KEEPING UP WITH THE THE KARDASHIAN

“Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” is, as the title suggests, a window into a family — a family that seems to understand itself only in terms of its collective opportunism. Ms. Kardashian, her sisters and younger brother are the children of Robert Kardashian, the Los Angeles marketing executive, now dead, who renewed his legal license to come to the defense of his close friend O. J. Simpson in his murder trial. Acting as patriarch of the family now is Bruce Jenner, the 1976 Olympic gold medalist whose emasculation would seem to begin with the absence of his name from the show’s title, even though he is the only person in his household to have actually accomplished anything.

Mr. Jenner seems to function now more or less as a domestic and weak-willed disciplinarian, performing tasks like preventing his own youngest daughters from performing acrobatics on a stripper’s pole erected in one of the Kardashian-Jenner bedrooms. His wife is preoccupied with a clothing boutique she runs and ministering to Kim’s ascent. Kim, in turn, feels as if her mother overworks her. There is only so much self-objectifying she can handle in any given day.

I would like to say that “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” is as good as the gold standard in its genre: “Gene Simmons Family Jewels,” the reality series about Mr. Simmons, the Kiss star; his companion, Shannon Tweed; and their children. But the Kardashian show is not about an eccentric family living conventionally; it is purely about some desperate women climbing to the margins of fame, and that feels a lot creepier.

And yet the E! venture still does not deliver the willies inflicted by “A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila,” the new reality dating series that made its debut on MTV this week, drawing nearly two million viewers. In one sense, we must celebrate Tila Tequila, who has made it to the levels of quarter-fame assisted not by lineage or connection. No, she gained a following by posing provocatively enough to become one of the most popular curiosities on MySpace. She boldly decided to approach the world as a meritocracy, and she made good.

As a face and a body, Tila Tequila looks essentially like a very well-toned squirrel. But men love her, and so do women — hence the premise of her show, which has 16 straight men and 16 lesbians competing for her affections. As one young woman contending for her partnership put it: “You have to be blind and a little retarded not to find her hot.”

But if you happen to be among the visually and mentally impaired who do not find Tila Tequila, in all of her sauced-up arrogance, to possess a modicum of charm, wit, sensuality or attractiveness — if you would rather, as I would, watch a dating show starring Danny DeVito — then you will wonder why men are courting her with jewelry and perfect abs and bowls of spaghetti, and why the women are dressing up as sexy cabdrivers and hard hats. You may wonder even why you haven’t, instead, kept up with the Kardashians.