Oh Danny boy: Bonaduce's back
10/20/06 01:28 PM
By ED BARK
How screwed up is Danny Bonaduce? The usual shorthand descriptions don't apply anymore.
"Actually it's a train wreck landing on top of a car crash mixed with a baby on fire," an interested observer opines on VH1's second season premiere of Breaking Bonaduce (Sunday night, Oct. 22, 8:30 central, 9:30 eastern).
That's probably putting it mildly. The Partridge Family's onetime cuddly kid is now a 47 year-old man-child battling more demons than The X-Men. Should we feel sorry for him, or his long-suffering wife, Gretchen? Is their act getting old? Not to the point where VH1 is about to give up on them. And it should be noted that the network has become very good at packaging these less than savory celebrity emissions. It's fresh from setting a ratings record with last Sunday's finale of Flavor of Love 2, in which rapper Flavor Fav picked "Deelishis" as his love connection. The thing attracted 7.5 million viewers, a level that several of this season's new broadcast network series have yet to hit.
Breaking Bonaduce has upscale production values if nothing else. This season's first two episodes are impressively presented, lending an almost film noir quality to the cheese at hand. So Danny is shot well, even when he's shot to hell. There's too much redundancy, though. Recaps and coming detractions seem to take up about one-fifth of these half-hour dollops. Gretchen's mantra goes like this: "I really want to file papers. I just don't want to live this way."
The first season of the series tracked Danny's descent into drugs, drinking binges and a 30-day stint in rehab. He's supposedly seven months sober as Season 2 begins. At least that's what he tells reporters and fans while strolling the red carpet toward the "VH1 Big in '05" awards ceremony. He somehow manages to lose the "Favorite Reality Star" category to last year's American Idol runnerup, Bo Bice. A gracious and still buff Danny responds by stripping to the waist and hugging Bice onstage. Talk about your magic moments.
The episode otherwise trains on Danny's trip to Mexico City for a press conference heralding the premiere of Breaking Bonaduce's first season in 22 Latin American countries.
"I look like an idiot on television. I look like an idiot in lots of ways," he says, displaying an acute self-awareness.
Problem is he's hardly watched any of his own show. So it vexes him to witness the Spanish language dubbing of a sequence in which Gretchen gets up-close and pretty personal with a male stripper who's performing at her birthday party. Two weeks later he's regressing again, Gretchen tells the couple's therapist, Dr. Garry Corgiat, who's returning from Season One.
Danny, who played a corpse earlier this season on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, gets the boot from Gretchen in Episode 2. He frets that "gearing up for this show" put him on the wrong track again. This, of course, isn't VH1's worry. A happy, contented Danny doesn't deliver the goods, so to speak.
He later blows up at a VH1 film crew for videotaping and recording what he deems a "super-private conversation with my wife." He demands that it not be aired, but of course it is. Meanwhile, his two young kids are missing their wayward dad, and you really hate to see them dragged into this. But press materials say that Danny eventually decides this season to "relinquish all of his demons and seek help from a most surprising place -- God."
We'll see how that goes. Boy, will we ever. Breaking Bonaduce in reality is the gift that keeps on giving to its star attraction. As he tells the Mexican press, the overall point of the show is "to pay my rent and feed my children."
It's a helluva way to make a living, Danny boy.
Grade: C+
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