Episode Seven: Making the Single: Part Two
Review by Noel Wood

I've noticed a peculiar irony here while following this third season of The Surreal Life. For the first two seasons, both of which I was pretty excited about from start to finish, there was almost no presence for the show elsewhere on the web. No images to use, no other people commenting on it, nothing. This year, though, VH1's website is a veritable cornucopia of Surreal goods, but I'm too lethargic and apathetic about the show this year to do anything about it.

Anyway, on with the seventh episode of this season, which is actually the continuation of last week's episode. When we left off last time, Ryan pitched a fit because she didn't want to sing pop music despite being a pop singer, and had locked herself in the bathroom. As we start off this week, Brigitte needs to pee, but Ryan won't let her in. Eventually, Ryan lets Red Sonya in, and Brigitte talks Miss Starr into going out there and singing.

The band is still busy recording their hit single, and by "the band", I mean Jordan Knight. Flavor Flav becomes the first of many folks here today to diss Jordan for his Hitleresque production techniques. Ryan stumbles back out and starts laying down a rough cut of her vocals, which Jordan is very impressed with, but Ryan eventually goes back to sulking. Jordan expresses his opinion that Ryan is "a little bitchy".

Flav starts laying down some drum tracks, and the studio tech who's watching over the recoding winces. He disses Flav's abilities on the skins, while everyone else disses Jordan's out-of-tune singing. Everyone but Flav and Jordan seem to think this is a train wreck, and even Charo states that "we sound like the Salvation Army", whatever that means.

To make this single even more of a trainwreck, Jordan has Dave Coulier contribute some trumpet to the song. Not real trumpet, of course, since Dave probably doesn't play the real trumpet, but trumpet noises through his mouth. Everyone else seems to think this is a bad idea too, but I guess they had to fit Dave on the thing somewhere. Ryan bitches that Jordan is focused too much on the trumpets and not her vocals, which she doesn't want to do anyway.

Charo decides to pull Jordan aside and lay the smack down on his production techniques. Charo says something about how "there is caca on the moon tonight". I think that if they ever release this season on DVD, they need a bonus disc of nothing but Charoisms. Flav tries to keep the peace and refers to himself and Jordan as "Super Musicians".

Ryan decides to pitch yet another fit about her "selling out" or whatever and decides to let Brigitte sing on the track, despite the fact that Brigitte can't sing. Flav tries to coerce Brigitte into it, but she's passed out on the couch and requires strawberries to motivate her out of slumber. Flav says a banana will have to suffice, but Brigitte looks pretty rough at this point. Finally, Ryan gives in and decides to lay down the vocal track.

To top off the song, Brigitte does some Danish spoken word stuff that's supposed to sound sexy or something, and for some reason this tiny little element seems to suddenly get everyone excited about the song. Suddenly everyone loves everybody and thinks they accomplished some great task but in all reality the song sucks horse balls and I'm just glas the episode is over.

It looks like next week's hanuted house episode may be the final one for this season, and boy howdy is that a breath of relief. Join us here next time, if you dare.