Jill fears that a member of her household staff, the little chihuahua dog she employs to deep clean her sinuses with its tiny, prehensile tongue, has a digestive ailment, so she calls a veterinarian to come look at it while she wipes chihuahua dog mistake off her furniture and the paravetic shoes.
The doctor examines the trembling exploited little thing, and declares it to be in good health.
Bethenny goes to Alex's house for lunch. She says that Alex, who has made a quiche, is a relief to her because she is low maintenance and does not have any citrus. While the girls make salad dressing, Bethenny reveals that she is engaged. She says it is hard for her to commit and she will keep her pregnancy a secret for now.
Meanwhile, in the Hamptons, Kelly and her daughter share trying to understand the instructions on a box of pancake mix.
Ramona and her daughter go to a sidewalk cafe for dinner. Avery, the daughter, asks for foccacia with prosciutto, ricotta and truffle oil. It's not on the menu but she wants one. Ramona says that the restaurant is her home away from home. She can't remember the name of what she wants, but thinks it has eggs and may be something like an omelette.
She reveals that she is going through a general renewal process and wants to renew her marriage vows. She wants her daughter to be her maid of honor. The daughter says she would rather just watch, but reluctantly agrees. Ramona says that although Avery is only 14, she has become a woman mentally.
Without warning, the New Jersey Housewives appear and warn the public that menstruating women must not be allowed to make pasta sauce because they will spoil it.
Back in New York, the Countess, with Kelly in tow, is looking at "permits."
(Note: a subsequent viewing with subtitles turned on revealed that she was looking at apartments).
The Countess reveals that she is accustomed to a sophisticated lifestyle after being married for 16 years.
She is surprised by the price point of even small, insufficiently Countess-like downtown apartments in the 7-8K rent range, but Kelly tells her that it is a more fun than the Upper East Side because you can wear a baseball cap, but the Countess says she prefers to be among people who make an effort.
The agent shows her a larger apartment, on Madison Avenue, with a rent of $14,500, but she is displeased because there are so many buildings in the area, some even visible from the windows, and it does not have a doorman.
The Countess' surprise turns to shock and disappointment because she was expecting something else. She feels she is better suited to be uptown.
Jill has written a book with her mother and sisters, called Secrets of a Jewish Mother. They and the sinus-cleaning Chihuahua dog all get in the bed to choose photos to illustrate the book. Jill explains that they are called the Bed Family because they always like to get in the bed and are very cuddly.
Jill's mother Gloria, revealing a sample Secret, warns the public not to wear chiffon on Christmas.
Jill says that her mother has done a good job of giving them that message repeatedly for over forty years.
Meanwhile, back in the Hamptons, Kelly, Sonja, and the Countess have cocktails. Sonja remarks that her friends who take Adderall have lost weight but are very snippy. She would like to lose weight but does not believe that Saggitarians should take Adderall.
Kelly says that Ramona is like that. She is on fire and told her to shut up.
The Countess reveals that she calls Ramona "crazy eyes," and explains that the three of them have a lot of love to give.
Sonja reveals that having regular sex is very important. Kelly says the guys in the stables are all Argentinian and gay. She reveals that she wants to get married and have more babies because she loves kids. The Countess tells her that is because she is a child, the Kelly Child, woo-hoo.
She tries to make the "woo-hoo" a Countess-appropriate version of Real Housewife of Orange County Vicki's signature "Woo-Hoo." Kelly and Sonja stare at her, quiet for a minute.
Sonja says she would like a man that doesn't cheat. "Did your husband cheat on you?" Kelly asks. "Did yours?" retorts Sonja. Kelly confesses that she is not sure why Sonja asked her that, unless maybe she wanted to talk about something that happened to her.
The Countess asks if they have to talk about that. She says she doesn't think she had that problem. Again, Kelly and Sonja stare at her, quiet for a minute.
Sonja confesses that she is sure that the Countess has her share of suitors.
The Countess reveals that Italians are great as lovers, but not to marry, because they want to marry their mothers and grandmothers.
The girls attend a Gotham magazine party for the 100 Most Eligible Bachelors.
Jill reveals that Ramona ruined her Kodak event and she can barely refrain from bitch-slapping her.
The Countess confronts Ramona's husband about calling her "Countless." She speaks to him in halting, high school Italian. She explains that she does not want to air her dirty laundry.
She reveals that she does not think Bethenny's blouse is appropriate.
Bethenny reveals that this is the party where they were all supposed to wear a square of toilet paper, that she doesn't have a top on, and Kelly's vagina and Alex's ass cheeks are hanging out and it like a yard sale of body parts.
Jill tells one of the Eligible Bachelors that if he will stick his tongue down Sonja's throat maybe she will let him sit at her table. "Wow," he murmurs politely.
Bethenny announces her engagement. Jill reveals that it is very awkward because all these things are happening that she and Bethenny talked about laying in bed.
The Countess stifles a yawn.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
High Society: Watch Out, Kardashians! Move Over, Tila Tequila!
At last a show for those of us who just can't stop wondering:
"But what about the girls who didn't make the cut for Rock of Love Bus?"
"High Society" is all about the doings of the creme de les beaufs in New York.
This show may not be suitable for viewers who are sensitive about international smiles-behind-the-fan when the subject of US culture pops up (pun soooo intended).
You know what I mean - people who just don't get that there is no such thing as old oil money.
For We the Authentic Bad Reality TV cognoscenti, however, it's a true treasure trove o' trash, featuring the arch-rival of Adam DiVello discovery wannabe Olivia Palermo, a girl named Tinsley Mortimer, who despite her positioning as an East Coast product, adheres strictly to the Stereotypiconic Indistinguishable SoCal Blonde style template, from corn-colored hair to strippalettos.
Tinsley claims to despise "being flat-footed" so much that she walks on tiptoes even when barefoot.
She is considered by some to be an aristocrat because of an ancestor who was very good at cleaning carpets. (I guess those same people would consider me a-list royalty. I have several ancestors who were really good at designing and weaving carpets).
Other cast tropes include PJ Calderon, in the role of quintessential spoiled brat, steadily partying away his trust fund, villainess gossip-monger Devorah Rose (who I believe gets a catfight scene with Tinsley in an upcoming episode), and Jules Kirby, the mandatory bigoted bus station skank who enjoys abusing hotel staff, and hates everybody but thin heterosexual white protestants. (Jules has since issued the mandatory post-production statement to the effect that CW forced her to say she hates everybody but thin heterosexual white protestants, and the network has duly responded that they didn't).
But the One True and Undisputed Star of the show is Tinsley's mom.
Dale Mercer was born for reality TV. She steals every scene she's in, and the one where, positioned at the foot of a grand staircase, she genuflects to dab at her eyes with the diaphanous hem of her red evening gown qualifies as a Great Moment in Television.
Although sadly, we are unlikely to be blessed with a second season of this train wreck of vapidity (its premiere received the lowest ratings in CW history), we are almost certain to get more of Miss Dale. Producers have got to be fighting over her as we speak.
Hey! I just realized something - Dale has been divorced from Tinsley's dad for like forever, which means she is single, which could mean - O please Mr Cris Abrego, if you are reading this - Socialite Bus of Love???
"But what about the girls who didn't make the cut for Rock of Love Bus?"
"High Society" is all about the doings of the creme de les beaufs in New York.
This show may not be suitable for viewers who are sensitive about international smiles-behind-the-fan when the subject of US culture pops up (pun soooo intended).
You know what I mean - people who just don't get that there is no such thing as old oil money.
For We the Authentic Bad Reality TV cognoscenti, however, it's a true treasure trove o' trash, featuring the arch-rival of Adam DiVello discovery wannabe Olivia Palermo, a girl named Tinsley Mortimer, who despite her positioning as an East Coast product, adheres strictly to the Stereotypiconic Indistinguishable SoCal Blonde style template, from corn-colored hair to strippalettos.
Tinsley claims to despise "being flat-footed" so much that she walks on tiptoes even when barefoot.
She is considered by some to be an aristocrat because of an ancestor who was very good at cleaning carpets. (I guess those same people would consider me a-list royalty. I have several ancestors who were really good at designing and weaving carpets).
