CD Release - TLC don’t Want no Scrubs (Still)

Television

TLC’s surviving members Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas don’t seem to be enjoying their UPN reality show “R U the Girl with T-Boz and Chilli.”

Why would they? They’ve insisted that they could never replace Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, who died in a car crash in 2002, yet here they are with a weekly television series in which they appear to be looking for a new member of TLC.

But as they’ve explained several times, that’s not the exact premise of the series. The winner of “R U the Girl” will record a song with T-Boz and Chilli and perform with them at a concert for the season finale. Each week, the announcer teases, “After that, who knows?”

We do — girlfriend’s gonna get cab fare home. Ain’t gonna be no new TLC up in this piece.

Since TLC’s 1992 debut, the group lived one crazysexycool drama. In that decade, there were label disputes, illicit affairs, chronic illness, multiplatinum records, broken marriages, bankruptcies, domestic abuse, arson, interpersonal dissension, and tragic death — in fact, the story was one of 1999’s better “Behind the Music” episodes.

But “R U the Girl” is a cut-rate talent show with contestants who make the girls of Diddy’s most recent installment of “Making the Band” seem like the friggin’ Supremes. (If you were busy having a life and missed “MTB,” Diddy wasn’t able to make a band out of his slim pickins, and will carry his search into a new season.)

TLC should follow Diddy’s suit and hold off until next season to impose these more stringent requirements that will net a better quality girl:

1) The Girl must have at least a two-page rap sheet that includes arson.

2) The Girl must have strange and interesting uses for a condom.

3) The Girl must have an insanely possessive boyfriend/baby-daddy who’s already well known in music or sports.

4) The Girl must be prescribed a 50-a-day cocktail of mind-balancing pharmaceuticals by her team of psychiatrists, and often forget to take them.

5) And most important: The Girl must not exceed 60 inches in height to ride this ride.