May 12, 2006 03:15 PM
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We were hoping we'd be the first people to bring this to you, but apparently someone leaked it, so all we can do is give it to you most comprehensively: O.J. Simpson's new "reality" show, "Juiced." Ostensibly, it's a "Punk'd" type show, with OJ and his band of depressing, out-of-work actors playing pranks on various denizens of Los Angeles, but really it's just a sad, vaguely evil look into the world that O.J. now inhabits.
The rap video above, which is simply the opening credits, should give you an idea of what we're dealing with here. (Warning: Briefly contains NSFW content and, most notably, was shot directly off our television, which is why it looks so awful. We'll sub in a better version when we have it. We just felt it was important to see.) But to actually watch the whole program ... well, it's about as compelling an hour of television as you can imagine. We say that in all seriousness. Also said in all seriousness: Afterwards, you'll feel like you can never take enough showers. Warning: There's some nudity here.
After the jump, a rundown of what the hour has in store for you. Not only is OJ not out looking for the real killers ... he's kind of just spending his time getting lap dances.
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The show, perhaps not surprisingly, is constructed in a shoddy fashion. Essentially, it's different pranks played by OJ and his cohorts, with segments from OJ's music video and naked women dancing interspersed throughout. Here, as best as we could decipher, are the "pranks."
• Riffing on the old Letterman joke, O.J. mans the drive-thru at a fast food joint. It's mainly him taking a bit out of people's burgers and seeing that creeped-out look on the face when they realize they just came across O.J. Simpson.
• O.J. heads out to the freeway and sells oranges.
• O.J. pretends to go fishing in a pet store.
• O.J. dresses up as an old man and runs a bingo hall.
• In the now notorious sketch, O.J. attempts to sell a white Bronco, touting its "escapability."
• The one that creeped us out the most, though, was this one: A guy appears to be on a variation of that "Cheaters" reality show, where wives (or husbands) are confronted with video evidence that their spouses are being adulterous. When a cuckolded husband is taken to a hotel room, he finds his wife there with O.J.
All of these sketches take the form of every other prank show since "Candid Camera." The joke is introduced, the victim is humilated and then O.J. comes out and yells, "Hey, you got JUICED!"
The look on the faces of each victim — and we use the term "victim" in a different way than we usually use it with O.J. — is an amazing amalgam of confusion, horror and just about every emotion other than relief. Imagine if, after the joke was revealed on "Candid Camera," the prankee looked at Allen Funt and thought, "Uh, this guy isn't going to kill me, right?"
It's that look. The "Oh, it's a prank show ... and it's O.J. ... oh, my, this might be how death happens." It happens a lot on this show.
We have always been befuddled by the stories that occasionally pop up of O.J. out on the town, with various C-list actresses, prowling the clubs. It would seem like O.J. would exactly be the most secure bet, when it comes to, you know, long-term relationship material.
But this video shows one of the scariest aspects of Los Angeles, and the culture of celebrity, out there: There is always a smaller fish. Somehow, even now, O.J. Simpson has some Kato Kaelins to follow him around. They're everywhere in this video, helping him with jokes, propping him up, still there to tell him, "You're the man, Juice!" And deep down, the wonder, why, exactly, did they ever decide to leave Iowa in the first place.
We can't imagine what it must be like for the Goldman and Brown families to watch a video like this, with O.J. laughing and drinking and slapping women's asses, and we're just going to assume they have enough self-preservation instincts to skip it.
No, the real shock is for us, watching it — and again, we recommend you do so, knowing full well that the money goes right into O.J.'s pocket — is that, for some reason, we, deep down, kind of thought O.J. would be spending the rest of his life is solitude. Dealing with his family. Reevaluating his life. Signing some footballs for cash. Something.
Watching the video, you realize that O.J. is just the same monstrous, idiotic ogre he always was. We probably knew that, of course, but seeing it is an entirely different matter all together. We're not interested in moralizing here, but it's pretty difficult to deny that when the world ends, and the Martians come to reinhabit our planet, they will see this video, and they will realize that a society that allows it to exist was probably doomed to a deserving extinction at some point. Probably couldn't have happened too soon.
Get Juiced [Official Site]
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