By Lauren Bishop
The Cincinnati Enquirer

It's mid-March on the season premiere of Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica, and Nick Lachey isn't doing so well. Not only are his beloved University of Cincinnati Bearcats out of the NCAA basketball championships, but CaCee, the best friend and new assistant of wife Jessica Simpson, also has just moved in.

And CaCee seems in no hurry to leave the couple's Calabasas, Calif., compound. After Jessica goes to a meeting, she and Nick go apartment-hunting, if that's what you call driving by apartment complexes.

"I'll just deal with it when we get back from the rodeo," CaCee says, after rejecting the one apartment they actually set foot in.

That would be the 2004 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, where Jessica is offended by the smell of pigs, amused by a pig race and amazed by the sight of a wallaby (or a koalaby, if you're going by Jessica Simpson's New World Dictionary). Oh, and they also sing a duet of Berlin's "Take My Breath Away," mercifully shortened for TV.

Afterward, in the car with friends, Jessica and CaCee laugh about their living situation and sing "Just the Three of Us" to the tune of "Just the Two of Us," and CaCee reveals that Nick has to come to her room every night to set her alarm clock for her.

"It's like having two Jessicas," Nick says, exasperated.

Back home in front of his flat-screen TV, Nick - in full Bearcats uniform - is ecstatic when the Bearcats beat East Tennessee State.

Nick's good mood plummets after the University of Illinois defeats the Bearcats two days later.

In the kitchen, CaCee tells Jessica that she hopes the couple's future children will be good in sports.

"No, if we have sons, they're gonna wanna be ballerinos," Jessica says.

"Ballerinas?" CaCee asks.

"No, ballerinos," Jessica says. "Guys are o's. You know, with the o's, the masculine."

Later, Nick reveals on the phone that Jessica is at the moment winning the basketball pool they entered, after betting on Xavier University and Georgia Tech.

Poor Nick.

E-mail lbishop@enquirer.com