Other cast tropes include PJ Calderon, in the role of quintessential spoiled brat, steadily partying away his trust fund, villainess gossip-monger Devorah Rose (who I believe gets a catfight scene with Tinsley in an upcoming episode), and Jules Kirby, the mandatory bigoted bus station skank who enjoys abusing hotel staff, and hates everybody but thin heterosexual white protestants. (Jules has since issued the mandatory post-production statement to the effect that CW forced her to say she hates everybody but thin heterosexual white protestants, and the network has duly responded that they didn't).
But the One True and Undisputed Star of the show is Tinsley's mom.
Dale Mercer was born for reality TV. She steals every scene she's in, and the one where, positioned at the foot of a grand staircase, she genuflects to dab at her eyes with the diaphanous hem of her red evening gown qualifies as a Great Moment in Television.
Although sadly, we are unlikely to be blessed with a second season of this train wreck of vapidity (its premiere received the lowest ratings in CW history), we are almost certain to get more of Miss Dale. Producers have got to be fighting over her as we speak.
Hey! I just realized something - Dale has been divorced from Tinsley's dad for like forever, which means she is single, which could mean - O please Mr Cris Abrego, if you are reading this - Socialite Bus of Love???
Monday, August 3, 2009
200 Pounds Beauty: Not Just a Rom-Com
This movie was actually released in 2007, so I'm late to the party, but it stuck with me so much for days after watching it that a rant was inevitable.
The plot: Hanna (Kim A-Jung) is an incredibly talented singer, but because of the societal stigma of overweight, she is relegated to the position of "playback singer" for Ami, the hottest new pop princess.
Stuck backstage in a stuffy little booth, Hanna belts it out while Ami, dressed up in typical pop princess stagewear and surrounded by the usual conglomeration of backup singers, dancers and special effects, lip-syncs.
When not recording or lip-syncing for Ami, Hanna moonlights as a phone sex worker, where thanks to her gifts of compassion and patience with her troubled clients as much as her creatitivity and "evocative" skills, she has a loyal following.
Hanna is in love with Ami's producer and boyfriend, Sang-Jun, (played by Jin-mo Ju), who is the only person who is even remotely nice to her.
Western audiences will be shocked by the way BFF Jung-Min (Hyeon-sook Kim) treats Hanna, so much so that the one scene where the girls get matching tattoos and giggle and squeal like actual friends is jarring and out-of-place, and in fact the tattoos are central to a needed plot element, so it is possible that the scene really was "stuck on."
Hanna should face facts and forget about love, Jung-Min tells Hanna, because as far as men are concerned, there are 3 kinds of women in the world, the pretty girls, who is a treasure, the ordinary girl, who is a gift, and then there is the reject. Hanna, of course, is a reject.
Although Sang-Jun's friendliness to Hanna is clearly only that, Ami is jealous of his sincere appreciation for Hanna's talent, and resentful of the fact that she has none herself.
She sets Hanna up with a cruel trick, sending her a dress, supposedly a gift from Sang-Jun, to be worn at his birthday party. Of course the dress is all wrong for Hanna, she looks awful in it, and then Ami shows up in the same dress. She actually looks pretty awful in it too, but that is just my subjective judgment and has nothing to do with the plot.
While a humiliated Hanna hides in the bathroom, she overhears Sang-Jun telling a fretful Ami that they must both be nice to Hanna, or does she want to go back to backup dancer days, because if Hanna walks, Ami's career will end.
In despair, Ami attempts to end her life, but is saved by a call from one of her devoted phone sex clients, who happens to be a famous plastic surgeon.
There follows a funny scene in the surgeon's office, where he is about to throw her out after she asks about getting the miracles he describes done on credit, but quickly changes his mind when Hanna cleverly reveals her "other" identity.
Hanna disappears for a year, during which time Ami's career predictably crashes and burns, and when her Extreme Makeover is complete, she erases her old identity completely, and returns to the world as the slender and beautiful Jenny.
Meanwhile, all the expected drama has been going on behind the scenes as the recording company is losing money by the day, having had to postpone Ami's much-awaited second CD, and a desperate search for a replacement "voice" is underway.
Hanna, as Jenny, auditions, the company (including San-Jun) goes wild, and plans are made to launch Jenny, the new pop princess, while Ami is left out in the failing sitcom pasture of the has-been.
The only person who knows Jenny's secret is Jung-Min, and that only because of the tattoo, which is a big old scoop of artistic license, as it would not have survived a makeover as Extreme as Hanna's, but hey, it's a comedy.
Jung-Min still sucks at being a BFF, though, telling Hanna that women who have had plastic surgery are considered "monsters" by mainstream society, and that even the most forward-thinking men may think it is fine for girls to get work done, "just not MY girl."
When Sang-Jun himself confirms this, using the same words, and her interaction with Sang-Jun continues to be as one-sided and painful for her as it ever was - if his earlier remarks to Ami about only using Hanna were a clue that Sang-Jun is no prize, in his most dramatic scene with Jenny, a raw, tear-your-heart-out moment when Sang-Jun finally understands just how much the woman who stands before him now, the woman who is Hanna, loved his sorry ass, just how sorry an ass that is is brought home to us as as hard as it is to her, and the more hopeful among us may even think we see a clue-stick hovering above the head of Sang-Jun himself.
Jung-Min needed the tattoo to recognize Hanna, but her father, institutionalized due to Alzheimer's or some other non-specified, or at least not understood by me, illness, does not need a tattoo, and when the movie, according to Korean comedy tradition, gets to "the serious part," it is through the scenes involving her father, (Hyon-shik Lim) that we feel the profundity of Hanna's anguish and the extreme emotional effects of the identity crisis in which she now finds herself.
But the one scene that is at once the most Spielbergian wipe-a-tear and bounce-up-and-down-howling-with-delight absurd takes place at Jenny's first concert, where everything hitting her at once, she is unable to perform, and confesses, whereupon the crowd all hold up stick-lights and chant "It's OK! "It's OK" reassuringly as a giant screen behind her fills with the image of Original Recipe Hanna, singing the song that she wrote "while just looking at the stars."
It is during these climactic scenes that Jung-Min finally redeems herself and starts acting like BFF material, and by movie's end, as a new SuperStar is born, and new posters and CD covers that say "Hanna" replace the ones that said "Jenny," even Sang-Jun seems to be trying on a bit of introspection for size, sadly realizing that to the extent his superficial ass may have ever been capable of real feelings, it was to the person Hanna is that his heart has always been drawn, as much as his mind has been drawn to the artist, no matter what she looks like, and that this nascent epiphany is several dollars short and about a year late.
Although especially the first third of the movie contains a lot of frankly offensive lame "fat" jokes and slapstick, as well as plenty of expected standard rom-com content, 200 Pounds Beauty is no ordinary romantic comedy.
Reportedly several famous actresses turned this role down. Maybe they were skittish about donning a "fat suit" Or maybe they read the script.
This would be a difficult role for any actor, but Kim A-Jung steps up, and while she plays nicely off the other actors in the comedic scenes, it is the dramatic moments where she gets the chance to show her chops.
This is an actress who works on her craft, and that someone who is -let's be honest here - NOT a natural comic in the classic sense of the term, nor with decades of experience and training to fall back on - can capture, to any extent, some of the subtleties of "what it would be like" not only to get used to a completely different body - but the instant turnaround in societal attitudes - is pretty impressive.
After a lifetime of being the butt of snickers, cruel jokes and rejection, when she emerges from the seclusion of recuperation from her surgeries, Jenny learns overnight just how different reality is for girls who are considered beautiful. In every situation, from the most casual encounter to potential catastrophe, the treatment she receives, the way people respond to her, is diametrically opposed to everything she has known.
For viewers looking for social commentary, it's there, but the mixed message element nearly obscures it.
I guess if we want to wax philosophical, we could argue that this accurately reflects cultural reality. While on the one hand, lip service about the importance of inner beauty, acceptance and self-love, has become obligatory, a cursory glance at any magazine or screen, large or small, tells a different story.
