I happened to be vegetating in front of the TV last night when MTV debuted its new travel show, “Trippin.” Just what is “Trippin”? As MTV puts it: “Cameron Diaz and a group of her close, personal friends think globally and act globally too as they travel to unlikely getaways...from Chile to Yellowstone, on a quest to safeguard the environment. The travelers will not have the benefit of any luxury.” Sound ridiculous, cliché-ridden, cartoonishly PC? It is. But I was happy to see it on MTV anyway. “Trippin,” as it happened, was preceded by the long-running show “Cribs,” which is essentially “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” for the Gen Y set. On “Cribs,” 21-year-old pop stars and zillionaire athletes show off their SUVs, BMWs and palatial Hollywood Hills estates in an orgiastic weekly display of conspicuous consumption. 

So last night, minutes after watching a race car driver talk up his private, man-made lake, it was refreshing to see someone on MTV—anyone—walk into a tiny house in Nepal with dirt floors and walls made of cow dung, and pause for a moment to soak it all in. No bling-bling. No swimming pool. No pet chihuahua wearing Prada. A real home for real people with walls made of cow dung. I’d like to think a conscientious programmer at MTV scheduled the show to air after “Cribs” to give that show’s viewers a brief glimpse of how the rest of the world really lives. Probably not, but it’s a nice thought. Others in the blogosphere had a different take on “Trippin.” Erik Olsen at Gadling was peeved, among other things, that Diaz appeared in a New York Times article discussing the show at the Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles while munching on arugula. I can understand his reaction. But when you look at the other travel shows on the tube, from the inane “Amazing Race” to the junk on the Travel Channel, “Trippin” is about the best thing going. That may say less about “Trippin” than it does about the sorry state of travel on TV, but at least the show is a step in the right direction on a network otherwise completely out of touch.