Recycle or Reuse? Shallon, Victoria, Nikki and Gurj swap ex boyfriends on the premiere episode of Downtown Girls

Tonight blogger Shallon Lester takes her turn at reality television with four of her closest girlfriends in Downtown Girls, airing at 11pm (EST). It’s a stylized “reality sitcom” that’s both more real and more constructed than reality shows it follows: The Hills and The City. The series also borrows heavily from the spirit of Carrie Bradshaw, using Shallon’s clever wordplay to narrate the series.

In the first episode Shallon comes up with an idea to pitch to both her editor at Glamour.com and her friends: having an ex-boyfriend swap. She literally pulls a Carrie seance, probably ripping the poor lady from a Manolo Blahnik sale, as she gingerly types on her laptop: “Can you recycle your ex?” On the surface it sounds either like sacrilege or just excruciating, but it somehow works. Of course, there are early kinks to work out, but there’s a chance that Shallon and her crew might pull this off.

Below is a clip of the girls planning the big sociology experiment. Victoria and Nikki are the only two girls besides Shallon who are single and ready to mingle:

And next, while at the said lab experiment, Victoria decides to defy the spirit of the evening and hook up with her own ex:

A few other shenanigans ensue, and the hungover girls do wake up a little wiser. Because they really are friends, and they really were that drunk, the drama doesn’t seem forced and the tiny bit of charted growth doesn’t seem scripted or fake.

At first taste this show seems smarter and generally more natural than most reality frolics, but it remains to be seen if they can really grow into their big girl shoes, or if that’s the kind of thing the people want.