The wisp-thin girl who conforms to the current standard of beauty, near-universal in the global village that is Modern Today, continues to enjoy a very fat advantage over her older, plumper, different-featured sister, everywhere from the workplace to the lunch counter to the social and dating arena
I know I have just left out whole chunks of this movie, for instance, there is the element of family business drama - Sang-Jun's dad owns the record company, which also employs his brother, and one scene in particular, with a slightly hokey but very effective use of blood as a symbol of, well, blood, is certainly worth a mention, but I have totally failed to praise Hyon-shik Lim sufficiently for his excellent portrayal of Hanna's addled but loving father.
If nothing or no one in 200 Pounds Beauty makes you cry, Hyon-shik Lim will!
If you like pop music, or even if you don't, the songs in this movie will stay in your head for days, and one way or another, find their way to your iPod.
Western viewers will enjoy Kim A-Jung's cover of the old Blondie song "Maria," and a totally new take on Ben E. Hill's R & B classic "Stand By Me" will make you first go "huh?" and then "Yeah!"
The plot: Hanna (Kim A-Jung) is an incredibly talented singer, but because of the societal stigma of overweight, she is relegated to the position of "playback singer" for Ami, the hottest new pop princess.
Stuck backstage in a stuffy little booth, Hanna belts it out while Ami, dressed up in typical pop princess stagewear and surrounded by the usual conglomeration of backup singers, dancers and special effects, lip-syncs.
When not recording or lip-syncing for Ami, Hanna moonlights as a phone sex worker, where thanks to her gifts of compassion and patience with her troubled clients as much as her creatitivity and "evocative" skills, she has a loyal following.
Hanna is in love with Ami's producer and boyfriend, Sang-Jun, (played by Jin-mo Ju), who is the only person who is even remotely nice to her.
Western audiences will be shocked by the way BFF Jung-Min (Hyeon-sook Kim) treats Hanna, so much so that the one scene where the girls get matching tattoos and giggle and squeal like actual friends is jarring and out-of-place, and in fact the tattoos are central to a needed plot element, so it is possible that the scene really was "stuck on."
Hanna should face facts and forget about love, Jung-Min tells Hanna, because as far as men are concerned, there are 3 kinds of women in the world, the pretty girls, who is a treasure, the ordinary girl, who is a gift, and then there is the reject. Hanna, of course, is a reject.
Although Sang-Jun's friendliness to Hanna is clearly only that, Ami is jealous of his sincere appreciation for Hanna's talent, and resentful of the fact that she has none herself.
She sets Hanna up with a cruel trick, sending her a dress, supposedly a gift from Sang-Jun, to be worn at his birthday party. Of course the dress is all wrong for Hanna, she looks awful in it, and then Ami shows up in the same dress. She actually looks pretty awful in it too, but that is just my subjective judgment and has nothing to do with the plot.
While a humiliated Hanna hides in the bathroom, she overhears Sang-Jun telling a fretful Ami that they must both be nice to Hanna, or does she want to go back to backup dancer days, because if Hanna walks, Ami's career will end.
In despair, Ami attempts to end her life, but is saved by a call from one of her devoted phone sex clients, who happens to be a famous plastic surgeon.
There follows a funny scene in the surgeon's office, where he is about to throw her out after she asks about getting the miracles he describes done on credit, but quickly changes his mind when Hanna cleverly reveals her "other" identity.
Hanna disappears for a year, during which time Ami's career predictably crashes and burns, and when her Extreme Makeover is complete, she erases her old identity completely, and returns to the world as the slender and beautiful Jenny.
Meanwhile, all the expected drama has been going on behind the scenes as the recording company is losing money by the day, having had to postpone Ami's much-awaited second CD, and a desperate search for a replacement "voice" is underway.
Hanna, as Jenny, auditions, the company (including San-Jun) goes wild, and plans are made to launch Jenny, the new pop princess, while Ami is left out in the failing sitcom pasture of the has-been.
The only person who knows Jenny's secret is Jung-Min, and that only because of the tattoo, which is a big old scoop of artistic license, as it would not have survived a makeover as Extreme as Hanna's, but hey, it's a comedy.
Jung-Min still sucks at being a BFF, though, telling Hanna that women who have had plastic surgery are considered "monsters" by mainstream society, and that even the most forward-thinking men may think it is fine for girls to get work done, "just not MY girl."
When Sang-Jun himself confirms this, using the same words, and her interaction with Sang-Jun continues to be as one-sided and painful for her as it ever was - if his earlier remarks to Ami about only using Hanna were a clue that Sang-Jun is no prize, in his most dramatic scene with Jenny, a raw, tear-your-heart-out moment when Sang-Jun finally understands just how much the woman who stands before him now, the woman who is Hanna, loved his sorry ass, just how sorry an ass that is is brought home to us as as hard as it is to her, and the more hopeful among us may even think we see a clue-stick hovering above the head of Sang-Jun himself.
Jung-Min needed the tattoo to recognize Hanna, but her father, institutionalized due to Alzheimer's or some other non-specified, or at least not understood by me, illness, does not need a tattoo, and when the movie, according to Korean comedy tradition, gets to "the serious part," it is through the scenes involving her father, (Hyon-shik Lim) that we feel the profundity of Hanna's anguish and the extreme emotional effects of the identity crisis in which she now finds herself.
But the one scene that is at once the most Spielbergian wipe-a-tear and bounce-up-and-down-howling-with-delight absurd takes place at Jenny's first concert, where everything hitting her at once, she is unable to perform, and confesses, whereupon the crowd all hold up stick-lights and chant "It's OK! "It's OK" reassuringly as a giant screen behind her fills with the image of Original Recipe Hanna, singing the song that she wrote "while just looking at the stars."
It is during these climactic scenes that Jung-Min finally redeems herself and starts acting like BFF material, and by movie's end, as a new SuperStar is born, and new posters and CD covers that say "Hanna" replace the ones that said "Jenny," even Sang-Jun seems to be trying on a bit of introspection for size, sadly realizing that to the extent his superficial ass may have ever been capable of real feelings, it was to the person Hanna is that his heart has always been drawn, as much as his mind has been drawn to the artist, no matter what she looks like, and that this nascent epiphany is several dollars short and about a year late.
Although especially the first third of the movie contains a lot of frankly offensive lame "fat" jokes and slapstick, as well as plenty of expected standard rom-com content, 200 Pounds Beauty is no ordinary romantic comedy.
Reportedly several famous actresses turned this role down. Maybe they were skittish about donning a "fat suit" Or maybe they read the script.
This would be a difficult role for any actor, but Kim A-Jung steps up, and while she plays nicely off the other actors in the comedic scenes, it is the dramatic moments where she gets the chance to show her chops.
This is an actress who works on her craft, and that someone who is -let's be honest here - NOT a natural comic in the classic sense of the term, nor with decades of experience and training to fall back on - can capture, to any extent, some of the subtleties of "what it would be like" not only to get used to a completely different body - but the instant turnaround in societal attitudes - is pretty impressive.
After a lifetime of being the butt of snickers, cruel jokes and rejection, when she emerges from the seclusion of recuperation from her surgeries, Jenny learns overnight just how different reality is for girls who are considered beautiful. In every situation, from the most casual encounter to potential catastrophe, the treatment she receives, the way people respond to her, is diametrically opposed to everything she has known.
For viewers looking for social commentary, it's there, but the mixed message element nearly obscures it.
I guess if we want to wax philosophical, we could argue that this accurately reflects cultural reality. While on the one hand, lip service about the importance of inner beauty, acceptance and self-love, has become obligatory, a cursory glance at any magazine or screen, large or small, tells a different story.
The wisp-thin girl who conforms to the current standard of beauty, near-universal in the global village that is Modern Today, continues to enjoy a very fat advantage over her older, plumper, different-featured sister, everywhere from the workplace to the lunch counter to the social and dating arena
I know I have just left out whole chunks of this movie, for instance, there is the element of family business drama - Sang-Jun's dad owns the record company, which also employs his brother, and one scene in particular, with a slightly hokey but very effective use of blood as a symbol of, well, blood, is certainly worth a mention, but I have totally failed to praise Hyon-shik Lim sufficiently for his excellent portrayal of Hanna's addled but loving father.
If nothing or no one in 200 Pounds Beauty makes you cry, Hyon-shik Lim will!
