Trash Talking the TV

Somewhere I heard that when you're low on certain vitamins and nutrients, you crave the food that has the ones you need. Well I don't know what vitamin deficiency leads to an irresistible urge to watch trash tv, but I have it. Probably to make up for the fact that The Bachelor is over. Oh, Jake, I believed you might be a normal human being who simply made the regrettable decision to go on national tv not once, but twice. Then you chose fellow attention-whore Vienna and Dancing With the Stars. One of those life choices I might have been willing to overlook. But both? Combined with your previous track record? No, good sir, that I will not abide.

Ok, fine, I still like you. Just...keep your shirt off to remind me of that fact.

Really, I'm not actually all that invested. I get involved in tv shows, especially reality tv shows, the same way most people get into drugs. That is, I watch them as a social activity and probably wouldn't do so if other people weren't involved. There are not many shows that I watch by myself. Even if I'm the only one in the household watching a particular show, I have a friend somewhere else that I discuss it with later. I need feedback in order to make it real. I have no idea what that says about me, so feel free to play internet psychologist.

Proving just how trashy the Bachelor was, I have indulged myself twice this week with shows that normally would not catch my interest. First it was the E! show "Pretty Wild", a show revolving around 3 teenage girls and their former Playboy mother. I have no idea what the premise for this show was supposed to be originally. I'm not sure E! knew either - they were just following the formula of hot girls + cameras + ? = profit. After the pilot episode, that ? has a myriad of options for this particular show. Irresponsible fame-whoring mother, underage drinking, criminal charges. I read somewhere that E! was basically hoping that this would be a wilder, less responsible version of the family dynamic in "Keeping Up with the Kardashians".

"That's right, by comparison, we're 'responsible'."

Woah. When the Kardashians are the classy version, you know this is going to be trouble. Let's start from the top of the problem pyramid and work our way down. The mother. Oh lordy, the mother. A former Playboy bunny and lingerie model, the mother wants the same classy lifestyle for her daughters. In the pilot she is shown doling out Ritalin to the girls due to their ADHD diagnosis somewhere along the line, doing a roll-call for the pills not unlike every mental asylum movie I've seen. It gets better, though. She home-schools them. Maybe she's hiding a doctorate education in her ditzy act (after all, "Girls Next Door" Bridget has a Masters in Communication), but I have a feeling those girls can only do fractions because their drug dealer taught them. It still gets better. She teaches them lessons based on The Secret. Seriously. The little bit of their "schooling" that they show has her handing them piles of magazines and asking them to make a photo collage of responsible role-models, representing the people that they look up to in their lives. Angelina Jolie is a popular choice for the girls, mostly due to her hot husband.

The Secret is that we have daddy issues.

Maybe I'm being too harsh about the school and they just edited it to look scary. After all, the two older girls are somewhere around 18 at the time of filming, so maybe the others have already graduated and are just doing this as a bonus. The youngest girl, Gabby, 15 at time of filming, is the most responsible of the three. By far, if editing is to be believed, since she seems to not party or drink and cleans up after everyone else in the house. The oldest, Tess, actually isn't related to the other two at all. It's kind of bewildering really, especially given the fact that it's completely implied that the three girls are sisters and being "raised" and "disciplined" by the mother. But Tess is actually unrelated to everyone in the house - the girls, the mother, the rarely seen step-father and absent biological father. So while at first it seemed kind of crazy that Tess stayed out all night and walked into The Secret home-school totally hungover (getting a weak reaction from the mother figure in the situation), when you realize she's over 18 and lives there voluntarily, it's a bit different. Plus she's already done some Playboy modeling of her own. It's entirely possible that the explanation for all of this was left on the cutting room floor as a result of the drama that took place just 3 days into the filming of the series. Hence the reason I said that it is hard to tell what E! originally had planned for the show. Three or four days into filming, the LAPD knocked on the door with a search warrant based on their suspicions that the third daughter, Alexis, was holding property that was stolen as a part of the celebrity burglaries happening at the time, lamely entitled The Bling Ring. Alexis gets arrested as a result. The cameras kept rolling, the cases are still pending, so I imagine now a large part of the show will focus on the fall-out from that.

As if that weren't enough, as a result of this little piece on one of my fave sites meant I had to track down a new CW reality show called "High Society". I was sucked in by the promise of some woman being racist and homophobic and awful, and she delivered just as that article said she would. It should be noted that immediately after saying that she used the n-word regularly and didn't have many friends that weren't skinny and white just like her, she said that she wanted to work at the UN someday. I'm still digesting that tidbit. Was that a joke? Is the leathery face preventing me from reading sarcasm in her facial cues? I just don't know.

