Bravo's 'Blow Out' is a bad hair piece

There can be something hypnotic about watching a full-blown narcissist in action. The more self-aggrandizing and vain he becomes, the more he makes passionate love to his own drama, the more we shake our heads in wide-eyed awe.

Tonight, on a new Bravo show called "Blow Out," the reality TV genre is affording us yet another glimpse of a self-absorbed legend in his own mind. He cries, he flirts, he yells, he broods, he natters on like a blow dryer with a broken off switch. He is Jonathan Antin, the owner of a West Hollywood hair salon, and he is about to realize his lifelong dream of opening a salon in Beverly Hills, the blunt-cut capital of the world. He is also about to raise the bar on what it means to be a phony-baloney individual being portrayed by a phony-baloney TV genre.

The show is a salon version of NBC's "The Restaurant," which has tracked Rocco DiSpirito's efforts to start a New York eatery. It furthers the sense that Bravo is aiming to be TV's metrosexual channel as it gives us the daily life of a pretty man who loves hair as much as he loves women. Like Warren Beatty in "Shampoo," he's drawn to the intimacy with women that styling provides, but unlike Beatty in that 1970s movie, he is loud, histrionic, and rabid to succeed. His motivation, he confesses, comes from the suffering he underwent as a child with bad hair. Such a tragic story.

The plot of the premiere, tonight at 9, finds Antin racing to finish his new shop in time for his grand opening party. You'd think he was going to host the United Nations, the way he frets and sweats, driving back and forth across LA in his silver Mercedes. We also see him auditioning a series of hip stylists, the people who will provide the subplots as they instantly become cliqueish and catty. One stylist in particular, a tattooed motorcycle dude named Brandon who boasts about his abilities and gets on his boss's nerves, promises to deliver water-cooler-ready behavior.

There are a number of obviously staged moments that undermine our remaining delusions that reality TV is even slightly real. Some of the material in the hiring sequences is ridiculous, as job applicants pretend to be surprised when Antin calls them -- even though there are camera crews there to film their reactions. Antin himself also manufactures a small set piece, when actress Kate Bosworth absolutely and totally must have her hair cut in his new salon, even though it's still under construction. Such bravery! Such heroism! Such hot air!

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.

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