I began watching The CW's "Crowned: The Mother of All Pageants" (9 tonight, WPCW) with a certain amount of dread. No viewer needs a TV critic to tell him or her about the mind-rotting qualities of most reality TV shows. Is this what my work life is destined to be until the writers' strike ends?

And yet, I ended up being entertained by this abomination of the medium. "Crowned" is indeed a waste of your time, but a more entertaining waste than I expected.

In the show, 11 teams of mothers and daughters compete for the top prize of $100,000 in a beauty pageant for TV. Judge Shanna Moakler (a former Miss USA, but mostly known as the ex- of punk rocker Travis Barker), tells the contestants, "We're celebrating modern women, where spirit, intelligence and heart are as meaningful as a pretty face."

Once some of the pairs reveal themselves to be catty, shallow and a little bit dumb, "Crowned" becomes more entertaining.

In their first strut in front of judges, a girl and her plastic surgery-enhanced mother stun the judges into silence. The judges call another pair, who choose the team name "Diamond Dolls," "a little superficial." Slightly chunky but more spirited contestants receive higher marks.

With some of the pairs, it's tough to tell which one is the mom and which is the daughter, something the judges pick up on.

"That is a compliment and sort of a question mark," says judge Cynthia Garrett.

"Your outfits make my eyes bleed," judge Carson Kressly ("Queer Eye for the Straight Guy") tells another pair.

But the best faux pas has got to be the oblivious mother-daughter pair who dub themselves "Silent but Deadly." I kid you not, they named themselves after a euphemism for passing gas. Maybe that shouldn't have tickled me as much as it did, but when you go into a series with low expectations, I guess you have to settle for lowest common denominator laughs.