If you like pop music, or even if you don't, the songs in this movie will stay in your head for days, and one way or another, find their way to your iPod.
Western viewers will enjoy Kim A-Jung's cover of the old Blondie song "Maria," and a totally new take on Ben E. Hill's R & B classic "Stand By Me" will make you first go "huh?" and then "Yeah!"
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
NYC Prep: "Paris Hilton was doing it, so I guess it's cool."
For someone who has, at 17, the spirit of a cartoon 50-something dowager, that Jessie would be so utterly unaware of the nature of fashion industry "intern jobs" awarded to applicants who come with a camera crew gave the First Day at Work segment an almost Chaplinesque, comedy-tinged-with-pathos feel.
But the evidence of the huge disconnect between her perception of her worldly-wise sophistication level and the facts on the ground was a reassuring reminder of the existence of Jessie's only visible teenage girl characteristic.
Except for none of it being quite believable. But then her stated goals do not include a career in acting, so it's all good.
Meanwhile, over at the Jill Stuart show, Taylor disingenuously voices over that the reason Cole doesn't like PC is because he thinks PC was "being mean at Camille's dinner party."
Sorry, Taylor. Nobody's suspension of disbelief bungee stretches that far. Cole doesn't like PC because you talk about him the way my neighbor's 11-year-old talks about the Jonas Brothers. Cole doesn't like PC because, at least for the purposes of the show, you are the Winnie of his Wonder Years, the little red haired girl in his bag of peanuts, his Venus in blue jeans, and no matter how much fun the Keyboard Analyst Posse is having speculating about the tender buds of PC's pullulating sexual preference, Cole doesn't like PC because you so obviously want to tap that.
Watching the fashion show, Taylor realizes that fashion is "like an art."
Watching the models, Cole makes typical teenage-boy-watching-models comments. When one of them succeeds in making Taylor giggle, PC suddenly realizes that his Scornful Aside skills need work, so he tosses a practice one at Cole, advising him to "take notes." The way the sequence was edited, it came off looking like he says this because he is miffed that it is Cole, and not he, who recognizes that one of Stuart's ensembles features a Mary Poppins hat.
Sebastian doesn't really know to which show he has received tickets for. He admits that he's not really into fashion, he's just psyched about hanging out with Kelli.
We are treated to a delightful scene where Sebastian clumsily mumbles to Kelli the glorious tidings that since Taylor has wisely declined to hook up with him, he is prepared to confer upon Kelli all the benefits of First Runner-Up, and Kelli deftly but politely slices him up for sandwiches, and just in case we missed it, declares in her Confessional that "I'm not his backup girl."
Poor Sebastian. Just last week, he was all excited because he scored a date with a Real Live Senior (who thought it would be fun to have a walk-on part with lines in a reality show) who not only talked to him as if he were the little brother of a friend that she had agreed to entertain for an evening, but turned out to actually speak French. And if that weren't enough, his hair was looking a little droopy, and wouldn't even flip right.
Hair-flipping and a very basic vocabulary of heavily accented French comprise Sebastian's surefire panty-dropper repertoire in its entirety, and he knows this. His Fashion Week prospects are looking mighty grim. He is reduced half-heartedly Confessing that he thinks Kelli must be bi-polar.
"There's just protocol"
PC apologizes to Kelli for accusing her of being younger than 16. If what you need is a good, old-fashioned nostalgic sigh, reach back far enough to remember just what a Grievous Offense that is.
Kelli does not accept the apology. Instead, she retaliates by accusing PC of fighting like a girl.
At the Pamela Roland show, PC greets Devorah of Social Life Magazine with a kiss and a compliment. Jessie scurries off and installs herself and Cat The Friend in PC's front row seats. It is the cruelest punishment she could impose on PC, and before he knows it, he is Making a Scene. At Fashion Week!
Humiliated, he Confesses that Jessie is a fat bitch. From his disgraceful second row seat, he leans over and hisses an epithet at her. After the show, Jessie and PC continue bickering, pecking at each other like fretful chickens. Cat the Friend is over it, and bails.
Jessie Confesses that people in the fashion industry are sometimes not who they say they are, and informs us that she is not like that.
Kelli and Camille go shopping. Kelli admires some boots. "I like them - for you," says Camille, skillfully dripping equal amounts of condescension on both boots and Kelli.
Undeterred, Kelli tells Camille that her singing teacher wants her to have an Edge and an Image. "That's funny, thinking that she doesn't think you are, you know, put together enough," Camille sneers delicately, looking Kelli up and down.
Kelli tries to save face in her voiceover. "I think Camille is confused about what an Image is."
Camille confesses that she thinks Kelli was "taken aback" by her "questioning."
Jessie gets another faux intern job with Carmen Marc Valvo. She arrives late, but the camera crew is on time, and Jessie is forgiven and even permitted to hand out press kits.
Kelli meets with the stylist, and inexplicably takes Camille along. Camille continues her "questioning" with the stylist.
Camille Confesses that even though they all go to fancy dinners, it is ridiculous for a teenage girl to have a stylist.
"You can tell when someone's not from New York, and just like, not like a real person."
Jessie decides to kill two birds with one stone: make up with PC and show off her new job at Carmen Marc Valvo, so she invites him to the show, but is upset when he shows up with a full court posse in tow - and if that weren't bad enough, Jessie Confesses, he brought people who were "(meaningful pause)different (pause redux) from everybody else that was there." PC, she informs us, knows better.
And the hits just keep on coming. Not only does PC bring one, possibly two gay men to a fashion show (a stylist and a photographer, shrugs PC in voiceover)but which Jessie considers "just not right," but he also invites Devorah the magazine editor.
"Why is she talking to PC?," Jessie wails. It grosses her out. PC should get to know people before he hangs out with them. She doesn't know them well enough to know if they are good people or not. They are 20-something.
She tells PC she is hurt, and she doesn't think he should go out with them after the show. He has time to do that in the future. PC tells Jessie that he isn't going out.
"What's her drama?" asks a bewildered Devorah. PC says he doesn't want to talk about it, and off he goes with Devorah to Buddah Bar, gallantly holding an umbrella over her head, leaving Jessie forlorn and alone in the Carmen Marc Valvo tent.
Things are looking up for Sebastian after all! He has a date "with this really hot girl I met at a party." When he agrees with her that "flambe" means "like on fire," she asks him if he is French.
"Wee," he replies, with a toss of head and hair. Sebastian has high hopes for this one, but is visibly horrified to discover that she attends public school, and immediately declares that the date is over.
This girl not only wanted a reality show walk-on, she really wanted to hook up with Sebastian, and asks if she can at least touch his hair. (It's doing much better today. He must have remembered to volumize). He refuses, and later Confesses that he thought that was weird. For once, he's right.
After gushboasting to a singularly unimpressed friend about her heady experiences at the fashion show and what an impressive manho PC is rumored to be, starstruck Taylor Confesses that she "isn't sure if it's cool to be bisexual, but it's cool that PC is bisexual."
Jessie returns to Carmen Marc Valvo, and is sent to a warehouse in New Jersey to match pictures to clothes and pull accordingly. She is thrilled to be trusted with such an important task.
But she's not thrilled with PC!
There is a really long-ass segment of her variously berating him, interspersed with Confessional, voiceover, back to harangue, and I Confess that I sort of tuned it out shortly after I heard the word "heartbreaking."
While all we saw was a couple of polite inquiries about whether she and her friend had enjoyed the show, to hear Jessie tell it, both Carmen Marc Valvo and his press dude are so consumed with the terrible awfulness of the disgusting, subhuman vermin that PC brought to the fashion show that they can think of nothing else, because "Guests of guests do not bring guests," and now Jessie's job is in jeopardy, and Carmen and the press dude have lost all respect for her, at the very thought that she might possibly know such wretched creatures, but despite all that, her only concern is to protect PC from predators who only want to use him for his money.
Jessie begins to cry and asks that the Confessional stop.
PC confesses that he loves Jessie to death and would do anything for her. He offers to send Carmen Marc Valvo a note, even personally go to the office, which finally shuts her up.
Well played, PC! Check, and mate!
