Photos: Rick Rowell / ABC
When A Sitcom Star Swaps With A Former Teen Porn Star, The Results Scarcely Elicit Even One 'Oooooh, Mary!'
Jackée Harry and Traci Lords live very different lives, but everyone's pretty cool with their choices in Celebrity Wife Swap's weirdly subdued season premiere.
Our Players
The Talk
Celebrity Wife Swap has returned for another season, and while the Jackeé Harry/Traci Lords matchup has aired first, it's (curiously) marked Episode 404 on the ABC media site, which seems like a better position for it. For a season premiere, it seemed strangely civil and restrained and un-scandalous to me. You?
Same! I liked pretty much everyone (except Jeff's dumb friends, who seemed to me to be deliberately playing dicks for the show's sake) and didn't really see the big conflict. And Traci Lords and Jeff don't need any help in the child-rearing department that I can see; that boy is a delight. His asking Jackée what she wanted to be when she grew up was adorbles.
We're agreed that the cupcakes she sent him to school with were totally store-bought, though, right? If Jackée's a novice baker, she's not busting out a pastry bag to frost them shits.
Oh, no question. I'm sure a producer saw the dailies of her blithely dropping half an eggshell into the batter and was like, let's not inadvertently poison Gunnar's classmates.
Now I feel we should talk about Elgin in a manner that's not going to get us sued. What...what?
Yes, quite right. Well, look: who cares what his sexuality is, obviously? And I too would marry Jackée despite not being into ladies in a romantical way, because she is great. But I believe that is the situation. And now please welcome our attorney.
Given that Traci is presumably not naïve about such matters, her whole campaign to help get Elgin in touch with his "king" side by taking him to a construction site and putting a sledgehammer in his hands seemed to me like extremely cynical producer intervention. Everything else we saw of Traci made it clear she is not judgmental, so I don't think she gives a rat's ass how Elgin wants to live, particularly since he seems pretty happy? I mean, someone tried to make it out like he's resentful of Jackée because she's a flower and forces him to be a gardener, but I didn't get the sense any of the times, plural, that he volunteered to do Traci's hair that Elgin really wants anyone to look after him or put him first; he's obviously a nurturer.
Yeah, agreed. When Traci's making his dating profile and he's saying he wants a woman who nurtures him, I sensed them both cheating that to the camera. I doubt anyone involved in the creation of the show gives shit one, but I'm guessing they think the CWS audience is more socially conservative and judgy. Which is weird, because what audience is, like, accepting of a partner swap (even if it's not the literal, swinging-seventies sort) but then can't go there with non-hetero situations. ...Insert "half the U.S. Congress" "joke" here, I guess.
Elgin used to have a reality show about his salon on VH1 and his appearance on this episode makes me want to watch it. He's very likable and has real star charisma -- as does Traci! If she got a cooking show out of this, I'd watch it. She seems sweet.
I would also watch it, as well as a series that's just, like, a webcam of Jackeé's friend's closet, the one who had the black-and-white suit and gorgeous two-foot-diameter hair.
I think that guy was also a supporting character in a recent Botched, btw. He's obviously got a pretty awesome circle of friends.
AND I would watch a kids' show where Jackée and Gunnar buy toys and play with them. (At my house.)