TV's "Fame"), Eric Nies (the original "The Real World") and Adrian Zmed ("T.J. Hooker") -- well, perhaps they came after my Teen Beat-reading days, but they seem more like former teen stars than teen idols.
Be that as it may, they all have the basic where-are-they-now requirement. Except Zmed, who works as a singer and dancer on a cruise ship, none are full-time performers. Atkins, at least according to the Internet Movie Database, has kept his hand in showbiz, but his real job is building swimming pools; Nies, who has appeared on fitness videos and "Real World" reunion competitions, is a vegan life coach; Walters is a firefighter-paramedic; Jackson is still working to overcome drug and alcohol problems; and so on.
Still, they share the same basic desire: to get back into that corrosive limelight.
To do this, they are each willing, apparently, to share digs with six other grown men (Jackson, rather touchingly, points out that this will not be a problem for him as he has served time in jail and been in and out of rehab), undergo group therapy administered by "celebrity psychology expert" Cooper Lawrence and, during the first episode anyway, endure being pranked by Baio and child star turned producer Jason Hervey ("The Wonder Years"). All in the contradictory and more than unsettling pursuit of exploring their addiction to fame while actively courting it once again.