Jessie hands over her queen without a fight, and mumbles something about really wanting the job. Since the last thing we heard they were telling her what she would be doing next week, this appears to be something of a non-issue, and thus the perfect note on which to end the episode.
But the evidence of the huge disconnect between her perception of her worldly-wise sophistication level and the facts on the ground was a reassuring reminder of the existence of Jessie's only visible teenage girl characteristic.
Except for none of it being quite believable. But then her stated goals do not include a career in acting, so it's all good.
Meanwhile, over at the Jill Stuart show, Taylor disingenuously voices over that the reason Cole doesn't like PC is because he thinks PC was "being mean at Camille's dinner party."
Sorry, Taylor. Nobody's suspension of disbelief bungee stretches that far. Cole doesn't like PC because you talk about him the way my neighbor's 11-year-old talks about the Jonas Brothers. Cole doesn't like PC because, at least for the purposes of the show, you are the Winnie of his Wonder Years, the little red haired girl in his bag of peanuts, his Venus in blue jeans, and no matter how much fun the Keyboard Analyst Posse is having speculating about the tender buds of PC's pullulating sexual preference, Cole doesn't like PC because you so obviously want to tap that.
Watching the fashion show, Taylor realizes that fashion is "like an art."
Watching the models, Cole makes typical teenage-boy-watching-models comments. When one of them succeeds in making Taylor giggle, PC suddenly realizes that his Scornful Aside skills need work, so he tosses a practice one at Cole, advising him to "take notes." The way the sequence was edited, it came off looking like he says this because he is miffed that it is Cole, and not he, who recognizes that one of Stuart's ensembles features a Mary Poppins hat.
Sebastian doesn't really know to which show he has received tickets for. He admits that he's not really into fashion, he's just psyched about hanging out with Kelli.
We are treated to a delightful scene where Sebastian clumsily mumbles to Kelli the glorious tidings that since Taylor has wisely declined to hook up with him, he is prepared to confer upon Kelli all the benefits of First Runner-Up, and Kelli deftly but politely slices him up for sandwiches, and just in case we missed it, declares in her Confessional that "I'm not his backup girl."
Poor Sebastian. Just last week, he was all excited because he scored a date with a Real Live Senior (who thought it would be fun to have a walk-on part with lines in a reality show) who not only talked to him as if he were the little brother of a friend that she had agreed to entertain for an evening, but turned out to actually speak French. And if that weren't enough, his hair was looking a little droopy, and wouldn't even flip right.
Hair-flipping and a very basic vocabulary of heavily accented French comprise Sebastian's surefire panty-dropper repertoire in its entirety, and he knows this. His Fashion Week prospects are looking mighty grim. He is reduced half-heartedly Confessing that he thinks Kelli must be bi-polar.
"There's just protocol"
PC apologizes to Kelli for accusing her of being younger than 16. If what you need is a good, old-fashioned nostalgic sigh, reach back far enough to remember just what a Grievous Offense that is.
Kelli does not accept the apology. Instead, she retaliates by accusing PC of fighting like a girl.
At the Pamela Roland show, PC greets Devorah of Social Life Magazine with a kiss and a compliment. Jessie scurries off and installs herself and Cat The Friend in PC's front row seats. It is the cruelest punishment she could impose on PC, and before he knows it, he is Making a Scene. At Fashion Week!
Humiliated, he Confesses that Jessie is a fat bitch. From his disgraceful second row seat, he leans over and hisses an epithet at her. After the show, Jessie and PC continue bickering, pecking at each other like fretful chickens. Cat the Friend is over it, and bails.
Jessie Confesses that people in the fashion industry are sometimes not who they say they are, and informs us that she is not like that.
Kelli and Camille go shopping. Kelli admires some boots. "I like them - for you," says Camille, skillfully dripping equal amounts of condescension on both boots and Kelli.
Undeterred, Kelli tells Camille that her singing teacher wants her to have an Edge and an Image. "That's funny, thinking that she doesn't think you are, you know, put together enough," Camille sneers delicately, looking Kelli up and down.
Kelli tries to save face in her voiceover. "I think Camille is confused about what an Image is."
Camille confesses that she thinks Kelli was "taken aback" by her "questioning."
Jessie gets another faux intern job with Carmen Marc Valvo. She arrives late, but the camera crew is on time, and Jessie is forgiven and even permitted to hand out press kits.
Kelli meets with the stylist, and inexplicably takes Camille along. Camille continues her "questioning" with the stylist.
Camille Confesses that even though they all go to fancy dinners, it is ridiculous for a teenage girl to have a stylist.
"You can tell when someone's not from New York, and just like, not like a real person."
Jessie decides to kill two birds with one stone: make up with PC and show off her new job at Carmen Marc Valvo, so she invites him to the show, but is upset when he shows up with a full court posse in tow - and if that weren't bad enough, Jessie Confesses, he brought people who were "(meaningful pause)different (pause redux) from everybody else that was there." PC, she informs us, knows better.
And the hits just keep on coming. Not only does PC bring one, possibly two gay men to a fashion show (a stylist and a photographer, shrugs PC in voiceover)but which Jessie considers "just not right," but he also invites Devorah the magazine editor.
"Why is she talking to PC?," Jessie wails. It grosses her out. PC should get to know people before he hangs out with them. She doesn't know them well enough to know if they are good people or not. They are 20-something.
She tells PC she is hurt, and she doesn't think he should go out with them after the show. He has time to do that in the future. PC tells Jessie that he isn't going out.
"What's her drama?" asks a bewildered Devorah. PC says he doesn't want to talk about it, and off he goes with Devorah to Buddah Bar, gallantly holding an umbrella over her head, leaving Jessie forlorn and alone in the Carmen Marc Valvo tent.
Things are looking up for Sebastian after all! He has a date "with this really hot girl I met at a party." When he agrees with her that "flambe" means "like on fire," she asks him if he is French.
"Wee," he replies, with a toss of head and hair. Sebastian has high hopes for this one, but is visibly horrified to discover that she attends public school, and immediately declares that the date is over.
This girl not only wanted a reality show walk-on, she really wanted to hook up with Sebastian, and asks if she can at least touch his hair. (It's doing much better today. He must have remembered to volumize). He refuses, and later Confesses that he thought that was weird. For once, he's right.
After gushboasting to a singularly unimpressed friend about her heady experiences at the fashion show and what an impressive manho PC is rumored to be, starstruck Taylor Confesses that she "isn't sure if it's cool to be bisexual, but it's cool that PC is bisexual."
Jessie returns to Carmen Marc Valvo, and is sent to a warehouse in New Jersey to match pictures to clothes and pull accordingly. She is thrilled to be trusted with such an important task.
But she's not thrilled with PC!
There is a really long-ass segment of her variously berating him, interspersed with Confessional, voiceover, back to harangue, and I Confess that I sort of tuned it out shortly after I heard the word "heartbreaking."
While all we saw was a couple of polite inquiries about whether she and her friend had enjoyed the show, to hear Jessie tell it, both Carmen Marc Valvo and his press dude are so consumed with the terrible awfulness of the disgusting, subhuman vermin that PC brought to the fashion show that they can think of nothing else, because "Guests of guests do not bring guests," and now Jessie's job is in jeopardy, and Carmen and the press dude have lost all respect for her, at the very thought that she might possibly know such wretched creatures, but despite all that, her only concern is to protect PC from predators who only want to use him for his money.
Jessie begins to cry and asks that the Confessional stop.
PC confesses that he loves Jessie to death and would do anything for her. He offers to send Carmen Marc Valvo a note, even personally go to the office, which finally shuts her up.
Well played, PC! Check, and mate!
Jessie hands over her queen without a fight, and mumbles something about really wanting the job. Since the last thing we heard they were telling her what she would be doing next week, this appears to be something of a non-issue, and thus the perfect note on which to end the episode.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
More To Love Does Not Get A First Impression Rose
Predictably, this show is being pimped as some kind of At Long Last! Inspiring Ray of Hope for the world's 98 or so % of women who are not size 0-2.
It's really just a Chubby Chaser version of the Bachelor. The Grand Prize is Luke, one of those dudes.
What, exactly, would be the difference in someone who didn't want you because of your size and someone who did want you because of your size?
