If you choose to go "Chasing Farrah" along with our friends at TV Land, you're in for a very weird ride.
Which, quite frankly, comes as no surprise. After all, Farrah Fawcett — the one-time "Charlie's Angel" who went on to do some fine work in projects like "The Burning Bed" and "Extremities" — has, in recent years, been famous mostly for being famous. And for being weird.
Which is the point of the TV Land reality series, which has a camera crew follow Fawcett as she lives her life. Although the one person who doesn't seem to realize that it's about how weird she is is Fawcett herself.
"It was a chance for me to go, 'OK. See. I'm not crazy,' " she recently told TV critics.
At least in the first couple of episodes, that doesn't come through loud and clear. At best, the jury is still out on the whole craziness thing.
Fawcett would have us believe that her whacked-out, disoriented and possibly chemically strange behavior during an appearance on the "Late Show with David Letterman" back in 1997 was all an act. She tries to explain it away again on "Chasing Farrah."
But, while she sometimes seems lucid and relatively intelligent on her reality series, at other times she seems no less strange than she was with Letterman.
Like the moment when boyfriend Ryan O'Neal mentions that, if he had it to do over again, he probably wouldn't have gone bungee jumping. And Fawcett comes back with, "I never would smoke crack or bungee jump."
OK . . .
Perhaps the strangest thing about "Chasing Farrah" is that Farrah spends a lot of time bemoaning the fact that her life is so public. That she can't go anywhere without being mobbed by fans and chased by photographers.
So, naturally, she fights this by agreeing to be followed by cameras and have her life turned into a TV show.
"I want to do something and not repeat myself, so I see the challenge which feeds my creativity," Fawcett told TV critics in an interview session that was, well, hard to make heads or tails of afterward, what with all the start-and-stop, incomplete sentences and replies that had little to do with the questions. "And otherwise, I'm perfectly happy to stay at home, do my art, cook. I mean, I'm a very normal person. I am. But even when I try to live my normal life, I'm never alone. So why not have these people follow me because people follow me anyway?"
This despite the fact that Fawcett, both in the interview and on the show, expresses strong distaste for reality shows in general. And never admits that maybe — just maybe — agreeing to do the show has something to do with the 58-year-old actress' desire to revive her flagging career.
"In fact, actually, I'm not a big fan of reality shows, but I haven't seen all of them," she said. "I saw the ones, like, where they have to eat bugs and do something like that. But I haven't seen the 'Newlyweds' or 'The Apprentice.' I don't even know what the formula is. And, in fact, I think there probably isn't a formula, because we're not following it."
While she repeatedly insists that "Chasing Farrah" has nothing in common with "The Anna Nicole Show," the format is essentially the same. Fawcett is joined by her various friends, employees and hangers-on as she goes about her life.
To be fair, however, there's no comparing Fawcett to Anna Nicole Smith, who's really whacked out.
"They said, 'Well, we'll just follow you around with a camera.' And I went, 'Oh, that's real interesting,' " Fawcett said. "But since people seem to be interested, like I said before, maybe they're watching for me to slip and fall. And that's normal. But it might as well be with a certain integrity and truth."
At least she's aware that coming across as normal would be pretty dull TV. So maybe she is just acting the whole time?
But if that's true, "Chasing Farrah" isn't much of a reality show, is it?
What Fawcett is apparently hoping is that she'll seem relatively normal in comparison to her entourage.
"What's great is that all the people who agreed to do it with me — who thought, 'No problem' — tend to actually go a little crazy and behave unprofessionally and badly and argue and mess up. . . . This was easier for me. I had other people to bounce off of. I'm more familiar with (being on camera), but I think I mess up the least. So there!"
"Chasing Farrah" is worth watching for at least one reason — it gives viewers a clue how celebrities can be so out of touch with reality. We get a glimpse of fans and flunkies fawning all over Fawcett, telling her how great she is all the time.
Heck, TV Land president Larry Jones refers to her as the "Holy Grail" of reality shows.
"I don't think anything in a celebrity or an actor's life prepares you for what comes along with fame and how people say things to you that you really don't know how to respond to," Fawcett said. "It used to be, 'Oh, you're so beautiful' or 'Oh, I liked your hair the other way.' Now it's 'Oh, you still look good.' I don't know what it's going to be later — 'Oh, my (gosh), you look horrible'? I mean, who knows?
"But I guess the sad thing for me is that it will always be there even if I chose, I think, never to work again. That I would never be able to, let's say, go home and see my parents or go to the market without 15 people commenting."
Which once again demands we ask . . . so why put yourself in a reality show?
Ah, well, it's her life. We're just "Chasing Farrah."
Debuts Wednesday
The six-part reality series "Chasing Farrah" premieres Wednesday at 8 p.m. on the TV Land cable channel. A second half-hour episode follows at 8:30 p.m.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com