It's just never the ones you expect. Or at least that I expect.

There's a whole new glut of reality trash tv popping up on basic cable, to take advantage of the network reruns. It wasn't like I was expecting Strip Search to be any good, but I thought it might be a fun guilty pleasure.

Just sad and unclean and especially boring. Relentlessly repetitive. Not at all interesting the first time, and then the same crap over and over. Blech.

But just as I set the tivo up for it a few weeks ago, as an afterthought, I decided to grab Kept as well. A truly vile-looking piece of garbage where Jerry Hall whittles down 12 ugly-American prettyboys to one lucky boytoy to be her kept man.

I am somewhat embarassed to admit that I snickered my ass off. Lots of clever touches, and with all reality tv, the real beauty is in the editing.

And though I'd never found Jerry Hall even remotely interesting, she turns out to have a pretty wry sense of humor. Along with her producers. In less capable hands, putting the dozen mostly dumbass contestants up in old English estate and only providing five beds would have just been cruel. And as a rule I'm against cruelty, but with this group, it feels like an overdue call from the karma police.

The boys talk a big game about how they're going to fight everything out like tough bastards, but end up acting like whipped dogs, crawling off to settle for couches and pretending to like them.

And Jerry's delivery is pitch perfect on her cutaway: "I guess we could have put in more beds, but--where's the fun it that?"

Cut directly back to musclehead Jason explaining how he "used a little strategery" to land one of the coveted beds.

It's really all her, though. No wonder Mick Jagger married this woman. She's sees right through all their nonsense. Her commentary about them drips with heavier sarcasm than Leonard Pinth Garnell.

Already this show feels like the anti-Bachelor/ette. Those shows are all about rounding up a pack of smarmy guys and putting them in romantic situations where a desperate single woman will fall for all their crap. Kept takes an infinitely wiser woman who could not care less and calls them on every bit of it.

But only to us, mostly. Most of these nimrods still think they're impressing her.

Ricardo is so starry-eyed and stunning that one of his competitors dubs him Rico Suave and then admits to the camera that the guy is so good at it he had practically fallen in love with the slickster himself. Even though the producers provided inumerable clips of Ricardo assuring us how wonderful he was, when he turned on the charm he was so captivating I really wanted to believe it was real. When he made his little introduction to her, he was convincing enough that I figured she would be taken in. Any of the bachelorettes would have immediately swooned. Here, we cut to Jerry rolling her eyes about him "giving me bedroom--there is a bit of insincerity."

Of course the dufi give her plenty to work with. Seth meets Jerry and her fiends at a pub and begins by saying how great it is to meet "some sexy-looking broads like yourselves." One of them cracks that he's a real charmer and he thinks she means it seriously, assures her that he's not. But he senses the mistake eventually and corrects himself, "Broads? Old ladies?" Yeah, I'm sure they were much happier with that.

Later, on the ride home, he confides that he might be in love. Austen, one of the few contenders with some semblance of a brain, replies, "Dude, you called them old ladies!"

But it gets better. No, really. The biggest neanderthal by far, 24-year old jon, who dresses to impress in a red leather jacket with lime green shirt and white ballcap explains, "The fact that I live with my parents, Jerry will see that I'm still growing as a person. I'm still evolving as a mn. She'll be very impressed."

Who could make this shit up? I just can't believe Jon is familiar with the concept of evolution, though presumably less aware of the irony of its failure to address him.