It's pretty much a zero-sum game (pun not intended but left there anyway).
That said, if you loves you some trashy reality show (and who among us does not?) then Yay! Here's a new one!
In the parade of contenders, we were treated to such inspiring and hopeful jewels of self-love as "I'd like to lose 50 pounds" and "I prefer to think of myself as 'big-boned'"
The main thing to me that stuck out about these hamsters compared to the average Bachelor selection is that there is a much higher % of beauties. Now I know that's a subjective judgment, but it's still true. A few of them are weapons grade beautiful - Turn-around-in-the-street-and-stare-even-if-you're-a-straight-woman gorgeous, which I haven't seen on The Bachelor or any other reality show, and only one of Luke's choices is plug-ugly, which I have seen quite a lot of on other reality shows, including the Bachelor, and no, I will not name names.
I heard one girl whimper that she finally loves herself. Maybe one day the thought won't make her cry. Oh well, it's a journey, I guess. Baby steps.
Anna-The-Goddess and Sandy both say that they think they intimidate people, but the one who should really worry about that is Arianne, who might want to consider changing the pronunciation of her name. And I would make the same recommendation even if she were five feet tall and weighed 90.
And just in case anyone needs to be told this, a woman who is 5'7" and weighs 180 is "plus size" in the same way that she is "short."
Just as most women in, for example, the US, are size 14 and up, most women are also 5'4" and under.
Somebody tell me if I missed it, but I counted a total of 1 hamster on this show who was 5'4", and 0 under that. Most of them appeared (coincidentally, I'm sure) to be at least or above the minimum height for fashion models, plus size or otherwise.
Which, by the way, is fine with me. I hope they get work. And I guess the fact that even a couple who are "too short" to model made the final cut is remarkable.
It's really just a Chubby Chaser version of the Bachelor. The Grand Prize is Luke, one of those dudes.
What, exactly, would be the difference in someone who didn't want you because of your size and someone who did want you because of your size?
It's pretty much a zero-sum game (pun not intended but left there anyway).
That said, if you loves you some trashy reality show (and who among us does not?) then Yay! Here's a new one!
In the parade of contenders, we were treated to such inspiring and hopeful jewels of self-love as "I'd like to lose 50 pounds" and "I prefer to think of myself as 'big-boned'"
The main thing to me that stuck out about these hamsters compared to the average Bachelor selection is that there is a much higher % of beauties. Now I know that's a subjective judgment, but it's still true. A few of them are weapons grade beautiful - Turn-around-in-the-street-and-stare-even-if-you're-a-straight-woman gorgeous, which I haven't seen on The Bachelor or any other reality show, and only one of Luke's choices is plug-ugly, which I have seen quite a lot of on other reality shows, including the Bachelor, and no, I will not name names.
I heard one girl whimper that she finally loves herself. Maybe one day the thought won't make her cry. Oh well, it's a journey, I guess. Baby steps.
Anna-The-Goddess and Sandy both say that they think they intimidate people, but the one who should really worry about that is Arianne, who might want to consider changing the pronunciation of her name. And I would make the same recommendation even if she were five feet tall and weighed 90.
And just in case anyone needs to be told this, a woman who is 5'7" and weighs 180 is "plus size" in the same way that she is "short."
Just as most women in, for example, the US, are size 14 and up, most women are also 5'4" and under.
Somebody tell me if I missed it, but I counted a total of 1 hamster on this show who was 5'4", and 0 under that. Most of them appeared (coincidentally, I'm sure) to be at least or above the minimum height for fashion models, plus size or otherwise.
Which, by the way, is fine with me. I hope they get work. And I guess the fact that even a couple who are "too short" to model made the final cut is remarkable.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Southern Belles Louisville: The Belles Toll a Toneless Farewell
So this uncomfortable little Real Housewives Lite knockoff has come and gone like the slightly queasy morning after a night spent consuming a surfeit of questionable seafood.
I did get a small chortle when one of them accidentally alluded to their not having known each other from Adam's old fox before the show.
Shea will, and should, end up marrying Joey from Real World Cancun.
I have known about 8 dozen versions of Shea over the years, and she always ends up marrying Joey from Real World Cancun.
Her obligatory post-emotional trauma drastic hair change is an object lesson for fair-complected brunettes everywhere: No matter what anybody tells you about how lightening your hair will make you look soft and youthful, do NOT do it without first experimenting with a wig to make sure that it does not totally ERASE you!
If we cared to dig deeply enough, which I don't, the "real dirt" we would probably uncover is that they were all recovering from unsuccessful attempts at modeling careers, or unsuccessful attempts at thinking about one, and that Julie is the only one who owns up to it. And will probably be the only Belle who, as a result of the show, achieves it.
I loved her nail polish at the dinner in the opening segment!
It was this really pretty dark burgundy color, which means that while it is perfect on cinnamon-dusted Julie, it probably wouldn't work on dirty mustard-dusted Weimeraner me. Burgundy clothes work fine, but every burgundy nail polish I have tried just makes my hands look sickly, especially now that both sun exposure and melanin production have been discontinued.
But I digress.
I also really liked Hadley's silver necklace at the going-away party, and I hate her for having a big ass enough head to be able to wear a wide headband like that, especially a tacky silver lace one. But I would do one that was silver lace all around, not lame elastic in the back. What was she thinking?
So captivated was I by that silver lace, that while Shea was strolling around Jeff's Dream House, I developed a love-hate relationship with that over-Bedazzled prostitution whore of a black and silver car coat.
I was glad to see that Kellie came to her senses, but I am still so annoyed by the very existence of that butt-fugly gray sweater of hers with that enormous turtleneck. Maybe it's supposed to be ironic. Come to think of it, that whole enveloped in giant folds of bulkachunk wool seems to be a sort of sartorial leitmotif for her. Is it that cold in Louisville?
If you can get past all that supersize knitting, Kellie is a sort of Modern Today version of a classical Dutch Baroque beauty, and it's a shame that at her age, she still doesn't know what to do with it.
Speaking of people standing around holding giant lumps of beauty, turning it over and over in their hands and looking puzzled, I would really like to get a hold of Hadley's mama. Although that haircut has become ubiquitous and tiresome, it's the only thing she's doing right. It also appears to be the only thing she's doing.
But she did make me spend several minutes wondering if I should ask my hair designer if she thinks I should add spiky bangs to my own copy of the ubiquitous and tiresome haircut.
I so miss the squillion different length layers hairdo that looked like it had been done with a Weed-Whacker. When is that one coming back in style? I didn't even have to comb it. Plus if you have very coarse, straight hair like I do, it will naturally stick out in all directions, giving the illusion of volume.
I would be very surprised if funding is found for a season 2 of this forlorn thing. The hamsters were spectacularly unremarkable, and failed to produce enough sensation or drama to compensate for that.
I did get a small chortle when one of them accidentally alluded to their not having known each other from Adam's old fox before the show.
Shea will, and should, end up marrying Joey from Real World Cancun.
I have known about 8 dozen versions of Shea over the years, and she always ends up marrying Joey from Real World Cancun.
Her obligatory post-emotional trauma drastic hair change is an object lesson for fair-complected brunettes everywhere: No matter what anybody tells you about how lightening your hair will make you look soft and youthful, do NOT do it without first experimenting with a wig to make sure that it does not totally ERASE you!
If we cared to dig deeply enough, which I don't, the "real dirt" we would probably uncover is that they were all recovering from unsuccessful attempts at modeling careers, or unsuccessful attempts at thinking about one, and that Julie is the only one who owns up to it. And will probably be the only Belle who, as a result of the show, achieves it.
I loved her nail polish at the dinner in the opening segment!
It was this really pretty dark burgundy color, which means that while it is perfect on cinnamon-dusted Julie, it probably wouldn't work on dirty mustard-dusted Weimeraner me. Burgundy clothes work fine, but every burgundy nail polish I have tried just makes my hands look sickly, especially now that both sun exposure and melanin production have been discontinued.
But I digress.
I also really liked Hadley's silver necklace at the going-away party, and I hate her for having a big ass enough head to be able to wear a wide headband like that, especially a tacky silver lace one. But I would do one that was silver lace all around, not lame elastic in the back. What was she thinking?
