Cynthia Garrett

We just spoke with Shanna Moakler, the 32-year-old actress and former Miss U.S.A. Earlier this week, we were pleasantly flabbergasted by her new fabulously bizarre CW reality show, Crowned: The Mother of All Pageants. Ms. Moakler—whose rocky-road relationship with her husband, the Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker, was the subject of an MTV show called Meet the Barkers—called The Daily Transom from her bed, where she was “all cozied up.”

Crowned, the second episode of which aired on Wednesday night, features 11 mother-daughter teams competing for a joint pageant title and a $100,000 cash prize. Ms. Moakler judges these self-titled teams, ranging from “Blonde Bombshells” to “Tomboy Queens,” alongside Queer Eye’s Carson Kressley and “television personality” Cynthia Garrett.

To be sure, Mr. Kressley’s witty off-the-cuff remarks, an odd mix of Michael Kors on Project Runway and Miss J. Alexander on America’s Next Top Model, keep the show watchable—if not downright addicting. Another asset arguably comes from the sense one gets that the three judges are definitely in on the joke.

“Oh, my god! He’s so fun,” Ms. Moakler said of Mr. Kressley. “It was so much fun to go to work. We would literally just go in and laugh for hours. Carson is so witty and he’d have these great one-liners,” she continued, “The producers had to tell us to stop laughing and tell us to take it more seriously, because we were having such a great time.”

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O.M.G.!—is all there is to say about the new CW show Crowned. For those unfortunate enough to miss the series premiere last night, we’ve included a clip that offers a tiny taste. The flavor? Reminiscent of frozen burgers kept in a Ziplock bag, like those prized by one of the show’s contestants, who keeps them on hand while the others munch on fancier fare, like burnt salmon chunks, prepared by the “Martha Stewart of the group.”

Judging 11 mother-daughter teams, who cattily compete to win a beauty pageant and some cash, are Queer Eye’s Carson Kressley, Meet the Barkers’ Shanna Moakler and “television personality” Cynthia Garrett. Almost as precious as the antics of Patty and Laura—two villainous “Redhead Bombshells,” who wake up super early to practice their gross singing routine—are the you-must-be-kidding faces made by Mr. Kressley. Dressed like some kind of gay Hugh Hefner in velvet slippers, he gleefully sends up a stream of sassy jabs at the 22 down-home gals. “I need a Band-Aid for my eyes,” he tells the other judges after one team clops the stage in flapper dresses strewn with little mirrors. And though our eyeballs survived, our second-hand embarrassment proved pretty brutal.