Sure, I had my doubts. There’s a whole lot of junk on TV these days – and some of the junkiest and trashiest of all is in the reality TV genre. I admit, I turned my nose straight up in the air when I read that A&E was going to put The Two Coreys back in the limelight. I mean, come on, The Lost Boys is soooo over. So, late one Monday night when I just happened to catch the pilot episode, I was all ready to start cracking jokes and laughing at these two washed-up former pinup boys.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered The Two Coreys are actually reality TV magic – and a helluva good pick for A&E after all. Honestly, the idea sounds awful. Haim and Feldman, two thirty-somethings who saw their stars rise and fall before the tender age of twenty, a pair of BFF who found life leading them into substance abuse and late night partying before they were even legal. Reunited by reality two decades after they found notoriety with a vampire flick, a veritable Odd Couple for the reality genre. Seriously…this is not an idea that should work. Ever.

And yet, somehow, it does. Today, Corey Feldman is a neat freak vegetarian who struggles to find quasi-acting gigs and keeps his head shoved so far up his wife’s behind, it’s a wonder they’ve actually survived four years of marriage. Corey Haim, by contrast, is a terrible slob, has disgusting eating habits, and seems to focus much of his energy on finding a woman – any good-looking female will do. Thrown together in a house for a reality TV experiment…it’s just asking for trouble. Yet, the two of them have managed to hold on to a friendship that other men might have let die more than a decade ago. They complete and complement each other, and while Haim bravely displays his raw emotion and naked desires to get back into the movie game, Feldman provides a steadying influence and a cooler head for Haim’s half-cocked ideas.

Everything about the show is fascinating. Corey Haim’s self-indulgence (with women, cigarettes, food, emotion) actually makes this former movie star completely endearing – like a lost boy who never did figure how to grow up. Meanwhile, Feldman is trying too hard to appear grown up, and ends up losing his own identity in the hard-core discipline of wife Susie Feldman, creating a freaky Feldman-Feldman monster that keeps me glued to the screen. Whether up or down, The Two Coreys manage to do what they do best – remain BFF.

Seriously, it’s good TV. I never thought I would be the one to say it, either.