The Osbournes, Season 3, Episode 3: Foreshadowing

A slow week of news on the Osbournes front. There were rumors floating around this past week that Kelly is trying to distance herself from the show – i.e. not showing up to be part of the program. MTV is after her to live up to her side of the bargain, while Jack is supposedly under stress due to becoming more of the focus of the program, what with Ozzy laid-up, Sharon busy with her show and caring for Ozzy, and Kelly gone missing. Not surprisingly it appears that the show is melting down towards a lackluster conclusion this year, which is only natural when you try to shove a camera in people’s faces for such a long period of time.

On another front, the next DVD boxset The Osbournes, Season ½ (see, even MTV’s distributor is confused about that whole ten-episode block thing that MTV does with the show), will be out on May 4. Extras will include a “lost episode” never aired on MTV, plus the usual extras seen on the other boxsets in the series.

But for now we’re still on Episode Three of the Third Season, “Rebel Without an Oz,” which begins with Sharon and Ozzy in bed. Sharon is talking about turkeys and how odd they look, while Ozzy attempts to educate her about the bird in some strange fashion (“they come from prehistoric times . . .”). It’s a very unexciting teaser, and an indicator of what is yet to come in the episode, so don’t be surprised if the recap this week is a bit short – there just really isn’t that much to cover.

We return to the bedroom after the opening credits to find Ozzy complaining about not seeing Sharon enough as she has to go to work each day for her television show. This leads to a quick montage of Sharon getting ready to head off to work, while Ozzy tries to preoccupy himself at the house.

At the television studio, the crew is seen preparing the set for Sharon’s show. We can assume they are crewmembers, but since every face is blurred they could be fugitives from a chain-gang as far as can be told. A brief call to Ozzy from Sharon sends the program back to the house, where Ozzy is busy putting together his home studio. He wants to show it off, but he also wants to keep it pristine and untouched by anyone’s hands but his own.

Back at the show, Sharon finds out that DMX is running late. Not only running late, no one knows where he is as he wanted to drive himself into the show. Sharon remarks about how much she loves DMX in such a way that it is obvious she is confusing the word “love” with “hate.” Jack, who is there at the studio with Sharon as she is getting made-up, tries to calm her a bit, while at the same time finds it a bit amusing to see his mother on the “sit and wait for the star to arrive” side of frustration for once. Sharon tries to call Ozzy, but he’s not in the house. Instead he is out in the yard, demanding to show off his studio once again. And, again, he wants nothing touched in the studio!

Running over the guest-list for the show that day, one of the production people mentions that comedian/actor D. L. Hughley will be on the show. Confusion comes quickly as the production people and Sharon jump from the name D. L. Hughley to L. Ron Hubbard somehow. A production member states that Hubbard is a “Christian Scientologist,” which gets Jack attempting to straighten out the mess everyone had gotten into by pointing out that Hubbard was not a “Christian Scientologist,” but the creator of Scientology (two vastly different things). It is also pointed out that Hubbard is not a guest on the show but rather D. L. Hughley is. It should have also been pointed out that Hubbard has been dead for years, so he really wouldn’t have been a good guest for the show anyway.

An assistant manages to get DMX on his cellphone and hands the phone over to Sharon. Sharon gets a laugh for trying to talk in her “gang voice” to “X,” which embarrasses her slightly. She finally tells the staff that the show will start on time and “if DMX isn’t here, I’ll sing!”

Sharon looks around for Jack, but he is no longer there. A cut back to the house shows him arriving in his car and then up in his room with a couple of friends, where they pull out a “Make Your Own Dildo” kit. Why Jack has this and why the guys feel a need to try out the kit is a question that perhaps shouldn’t even been asked. At least if they were drinking you could blame it on that, but no.