Too Much Kirstie Not a Good Thing

You may have seen Kirstie Alley on David Letterman. Or on the Today show.
That means there are two problems: Too much Kirstie on TV. And too much Kirstie.
Ms. Alley, who put herself on display in the Showtime show Fat Actress a few years back, has regained weight. Her response: she’s appearing in a reality show on A&E called Kirstie Alley’s Big Life in which she expects to lose those pounds again and launch her own diet business.
The show covers a lot of familiar reality TV ground. Here’s the star waking up. (Did she really go to sleep with a camera crew in her bedroom?) Here are her kids, and her quirky entourage. In Kirstie’s case these include a stylist, an assistant, the assistant’s assistant a bunch of lemurs and a handyman.
Turns out the handyman has a weight problem of his own, so Kirstie persuades him to join her in a diet and exercise regimen.
How much weight does she needs to drop? She weighs in at 230 and wants to get down to 140. (That means she has to lose only 6.4 stones, using the English system to make the task seem less gargantuan.) Jim the handyman is a solid 324 and would like to be 195.
Can they make their goals? She told the Today show she’s down 20 pounds already.
You can tune in if you want, but I don’t think it’s a healthy part of my television diet.
L.A. Times critic Mary McNamara doesn’t think the show is such a good idea either. In an open letter, she suggests that if Ms. Alley wants to make a less superficial change in her life, so devote herself to good work by joining the Peace Corps and working for Habitat for Humanity for a year, rather than focusing on her figure.
Nor is the New York Times a fan. Alessandra Stanley sees Big Life as one more entry in a growing list of obesity TV shows, with this one staring someone who has played the part before.
“It’s a low-budget, low-energy reality show in which its star lolls around her large Hollywood mansion, moaning about her weight,” Stanley writes.

What I’m really looking forward to on Sunday is the return of Breaking Bad on AMC. It took me a while to catch up with the end of season 2, but it certainly ended with a bang.
Now I can wait to see what creator Vince Gilligan, award winning actor Bryan Cranston and company will come up with next.
FYI: Here’s a link to the New York Times’ review of the beginning of Season 3.