Breakout star Sanjaya Malakar and Patti Blagojevich out as crapass I'm a Celebrity 2 comes to an end, finally

I'm a Celebrity 2 » by Andy Dehnart / June 24, 2009, 8:51 AM

I wasn't going to write anything about I'm a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here 2 today, waiting to just wrap it up tomorrow after it ends, but I can't ignore the fact that whoever bothered to vote on this stupid show dumped the two of the more interesting characters: Patti Blagojevich and Sanjaya Malakar. That leaves Lou Diamond Phillips, John Salley, and Torrie Wilson to compete for whatever in whatever way the producers make up, unless they really are going to let eliminated people compete.

Anyway, I'm pissed at whoever bothered to vote on this stupid show. And how the hell does John Salley go from being the lowest vote getter at some indeterminate point to one of the top three? Or did that last-place status motivate his fans?

The results are mostly tragic because break-out star Sanjaya Malakar is now gone, although he'll probably appear tonight, too. While he was mostly a joke on American Idol, here, he was interesting for many reasons, from his comfortable Big Brother-style confessionals to his relationship with Holly Montag. (For the record, Holly says "we're just best friends and that's where were' keeping it for now.")

Sanjaya is just so absurdly innocent, often in a clumsy way yet authentic way, like his confession on the show that he's a "straight gay best friend". As another example, at the opening of the American Idol Experience attraction at Disney earlier this year, I asked him about his memoir, Dancing to the Music in My Head: Memoirs of the People's Idol, which is really bland and nothing at all like the Sanjaya on the show. It's certainly not as revealing as his Howard Stern interview.

When I asked about writing it, Sanjaya said, in his always cheerful voice, "It was kinda hard. I had a ghostwriter who really helped me out, but it was basically getting up, taking on the phone for seven hours a day about the experience. In that sense, it was easy, since I was just reliving memories, but at the same time I was reliving memories so I to think into detail about what really happened. It was interesting; I've never written a book before, so it was fun."

I didn't have the heart to tell him that he still has not written a book, because talking to a ghostwriter on the phone is, well, not writing a book. But therein lies what works with him, and perhaps it's what drew people during the show (it sure as hell couldn't have been his singing): he's honest and unfiltered and despite being somewhat naive, comes off as totally genuine.

And when that's held up against the totally contrived antics of Heidi and Spencer or the histrionics of Janice Dickinson, that's definitely something to appreciate.