So captivated was I by that silver lace, that while Shea was strolling around Jeff's Dream House, I developed a love-hate relationship with that over-Bedazzled prostitution whore of a black and silver car coat.
I was glad to see that Kellie came to her senses, but I am still so annoyed by the very existence of that butt-fugly gray sweater of hers with that enormous turtleneck. Maybe it's supposed to be ironic. Come to think of it, that whole enveloped in giant folds of bulkachunk wool seems to be a sort of sartorial leitmotif for her. Is it that cold in Louisville?
If you can get past all that supersize knitting, Kellie is a sort of Modern Today version of a classical Dutch Baroque beauty, and it's a shame that at her age, she still doesn't know what to do with it.
Speaking of people standing around holding giant lumps of beauty, turning it over and over in their hands and looking puzzled, I would really like to get a hold of Hadley's mama. Although that haircut has become ubiquitous and tiresome, it's the only thing she's doing right. It also appears to be the only thing she's doing.
But she did make me spend several minutes wondering if I should ask my hair designer if she thinks I should add spiky bangs to my own copy of the ubiquitous and tiresome haircut.
I so miss the squillion different length layers hairdo that looked like it had been done with a Weed-Whacker. When is that one coming back in style? I didn't even have to comb it. Plus if you have very coarse, straight hair like I do, it will naturally stick out in all directions, giving the illusion of volume.
I would be very surprised if funding is found for a season 2 of this forlorn thing. The hamsters were spectacularly unremarkable, and failed to produce enough sensation or drama to compensate for that.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Southern Belles Louisville: Lord, this show makes me preachy!
Mercifully, subsequent episodes of this show have not been quite as "raw" as the "premiere," maybe it was just a learning curve thing, with the 1st couple of airings taking viewers along for the ride - an extra bonus layer of "reality" as the producers figure out just how much of that commodity viewers should be asked to stomach.
To atone for past sins, the last couple of episodes have featured some frankly comical overstaging - like the "slumber party," but it's Julie's "babysitting" sequence that, for all its hilarity, gives our suspension of disbelief a serious workout!
First, we are asked to accept the idea that Julie, in the 35 years she has been alive, has never spent so much as an hour or two alone with any children.
From there we glide into the idea that her first-ever conversation with her father on the subject of whether she might one day wish to be a parent occurred last week, and then it is just a hop-skip to Julie's grand Epiphany that in order to find out how becoming a mother would change her life, she should spend an afternoon babysitting - not one, not two, not even three - but FOUR small children!
Enter two of Julie's good friends - each with two daughters of about the same age - two sets of extremely telegenic sisters, one pair blonde, one pair brunette, all completely at ease with lights, crew and camera.
Of course we only see what makes it out of the editing room, but it does not appear that the two sets of sisters have ever played together before. All the interaction between the children that we are shown involves sister playing with sister. Kids who know each other would be much more likely to pair off according to age, kids who have never met will tend to interact with their respective sibling.
This show just might be a contender for the Mostest.Audrinage.Ever reality show tradition award - if some, even most, of the cast of the various Real Housewives shows were only glancingly acquainted with each other prior to the first day of shooting, the Belles' lack of shared "history" is glaring.
Nevertheless, as I continue to watch it, I find that it provides as much fodder for sober refection as for helpless giggling fits.
Kellie's situation, for example, is heart-rending, a grim reminder that whether it feels awkward, weird, even inappropriate, the time for the "Do You Want Kids?" talk (or more kids, if one of you has, like Kellie's Jeff, already obtained offspring) is preferably the second, but no later than the third date, BEFORE either party has had a chance to become "emotionally invested" enough to cause serious damage should there be a wide variance in their respective views on this subject.
It's a thought-provoking illustration that no matter how trashy the show, how stupid the script, or how inane the hamsters, even the lamest and most superficial television shows can educate, even illuminate, and this is something that every one of the "single ladies" - and their single brothers - who watch this show can "take away" from it, and receive the huge benefit of saving themselves from the kind of agony Kellie is suffering, an agony that would be even more emotionally eviscerating, even more causative of permanent harm, if Jeff were not such a tool.
At least when it is all over, she will have the comfort of relief that she did not make a permanent committment to a total asswipe.
Shea, who also has a Jeff, is confronting basically the same issue, at least in my view, since I don't make a large distinction on the basis of species.
Even if we lay aside their housing preferences - while Jeff dreams of mulching and mowing as proud handyman and householder, Shea's notion of the ideal home involves maid service and a spa on the premises - the real non-negotiable, potential deal-breaker is that Jeff comes with what is, for all practical purposes, a child.
The well-being of dependent family members who share one's home, whether human or not, can be neither relegated to the status of non-essential "extra," nor swept aside entirely, and anyone who would even consider such a thing is presenting empirical evidence that they are NOT husband material.
If they are capable of, much less willing, to renege on their committment to that being or beings, what could one expect who considers choosing such a person as life partner? And this goes both ways. If Shea can so easily dismiss the needs of Jeff's dog - well, in the case at hand, Shea has already been pretty upfront with Jeff about just what kind of living hell he could expect, and indeed the internet buzz is that he has wisely delivered himself - and his pupdog - from such a grisly fate, and empowered Shea to return to the garden to seek a more suitably crushable flower.
That this match was doomed was pretty much foretold in every frame of Shea-and-Jeff footage that made it to air, and in case there were any doubts, it was writ large in big red flags in the scene where Shea takes Jeff for a pre-marital counseling session with an gentleman who looks eeriely like Emily's creepy dad. Shea believes that the counseling will prevent her from ending up divorced like her parents.
"I have changed so much for you," Jeff blurts. Shea asserts that she has seen no change, but whether she has or not, whether it is even objectively true or not, if such a sentiment is in the heart of either party, that relationship is dead in the water.
Ideally, true love does change us, in that it makes us want to be, and become, better people, the best version of ourselves, but that's several galaxies away from Jeff's orbit.
As always, even as we keep in mind that the footage of each hamster is deliberately edited for the purpose of drawing a particular "character," we are also obliged to recognize the flip side of that: no matter what they leave out, no matter how they change or remove from context entirely - if the hamster doesn't say or do it, they won't have it to leave in.
Although it may be that Shea's footage is edited frame by frame in order to paint for us a portrait of a woman completely devoid of substance, if we assess the footage that she has given them to work with, we can come to no other conclusion that she is either a talented actress or that there really is no "there" there.
Internet personality aklein has called Emily "painful to watch." She has, aiklen remarks sadly, "emotional maturity of a 12 year old."
It's hard to come up with a credible rebuttal to that.
I am so not the appropriate person to defend any of these hamsters, but in fairness, there was a scene where Emily's Xtreme Cage Match Creepy dad was ragging on her about her hair, while Mama just sits there and says nothing, and there was something about it that looked like it was one of the more natural and effortless bits of footage we are likely to see on any reality show. I got the distinct feeling Emily heard that song with dismal regularity, just another number in CreepyDaddy's extensive repertoire of Pick on Emily showstoppers.
Whether Emily's dad is "for real" or not is a tough call. On the one hand, we have all known people with the misfortune of having parents like that. If it's a role and he is an actor, he has certainly "committed" to the character. He has it down, down to the teensiest creepy nuance.
This is probably born more of wishful thinking for Emily's sake than concrete perception, but a couple of times he has appeared to be mugging for the camera in an almost SpencerPrattian cartoon villain face mode.
I would be willing to bet that there is a connection between Emily's emotional development issues and having grown up with a father who considers his daughter having physically "matured too early" as a sort of inexpiable indiscretion, an unforgivable transgression for which he is still reprimanding her even as her thirtieth (or 30-something) birthday approaches.
Emily is presented to us as the classic damaged bird, her plumage dulled by a lifetime of stern reproaches for having ever had any plumage, without an ally, reviled in the nest which should have nurtured her, and which she now fears to leave, torn between what remaining shreds she has of natural, healthy instincts to go forth and be a person, pitted against the sheer terror of displeasing the father she has never, can never please, who has devoted himself to steadily and relentlessly breaking her down, convincing her that she is essentially incapable of personhood, and her female role model appears to conform to that ideal. Emily's mother is painted as a non-entity, an empty cipher who silently accepts Ogre Dad's condemnation of her daughter.
