Is America so in love with Paris Hilton that it wants to meet her mother? NBC thinks so.
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The Good Life, likened to George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion by its producers (except perhaps minus the social satire, the irony and the humor), will feature one woman being booted each week by Kathy Hilton for failing to measure up to the week's task. The winning contestant will receive a year's free stay at the Waldorf-Astoria, as well as a car, clothing, jewelry and a one-year job (shades of NBC's The Apprentice).
The initial order for the show is eight episodes, meaning that Kathy Hilton will start the last show with three contestants, one of whom will win. All we can hope is that Kathy does a better job training them in how to act like "ladies" than she did with Paris and her younger sister Nicky.
We also hope that the producers remember the main lesson that Shaw was trying to convey in Pygmalion, which is revealed in the classic speech from Eliza Doolittle after her triumphant "debut": "You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up -- the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on -- the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated." But we have our doubts that the contestants on The Good Life will be treated as anything more than flower girls.