Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Getty
Last week, the Kardashians wrapped up the fourth season of their reality show on Hulu, about which I’m surprisingly sad. Thankfully, though, another famous clan of nepo babies is here to satisfy my weird craving for witnessing other families’ mess. Last week, Peacock released Season 2 of Paris Hilton’s latest and surprisingly fascinating reality show, Paris In Love.
While the first season didn’t make a huge splash, the show has earned its first viral moment this time around, thanks to an uncomfortable conversation between Paris and her mother, Kathy Hilton. I’ve never really been a fan of Paris, outside of her eponymous perfume, and I think her resurgence in pop culture is, frankly, undeserved, if not boring and pointless. However, the mother-daughter drama playing out on her latest TV venture has finally given me something about her to grasp onto.
Season 2 of Paris In Love is definitely a pivot in tone from Season 1, which felt a lot lighter and more PR-friendly. Much of it seemed designed to convince the public that Paris was still as relevant and popular as she was in the early aughts and make us fascinated with her life again. The first season also functioned as damage control for Kathy, who received a lot of online criticism following her eldest daughter’s YouTube documentary, This Is Paris. In the film, Paris reveals the physical and sexual abuse she allegedly suffered as a teenager at the controversial Provo Canyon School in Utah, where her parents sent her for her excessive partying. At the end of the doc, she tells her mother about the abuse for the first time, and Kathy bursts into tears.