Brandon Hickman / E! Entertainment"Not to be lazy."
This is how Ryan Seacrest replied when asked about his New Year's Resolution for 2009.
And lest he be accused of snoozing through the coming Year of the Ox (what with American Idol, E! News, KISS FM, running a production company and his various other jobs), he's getting started early by executive producing a new reality show for NBC called Momma's Boys, which starts tonight. And OMG, these mommas are drama.
Imagine the Real Housewives trying to set up the Bachelors with Top Models (all while living together in the Big Brother house) and you have a general idea of the insanity that ensues.
So which mother is the bat-poop craziest of them all? A woman who's destined to instantly enter the reality-star hall of fame. Seriously, Omarosa would be freaked out by this lady...
What we learn in tonight's premiere (and the extended trailer below) is that one of the moms, Khalood Bojanowski, is a good old-fashioned, shameless racist. This mom, who comes to a house populated by a diverse harem of young ladies, doesn't want anyone black, Latina or Asian dating her beloved son. The girls see her video testimony to this effect before they even meet her, and they are uniformly horrified. And as you can imagine, the relationships between the girls and this potential future mother-in-law are...testy.
Ryan puts the power struggles in context, saying, "These are moms that are clearly obsessed with control when it comes to their sons' lives—and they did not hide their feelings once they got in the middle of all these girls." Still, the other moms are less crazytown than Khalood, and the girls seem like a decent lot, despite having a larger-than-expected proportion of nude models. Everyone involved does seem sweetly, almost quaintly, devoted to the idea of creating a family, even if it is being formed under the blinding glare of the reality-TV spotlight.
As for the Khalood question, the girls aren't wilting wallflowers who will sacrifice anything, least of all their self-respect, to snag a man.
As exec producer Andrew Glassman told reporters, "[Khalood] comes in with a severe attitude, and then you watch as a younger generation—including her own son, by the way—gives [Khalood] her comeuppance over those views over and over again." And the crowd roars!
Now, take a look at the dramarama in the full preview below...
If you're in the market for a decadent new reality-TV series, Momma's Boys premieres tonight at 10 on NBC.