Bimbo nutjobs make absurd ‘Sunset Tan’ a reality winner

Such is the tan-fastic voyage of “Sunset Tan” (10:30 p.m. Sunday, E!), which, like every third reality show these days, has a Las Vegas connection.

The series follows the day-to-day shenanigans at a chain of L.A. tanning salons. If there’s an underlying theme, besides seeing how much idiocy can be crammed into 30 minutes, it’s the fight to see who’ll get to manage the company’s upcoming Vegas location.

Scheduled to open early next year at Palms Place, the local spinoff is presented as the holy grail of tanning. Nick, the snarky manager of the West Hollywood store, estimates the Vegas job will be worth $100,000. Or more. A year. To manage a tanning salon.

One of the main responsibilities of the winner — who’ll be revealed in Sunday’s finale of the far-too-short, six-episode season — will be to visit the rooms of various party girls and airbrush their naked flesh. But, if the Vegas crew is anything like the L.A. nutjobs, it would take every penny to make putting up with them worthwhile.

Any good reality show will have at least one or two avert-your-eyes moments. But “Sunset Tan” averages more train wrecks than a “Faces of Death” video.

There’s the pregnant woman — who looks to be in at least her eighth trimester and can’t fit in a tanning bed — who gets airbrushed so she’ll look “really hot” during childbirth.

There’s the bubble-headed twins whose boyfriends can’t tell them apart, so they get their guys’ names — Hunter(!) and Thor(!!) — “tantooed” on their lower backs.

There’s Erin, the fresh-from-Oklahoma Sunset Tan employee, who while spray-tanning Jose Canseco’s topless ex-wife, asks her how much her mansion cost and who did her implants.

There’s the pre-total mess Britney Spears extolling the virtues of tanning while complaining about her funky-looking toes.

There’s the skinny-dipping/streaking party thrown by Sunset Tan’s leather-shirt-wearing owners. (I can’t remember their names; I just call them, based on looking at them, Porn Star and The Swinger.)

There’s Porn Star and The Swinger’s freakout because Paris Hilton couldn’t get spray-tanned in less than 30 minutes.

And there’s the “corpse,” who is still very much alive, having since turned up on VH1’s “Best Week Ever” and various Web sites.

Most of “Sunset Tan’s” wackiest moments, though, come from the bimbos who tanned the not-as-dead-as-he-appeared-to-be client.

The Olly Girls, Molly and Holly (it doesn’t matter which one is which) simply had to have been hired just for the show. The poor things can’t even grasp the concept that leaving a person in a tanning bed for 12 straight hours would leave them dead, not tan. (In a perfect world, they’d join E!’s other reality stars, Paris, Nicole and The Girls Next Door, in a Thunderdome — Seven Blond Bimbos Enter, One Blond Bimbo Leaves.)

In what may just be the most uncomfortable celebrity cameo ever, Chris Kattan is left with the Olly Girls, defenseless and alone, while his model-girlfriend tans. After several excruciating attempts to sell him a tanning package, including enough molestation to warrant charges, Kattan eventually stumbles out of the salon looking like he’d been roofied.

But nothing compares to “Sunset Tan’s” defining moment, a little slice of reality genius that’s been replayed around the world.

A woman brings her daughter, who looks to be all of 8 years old, into the salon, because it’s time for school pictures, and, the mom says, “she was a little pale last year.”

Once she’s about to be airbrushed, though, the bright smile that came when she was asked if she wanted to look like Lindsay Lohan is replaced by abject terror. “You know, I really don’t wanna do this,” she says, on the verge of tears. “Well, you need to do this,” her mom responds, channeling Catherine O’Hara at her most wicked. “It’s for your pictures.”

The $1,200 package eventually leaves the poor thing looking like an Oompa-Loompa.

It was cruel. It was unusual. And it was quite possibly the greatest moment in the history of reality TV.

A second season of “Sunset Tan” probably would be set at the Palms. And, if the TV gods are willing, there will be a second season. Most every other reality show pales in comparison.

Christopher Lawrence’s Life on the Couch column appears on Mondays. E-mail him at clawrence@reviewjournal.com.