It's hard to hear that E! Entertainment is bringing back "The Simple Life" for a fifth season and not wonder what the hell E! president Ted Harbert is thinking.

Turns out Harbert, who in a past life was the entertainment president at ABC, is thinking a great many things, some of them not meant for publication, but one thing he's not thinking is that it would be a good idea to make yet another season of the show in which Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie never occupy the same space at the same time.

"I aim to change how we did it this year," he told me during an E! party earlier tonight.

When I asked him if there were anything about this season he liked, he paused for a moment.

"Yes," he said finally. "I thought there were individual stories, individual scenes with both of them and their 'families' that worked. I think we pulled off, creatively, an almost-impossible thing to pull off."

But "I don't want to do it that way again," he added. "I think that's asking too much of the viewer."

So what's he thinking? Couples therapy for the former friends?

"I don't know," Harbert said.

Does that mean he's hoping they'll be together?

"I am hoping that we'll shoot them in a different way than we shot them this year," and "I think differently means not separately."