TVSquad

All is well with the world: Lou Diamond Phillips won I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! He's the only contestant out there that deserves to be called a "celebrity."

Why did Lou Diamond Philips pick a show that anyone could see was going to be a train wreck? Did he have 24 days off and say, "why not?" Or did he look at the list of celebrities and then agree? After watching the season, I still don't know who Torrie Wilson was, and she was the runner up.

Lou Diamond Phillips is a good actor. I loved him in La Bamba. I have CHE on my list of movies to watch. He may be a little aged now, but he still gets parts and plays them well. If he did the show for his charity (I love him for supporting Art has Heart), he probably agreed because he knew he had the most celebrity and probably was the most sane person out there.

I understand that most of Lou's work comes from the NBC/Universal umbrella. His last acting gigs were shows like Law & Order and stuff on SciFi. Was it that easy to call him up to go on an NBC show because of his connections? Why wasn't he picked for The Celebrity Apprentice then? Wasn't he on CBS's Numb3rs? He had a real career going before the show started.

Most celebrity reality television shows are a way for celebrities to quickly vault themselves back into the limelight. We normally see either former stars (usually falling under pop star, model, comedian, or child star) or reality stars (like Sanjaya and Speidi) trying to capitalize on their fifteen minutes. Lou Diamond Phillips didn't fall under those categories and I don't think he needed to vault himself, because he's still getting steady offers and spent the last year doing both movies and television.

If Lou Diamond Phillips had to be on reality television, why couldn't he be on Dancing with the Stars? The show has a higher caliber of celebrity (read: they'll never put Stephen Baldwin on) and the show leaves many celebrities in a positive fashion (Mario Lopez, Warren Sapp, Marissa Jaret Winokur, and Melissa Rycroft all got some sort of hosting position; Gilles Marini is slated to be on Brothers & Sisters and Nip/Tuck). The show has grabbed several ailing celebrities that were in their peak in the 80s (Steve Guttenberg) and 90s (Tia Carrere) so there should have been no problem for Lou to be in the pool. His positive nature, decent fan base, and can-do attitude would have served him well. Let's hope that he may be on in the future still.

In the end, will winning (or just being on) I'm a Celebrity hurt Lou's career? As much as I'd like to say yes, it's all up to Lou. I'm hoping that since he won, Lou could use the momentum to get onto some project that would boost his career even more. Kathy Griffin did it after winning Celebrity Mole: Hawaii. On the flip side, I haven't heard much from the casts of Celebrity Apprentice. What will happen to Lou Diamond Phillips career now? Post your comments below.