"The United Nations is a fashion house, right?"

I expected that to be the be-all and end-all of the episode, but the show has some real scene-stealers in it. Allegedly, the focus is on Tinsley Mortimer, a New York socialite recently divorced from Topper Mortimer. Although not poor prior to the marriage, it seems Tinsley didn't become a socialite until she married into the Mortimers (an old money family with interesting genealogical connections like the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay). Apparently she enjoyed the parties and the fashion shows whereas the Mortimer family disdained press, resulting in bad juju in her marriage. Actual high society old-money families don't generally attention-whore. There was a subdued murmur to that effect when NYC Prep came out, claiming to be the real world Gossip Girl, with people criticizing the people who appeared on that show as being the bottom of the prep-school barrel. Not a bad barrel to be on the bottom of, but apparently the real rich and fabulous think seeking out bad press via reality shows is tres trashy.

Anyway, Tinsley is kind of boring. She designs handbags (like every single no-talent socialite you've ever heard about). Her mom really wants her to make it work with the ex and is horrified that she is moving from her fab Upper Eastside place to scary Midtown. Mom also disapproves of the latest boyfriend, a ridiculously tall German Prince of some sort. So blah blah blah on Tinsley. But her friends include the Crazy Racist Chick who looks like she's lived a hard life already as well as CRC's sworn enemy, Paul Johnson Calderon, aka PJC. He's fabulously gay, but based on some of his behavior, I would guess he is not really fabulously wealthy. But he is a genuine scene-stealer, and I want him in every moment of this show. Luckily, he's a bit of a klepto, so scene-stealing seems to be on the menu if this show continues.

"Admit it, I'm stealing your heart right now, aren't I?"

Just in this episode he makes out with a very hot model, throws a can of PBR out of his limo, throws a tumbler of whiskey into someone's eye, evades the police called to the club as a result of said whiskey incident, and demonstrates how far he can pull wool over his mother's eyes. I find the last one the most interesting. His mother comes to the city to visit him, and she interviews that she thinks the two stints he spent in rehab really taught her son his lesson and that he probably only has one drink when he goes out now and is looking for a serious relationship. Cut to clips from the previous night of PJC getting trashed and making out with a random guy at a party. I wish we could have like, picture in picture of her watching this episode. Especially as we get to the next part, where he asks her for $50,000 from his trust fund so that he can get his own apartment. I'm a little unclear as to where he's living now, but, whatever, it's not like I want this show to be an hour long just so we can learn mundane things like the fact that he has a roommate or something. She chastises him blowing through $200k of his trust already and says she'll have to think about it. That is indication #1 that PJC is not as rich as he seems (I don't count the stealing incidents because that can indicate something more than just needing money). I mean, based on drink prices alone, I don't think $200k is all that impressive to go through. We're not given the amount of time, but anyway, whatever. The fact that his mother and he are treating those numbers like big numbers tells me that they're not all that rich. That may be a lot of money to me, but it shouldn't be to them. I just watched "Selling New York" last night on HGTV, and those people didn't even bother haggling over a 2.3 million price tag, they just paid it and moved in, netting their realtor a one-time paycheck about four times the median NYC annual salary. (Further reading reveals that they may not have paid the full price, so who knows. You mean reality tv isn't real?!? Say it ain't so! Either way, PJC isn't going to be doing a cross-over episodes for that series.)

When PJC's deluded mother agrees to give him half the amount he asks, he immediately rents a luxury hotel suite and calls up his friends to help him spend his hard-earned cash. He has a bubble bath drawn and champagne popped while a personal shopper brings him a couple racks of clothing to browse. Then of course they go out on the town and he buys rounds of drinks for his friends and shots for random hot guys in the vicinity. I'm worn out just thinking about what a hectic day he must have had.

Next up on the blog front - I'm in the process of two different reading groups with my friend Linda, so I'm thinking I might write up some thoughts on those. That's assuming I can get myself to sit still for a couple of hours and read. I'm a fast reader, but not when I'm actually trying to remember what I've read and think about it. Then I have to stop and make notes and high-light and look things up, etc etc. I'm a few chapters into Moby Dick, but I need to move it along if I want to be able to take part in any meaningful discussions. That's right, from trash tv to Moby Dick. Diversity, that's how I roll.