Even as trash TV, 'Crowned' disappoints

Want a quick end to the Hollywood writers' strike? Force TV and film producers to sit down and watch "Crowned" when it debuts at 8 p.m. Wednesday on WGN Channel 9.

If this is the sort of reality program we have to look forward to filling in for shows on hiatus without scripts, the writers will be back to work in no time.

"Crowned: The Mother of all Pageants" is a new reality competition from the CW network pitting 11 pairs of mothers and daughters against one another in an eight-week beauty pageant. As usual in this sort of thing, they all live together in the same "pageant house," which leads to inevitable conflict when someone like Laura from Tennessee wakes up at 7 in the morning and starts doing her vocal exercises.

Take your typical reality-TV cat-fight quotient and multiply it exponentially, because not only do you have beautiful young women competing, but also their beautiful mothers, who are sometimes competing to be as beautiful as their daughters.

Thus you get people like Amanda proclaiming, "I don't need to make friends, especially when $100,000 is involved." When her mom, Andrea, proves equally cutthroat, Amanda chides her by saying, "You're not going to win Miss Congeniality like that."

Now, I'm sure plenty of viewers out there are just licking their chops over the idea of getting involved with such a trash fest, and why not? Right away there's a food fight, and the potential for an all-out rhymes-with-witch-slap session is high.

So what's really remarkable about Wednesday's premiere is how lifeless and laconic it turns out to be. If it didn't have the inimitable "Queer Eye" fashionista Carson Kressley acting as judge and delivering put-down ad-libs sharper than any writer could provide him, this show wouldn't have any personality at all.

The 11 mother-daughter combinations are each assigned to adopt a team name and choreograph an introductory presentation of themselves. What they come up with doesn't exactly defy the stereotype of beauty-pageant contestants being bubble-headed bimbos.

One pair names itself Silent But Deadly. "When I think of 'silent but deadly,'" Kressley whispers, "I think of one thing." Never one to play coy, he goes on to name exactly what that is. When the Blonde Bombshells come out in matching black hats, he says, "You looked like Amish hookers or something." He does get points for diplomacy when the Diamond Dolls do a lame routine and he says, "It seemed a little superficial."

Fellow judge Shanna Moakler, a former Miss U.S.A., takes offense with one mother-daughter combo calling themselves Hot & Not. But she gets even more irate over Delaware's Jill and Nicole calling themselves Sassy Sisters.

"Which one's which," Moakler says, and indeed they'd fit in the old dishwashing-liquid commercial about mothers and daughters who look alike. But Moakler insists they're not sisters, nor should they pretend to be.

Better are the Tomboy Queens -- "I identify with that name," Kressley says -- and the Daredevil Divas, who appear in a matching set of dresses covered in mirror disks.

"Your outfits make my eyes bleed," Kressley says. "But I love how relaxed you are. If you can be comfortable in those outfits, you're comfortable in your own skin."

Of course, each week leads toward the closing "de-sashing ceremony," in which one pair will be ousted, until we finally arrive, two months from now, at the finale when one couple will win the $100,000 -- and other gifts including a matching set of tiaras.

Oh Lordy, please let the writers' strike be over by then.

In the air

Remotely interesting: The fine PBS series "P.O.V." presents a profile of "Angels in America" playwright Tony Kushner in "Wrestling With Angels" at 9 p.m. Wednesday on WTTW Channel 11.

Jennifer Lyons has been promoted to executive producer of WGN Channel 9's morning news. She spent the last four years producing the station's noon newscast. … Trevor Frederickson is the new digital sales manager at WBBM Channel 2, jumping over from WMAQ Channel 5.

End of the dial: The Museum of Broadcast Communications has compiled a list of the 125 most memorable political moments airing on radio or TV. John F. Kennedy's assassination and Sept. 11 top the list, but it goes back to Franklin Roosevelt's Pearl Harbor speech on radio and beyond. It will be used for a "Politics on the Air" exhibit when the museum reopens.

CNN anchor Lou Dobbs will join the ranks of radio pundits with a syndicated show launching in March through United States Radio Networks.