The Anna Nicole Show’s Bobby Trendy: The Style of Ineptitude

Instead, Trendy blames others for his mistakes. Typically blaming Howard for things that Trendy had specifically said he would be able to do and failed to achieve. This is hardly the way to keep customers and gain new ones, as Howard pointed out himself several times in the series. Moreso, he became shriller as each mistake was brought to his attention. Don’t believe me? Look at Episode Two, when Bobby first appears – he’s a bit laid back, willing to listen to ANS’s ideas, and although he tries to shove the sale of that couch down ANS’s throat, he does not come off as over-the-top.

Now, look at the episode mid-way through the series, where Howard and ANS have come to their wits’ end and have their friend Frank come over to help sort out Bobby’s mess. Sure, Trendy is being defensive for good reason – he is being exposed for not being good at his job – but tried much too hard to hide the fact that he was upset (“I’m in a good mood! I can do this, because I’m in a good mood! See, I’m IN A GOOD MOOD!!!”). Instead of appearing to “rise above it all,” he came off as simply ignorant. Even odder, seemingly unable to stop in his overreacting to everything once he was brought back down to earth, from this point on in the series Trendy rambled instead of thinking things through whenever he opened his mouth, leaving everyone around him uncomfortable with his nonsensical rantings. There is a good reason in a latter episode that Frank eventually breaks down in laughter when Trendy tries to explain why Labor Day was for “celebrating his freedom,” and that Howard moved further and further away from Bobby as he spoke – he was not making any sense. He became desperate, and no one could take him seriously after that.

Bobby’s attitude is obviously an attempt to prove that he is better than the people who are the stars of the show. Unfortunately, for Bobby, while people may not care for ANS or Howard, Bobby came off as being on a lower-rung of the ladder than even those two. He eventually got so upset over the problems facing him that he:

• Refused to deliver paid-for work.
• Threatened a lawsuit against ANS and Howard due to their repeated requests for the furniture.
• Then, destroyed the chances of proving the supposed harassment of Howard by trying to provoke Howard at a club soon after the letter threatening a lawsuit was sent to Howard and ANS.
• When delivering further pillows to ANS’s house and was denied entrance, he purposely stated to the camera that he wanted to thank ANS for “making me rich.”

It was like watching an eight-year-old trying to prove to the other kids on the playground that he was better than a couple of kids from the “slow class.” Bobby went out of his way to try to provoke both Howard and ANS with his comments after they had stung him about his work. In attempting to dig at them on-camera, Bobby ended up making the pair more sympathetic to viewers than at any other time in the series.

Perhaps that was E!’s goal in keeping Bobby around that long anyway. Even if it was, Trendy appeared so clueless on the series that he never would understand he was being ridiculed throughout the season.

Trendy must also be called out for his inability to be nothing more than a caricature of every flaming interior decorator ever seen on television or film. Now, we can tell from Episode Two that Trendy is not like this “flaming queen” (as Frank called him) that he portrayed on the show, but it is also obvious that after his sedate performance in Episode Two he started “swishing” it up a bit as well. It was an insult, plain and simple, not only to himself but to others; and it was obviously a case where Trendy was told to play it up and because he saw that he would get more attention in doing so, he did.

Thus, for his inability to be nothing more than a cardboard stereotype and his ability to “lose the battle” by making audiences believe ANS and Howard were normal, levelheaded people, Bobby Trendy is awarded his place in the “luxurious” wing of the Hall of Shame.

You can e-mail Dale about this column or his other projects at justabob@iglou.com. Be sure to look for his upcoming book, The Urban Legends of Rock and Roll: You Never Can Tell, which will be released by the end of October. You can click here to pre-order that one and any of Dale’s other books.

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