It’s a not particularly well-kept secret that most men under 50
years of age — given the opportunity — would happily spend the entire
day looking at pictures of scantily clad and/or naked women on the
Internet. It’s also inevitable, really, that as reality television has
gotten bigger and bigger, there would be a series that would eventually
lead us to the doorstep of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, and inside his namesake mansion. These two things dovetail nicely in The Girls Next Door,
the jiggly, wealth-flaunting cable series centered around Hefner, his
trio of blonde live-in girlfriends and their ring-a-ding lifestyle.
The
three women in question are the now-21-year-old Kendra Wilkinson, Holly Madison, 26, and Bridget Marquardt, the grand dame of the group at 32
years of age. As one might imagine for the concubines of a millionaire
retiree, there aren’t exactly many taxing occupational demands or
worried conversations about how they’re going to pay the gas bill this
month. Instead there’s an abundance of premium-quality leisure
activity, so the 15 episodes included here chart all manner of
lounging, partying and cheery beverage sipping, from a trip to Las
Vegas, an AFI salute to George Lucas and a wine-tasting jaunt to
Northern California to “fight night,” Hefner’s famous Midsummer Night’s
Dream party, celebrating Kendra’s 20th birthday and more. In fact,
based on all this evidence, I’d confidently estimate that the girls
spend a good 30 percent of their lives posing for pictures. And another 15 percent pillow-fighting.
Sold in a cardboard slipcase that houses three slimline cases and three discs (one for each lady!), The Girls Next Door: The Complete First Season
is presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with optional English and Spanish
subtitles. Bonus features include more than 50 minutes’ worth of
un-bleeped and un-blurred deleted scenes, audio commentaries with the
girls, network promos and a voluminous (though tasteful) photo gallery.
In addition to the shock of some of these many dozens of photos
featuring the women in full clothes (including jeans!), two pictures in
particular of Hefner cracked me up. In most photos, of course, Hef has
that same dignified and extremely photogenic look — it feeds his image
as pleasant and avuncular, yet still unattainable to folks like you and
I. In one here, though, from what I presume to be a costume-themed pool
party, he has on Bettie Page print shirt and a ball cap cocked to the
side, b-boy style. In another… well, there’s no polite way to put this:
he looks like a grinning idiot. It’s the exact look you would expect on
the face of someone crashing the gates of the Playboy mansion, and it
made me laugh out loud because I think this is the first photo of its
kind that’s slipped through the steely, image-vetting clutches of the Playboy machine.
The real… I don’t know, shock, or maybe jaw-dropping and wincingly
comedic value of the set, though, arrives in extra interview footage
with the ladies. Two-and-a-half minutes never seemed as long as it does
with San Diego native Kendra, who talks about going to massage therapy
school a couple days a week and… I can’t remember what else. The other
ladies have a bit more life experience, so when Northern
California-bred college grad Bridget cops to it “being a great
opportunity” to be Hefner’s girlfriend in her six-minute chat, you
clench your teeth and shake your head a bit less than you otherwise
might. Then there’s the Alaskan-born Holly, who’s apparently Hefner’s
“main” squeeze. I quote, verbatim: “This is going to be hard to
articulate because I don’t think I ever realized I was beautiful. I
think I realized I was ambitious enough to change myself into that
person, because it takes effort to be beautiful, whether it’s getting
your hair done or getting surgery or whatever.” Guys — and I cannot
stress this enough — skip these segments. C+ (Show) A- (Discs)