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Whitney Houston says- and she learned this in what she recalls as a "35-minute lecture" by "the Israelites" -that "there are little bugs inside your system that food creates, along with your intestines."
Clawing viciously at the shoulder of her husband, Bobby Brown, she explains to Tommy Brown, her brother-in-law, "It'll be like this, on the walls of your stomach and of your rectum."
It's an impassioned presentation, this advocacy of colonics. (The Israelites are presumably the Black Hebrews, a group of African-Americans who live in Israel and believe they are descendants of one of the lost tribes; Ms. Houston and her husband visited them in 2003.) It is also the most sustained look at the mind of the strung-out singer as she surges and retreats tonight in a kinetic supporting role on "Being Bobby Brown," a reality series making its debut on Bravo that chronicles six months of Mr. Brown's life.
Of course, we can't explicitly be here for Ms. Houston; we're supposed to watch Mr. Brown. In 2002, Mr. Brown told Diane Sawyer that his wife's multiplatinum prominence didn't bother him because "she's a female, and no one can touch me as an entertainer." (Mr. Brown was an R&B song-and-dance sensation in the late 1980's and early 90's.) But he seems nonetheless a little sensitive about the dimming of his star, as when in the new series someone mistakes him for P. Diddy or when a fan asks "Miss Houston" for her autograph.
"Mrs. Brown," says Mr. Brown firmly.
"Being Bobby Brown" is not one of the clean, well-lighted reality shows, like the competitions or MTV's "Newlyweds" or "Real World," where much of the production takes place in houses explicitly designed and illuminated for the purpose. Instead, it's more like "Chaotic," Britney Spears's show: haphazard and shot on the fly, with drama driven in part by the apparent irritation of some of the side players, who appear ambivalent about reality television. "Being Bobby Brown" looks dirty, in short- just as a show about a fighting, drinking, addiction-prone outlaw should. And the dirtiness makes it an absorbing hour of drama and comedy.
The series begins, like a good novel, with its hero freshly out of jail - 30 days in Atlanta. Then he has to detour to Boston, where he grew up, to report to someone for skipping child-support payments. (The legal details, which come from Mr. Brown himself, are murky.) In Boston, we meet two of Mr. Brown's children: La Princia, 16, and Bobby Jr., 14. While he dotes on Bobby Jr., he teases La Princia.
"I'm going to have to put the smack down on you," he says.
"I'll pretend you didn't just say that," La Princia replies.
Later he returns to Atlanta-"Back in the ATL!"- to see his wife, in a superhyped reunion at the Hyatt. After he relaxes with beer and cigarettes, she shows up, and they disappear into the bedroom.
Ms. Houston looks skinny but not sickly. She wears mostly white. In many scenes, she's hidden behind glasses and headscarves, but her beauty is obvious, as is her lusty appreciation of her husband. She laughs happily at his jokes and -when she's not caught up in a private fixation- nurtures him. In turn, he consoles her when she's missing her father, who died recently, and lets her eat off his plate.
"Are you sure you don't want steak and eggs?" Mr. Brown says, noting that Ms. Houston is generously helping herself to his plate.
"No," she answers. "I want your steak and eggs."
In Mr. Brown's easy laughter is his happy resignation to marriage. Like "Newlyweds" and "The Osbournes," this program promises to offer another data point in response to the eternal sociological question, What are other people's marriages like?
www.nytimes.com
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