Former New York Daily News gossip duo Rush & Molloy are suing MTV for stealing gossip peon Shallon Lester and putting her in an inane reality show. That silly idea was theirs first!

In legal documents (see below), George Rush and Joanna Molloy claim they got the ball rolling for Shallon Lester's now-canceled reality show Downtown Girls. But in the original version, the show would be about the intrepid assistants to a pair of married gossip columnists named Rush & Molloy. The show would be called Downtown Girl. But R&M forgot that reality TV is for kids! MTV quickly realized that they didn't need the old folks to turn gossip peon Shallon Lester into a rinky dink Carrie Bradshaw: Shallon left her job and MTV ended up with Downtown Girls, a show that revolved around Shallon and her new job at Glamour.com. (Funny how reality stars don't need their old jobs, because between MTV and cross-promotions, they can land new ones faster than you can say "Diane von Furstenberg.")

And so the underling rose above. (Well, sort of. The one episode I watched was like Chinese water torture, boring and incessant to point of psychic pain. But, fame!) The legal question is whether MTV owes the couple $30,000 in producer fees (six episodes at a rate of $5,000 each) as well as a credit at the end of the show, which still exists on MTV.com.

Moral of the story: Reality stars are like the Frankenstein monster. You may have made them, but they will quickly outgrow you, run away to Switzerland, and do whatever the fuck they want.

Related:

Gossip Hack-Turned-Vlogger Hits Pseudomedia Trifecta with Reality Show
There Is No Way This Reality Show Will Make Shallon Lester Look Bad