Her determination to move to Las Vegas may not be the shrewdest move, nor her aspirations of becoming a high profile broadcast journalist the best match for her aptitudes and abilities, but that she has enough "oomph" left into her to recognize and follow the self-preservation instinct to get the hell away from her toxic Daddy is a positive and hopeful sign.
Ironically, while it is Emily who dreams of becoming a TV star, it is Hadley the Flounderer who has the face for it, though she, too, appears to suffer from an extreme case of arrested emotional development, in some ways even more fundamental and deep-seated. So much so that if I were obliged to bet on which of the two would "succeed," in terms of growing into a whole and functional person, I would put my money on Emily.
The character of Hadley is as materially empty and vacuous as Shea, at least as she is presented to us, and as always with the understanding that she could be acting, playing a role that was assigned to her.
Lord, this show makes me preachy!
To atone for past sins, the last couple of episodes have featured some frankly comical overstaging - like the "slumber party," but it's Julie's "babysitting" sequence that, for all its hilarity, gives our suspension of disbelief a serious workout!
First, we are asked to accept the idea that Julie, in the 35 years she has been alive, has never spent so much as an hour or two alone with any children.
From there we glide into the idea that her first-ever conversation with her father on the subject of whether she might one day wish to be a parent occurred last week, and then it is just a hop-skip to Julie's grand Epiphany that in order to find out how becoming a mother would change her life, she should spend an afternoon babysitting - not one, not two, not even three - but FOUR small children!
Enter two of Julie's good friends - each with two daughters of about the same age - two sets of extremely telegenic sisters, one pair blonde, one pair brunette, all completely at ease with lights, crew and camera.
Of course we only see what makes it out of the editing room, but it does not appear that the two sets of sisters have ever played together before. All the interaction between the children that we are shown involves sister playing with sister. Kids who know each other would be much more likely to pair off according to age, kids who have never met will tend to interact with their respective sibling.
This show just might be a contender for the Mostest.Audrinage.Ever reality show tradition award - if some, even most, of the cast of the various Real Housewives shows were only glancingly acquainted with each other prior to the first day of shooting, the Belles' lack of shared "history" is glaring.
Nevertheless, as I continue to watch it, I find that it provides as much fodder for sober refection as for helpless giggling fits.
Kellie's situation, for example, is heart-rending, a grim reminder that whether it feels awkward, weird, even inappropriate, the time for the "Do You Want Kids?" talk (or more kids, if one of you has, like Kellie's Jeff, already obtained offspring) is preferably the second, but no later than the third date, BEFORE either party has had a chance to become "emotionally invested" enough to cause serious damage should there be a wide variance in their respective views on this subject.
It's a thought-provoking illustration that no matter how trashy the show, how stupid the script, or how inane the hamsters, even the lamest and most superficial television shows can educate, even illuminate, and this is something that every one of the "single ladies" - and their single brothers - who watch this show can "take away" from it, and receive the huge benefit of saving themselves from the kind of agony Kellie is suffering, an agony that would be even more emotionally eviscerating, even more causative of permanent harm, if Jeff were not such a tool.
At least when it is all over, she will have the comfort of relief that she did not make a permanent committment to a total asswipe.
Shea, who also has a Jeff, is confronting basically the same issue, at least in my view, since I don't make a large distinction on the basis of species.
Even if we lay aside their housing preferences - while Jeff dreams of mulching and mowing as proud handyman and householder, Shea's notion of the ideal home involves maid service and a spa on the premises - the real non-negotiable, potential deal-breaker is that Jeff comes with what is, for all practical purposes, a child.
The well-being of dependent family members who share one's home, whether human or not, can be neither relegated to the status of non-essential "extra," nor swept aside entirely, and anyone who would even consider such a thing is presenting empirical evidence that they are NOT husband material.
If they are capable of, much less willing, to renege on their committment to that being or beings, what could one expect who considers choosing such a person as life partner? And this goes both ways. If Shea can so easily dismiss the needs of Jeff's dog - well, in the case at hand, Shea has already been pretty upfront with Jeff about just what kind of living hell he could expect, and indeed the internet buzz is that he has wisely delivered himself - and his pupdog - from such a grisly fate, and empowered Shea to return to the garden to seek a more suitably crushable flower.
That this match was doomed was pretty much foretold in every frame of Shea-and-Jeff footage that made it to air, and in case there were any doubts, it was writ large in big red flags in the scene where Shea takes Jeff for a pre-marital counseling session with an gentleman who looks eeriely like Emily's creepy dad. Shea believes that the counseling will prevent her from ending up divorced like her parents.
"I have changed so much for you," Jeff blurts. Shea asserts that she has seen no change, but whether she has or not, whether it is even objectively true or not, if such a sentiment is in the heart of either party, that relationship is dead in the water.
Ideally, true love does change us, in that it makes us want to be, and become, better people, the best version of ourselves, but that's several galaxies away from Jeff's orbit.
As always, even as we keep in mind that the footage of each hamster is deliberately edited for the purpose of drawing a particular "character," we are also obliged to recognize the flip side of that: no matter what they leave out, no matter how they change or remove from context entirely - if the hamster doesn't say or do it, they won't have it to leave in.
Although it may be that Shea's footage is edited frame by frame in order to paint for us a portrait of a woman completely devoid of substance, if we assess the footage that she has given them to work with, we can come to no other conclusion that she is either a talented actress or that there really is no "there" there.
Internet personality aklein has called Emily "painful to watch." She has, aiklen remarks sadly, "emotional maturity of a 12 year old."
It's hard to come up with a credible rebuttal to that.
I am so not the appropriate person to defend any of these hamsters, but in fairness, there was a scene where Emily's Xtreme Cage Match Creepy dad was ragging on her about her hair, while Mama just sits there and says nothing, and there was something about it that looked like it was one of the more natural and effortless bits of footage we are likely to see on any reality show. I got the distinct feeling Emily heard that song with dismal regularity, just another number in CreepyDaddy's extensive repertoire of Pick on Emily showstoppers.
Whether Emily's dad is "for real" or not is a tough call. On the one hand, we have all known people with the misfortune of having parents like that. If it's a role and he is an actor, he has certainly "committed" to the character. He has it down, down to the teensiest creepy nuance.
This is probably born more of wishful thinking for Emily's sake than concrete perception, but a couple of times he has appeared to be mugging for the camera in an almost SpencerPrattian cartoon villain face mode.
I would be willing to bet that there is a connection between Emily's emotional development issues and having grown up with a father who considers his daughter having physically "matured too early" as a sort of inexpiable indiscretion, an unforgivable transgression for which he is still reprimanding her even as her thirtieth (or 30-something) birthday approaches.
Emily is presented to us as the classic damaged bird, her plumage dulled by a lifetime of stern reproaches for having ever had any plumage, without an ally, reviled in the nest which should have nurtured her, and which she now fears to leave, torn between what remaining shreds she has of natural, healthy instincts to go forth and be a person, pitted against the sheer terror of displeasing the father she has never, can never please, who has devoted himself to steadily and relentlessly breaking her down, convincing her that she is essentially incapable of personhood, and her female role model appears to conform to that ideal. Emily's mother is painted as a non-entity, an empty cipher who silently accepts Ogre Dad's condemnation of her daughter.
Her determination to move to Las Vegas may not be the shrewdest move, nor her aspirations of becoming a high profile broadcast journalist the best match for her aptitudes and abilities, but that she has enough "oomph" left into her to recognize and follow the self-preservation instinct to get the hell away from her toxic Daddy is a positive and hopeful sign.
Ironically, while it is Emily who dreams of becoming a TV star, it is Hadley the Flounderer who has the face for it, though she, too, appears to suffer from an extreme case of arrested emotional development, in some ways even more fundamental and deep-seated. So much so that if I were obliged to bet on which of the two would "succeed," in terms of growing into a whole and functional person, I would put my money on Emily.
The character of Hadley is as materially empty and vacuous as Shea, at least as she is presented to us, and as always with the understanding that she could be acting, playing a role that was assigned to her.
Lord, this show makes me preachy!
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