The reality of 'Princess' is dull and void

How to characterize ''I Married a Princess"?

At first, I was seriously tempted by ''banal," particularly since celeb-reality TV is one of the banes of prime time. But ''insipid" is a far more interesting word, since it almost has ''stupid" buried within it. And no word says ''it's stupid" quite as nicely as ''insipid." But still, ''insipid" belongs with a loftier subject than ''I Married a Princess," Lifetime's new look at the home life of actors Casper Van Dien and Catherine Oxenberg, who is the daughter of Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia. ''Insipid" deserves better.

So I started shopping in the ''vacuous" market, where you can pick up connotations of both ''empty" and ''inane." ''I Married a Princess," which premieres tonight at 8, is ''empty" in that it is really about nothing, as two beautiful people supervise their five beautiful children, ages 1-13, in their beautiful Malibu mansion. It's not shallow, it's hollow. And it is quite ''inane," in that it has no point in existing, at least not outside of the Van Dien-Oxenberg home-movie cabinet. It's just a big bunch of who cares.

And the ''vacuous" synonyms, including ''vacant," ''blank," and ''devoid," also nicely tie in Van Dien himself, who comes off as wooden and generic as a soap-opera hunk, which he was on ''One Life to Live" in the 1990s. And they safely cover Oxenberg, best known for her long-ago ''Dynasty" stint and her annulled 10-day marriage to producer Robert Evans. When she embarks on a ''nonsurgical facelift" in the dramatic apex of tonight's episode, she personifies the air of futility that fills the ''vacuous" words to the gills with existential nothingness.

But, to do true justice to the show, there has to be a hint of ''offensive" in the perfect adjective. That's not only because the children do and say things on camera that they may regret in years to come. Yeah, it's a little ''offensive" to show kids whining and throwing fits on TV even though they're too young to give permission.

But the ''offensive" part kicks in when you think about who Lifetime and the people behind ''I Married a Princess" think we are. Do they think we have nothing better to do than watch Hollywood C-list actors bloody their hands trying to juice their careers through reality TV? Do they think we have enough time in our days to watch someone else's kids bicker about new blue jeans?

Next thing you know, TV execs will be offering up the mundane meanderings of Anna Nicole Smith, Farrah Fawcett, Brigitte Nielsen, and Paris Hilton. Wouldn't that be banal? I mean insipid. I mean vacuous. I mean offensive.