True Beauty: "The Stealing Challenge"
Matthew J. Brady
Summer seems to be the time to subject oneself to trashy reality TV, since there's little else on (how about that Lost-esque miniseries NBC has been promoting the hell out of? Or whatever crappy sitcoms TBS keeps vomiting onto the air?), but if I'm going to try to watch and possibly write about any of these, it might as well be the most schadenfreude-laden one I can find, right? After a decade of this shit being plastered all over the airwaves, the main "pleasure" to be obtained from any non-"heartwarming" (fix up the poor people's houses, help fat people stave off bloated death, etc.) iterations of the genre comes from seeing people make asses of themselves. That's the only explanation I can find for Tucker being fascinated with The Bad Girls' Club anyway. So, with this series, which is apparently spearheaded by dual-headed Banks/Kutcher monster Tyrash (although it's not indicated in the show itself, except perhaps in the credits), the premise is ostensibly to gather the typical all-surface reality-show mavens and then mock them for being pretty on the outside and a black hole of human decency within. Or so goes the claim, although the show seems just as interested in lusting after the beautiful people as any other. The group of ten young models/actors/obnoxious assholes are gathered in Las Vegas, told they are competing to be the "Face of Vegas", and all packed off to live in a hotel suite, while the ostensible hosts (the gratingly flamboyant, fish-lipped, dead-eyed Carson from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and some model who looks like a slightly older, and thus hideous and decrepit but also wise with age, version of all the female contestants) watch their antics in a "spy center" that consists of a bank of monitors displaying the views from a bunch of hidden cameras, along with the "real" host, another aging model who, in an apparent bit of reverse casting psychology due to her resemblance to Vanessa Williams, is apparently supposed to be an authority on morality or something.
But! While the vapid morons think they'll be competing in the typical reality show challenges, they'll secretly be tested in moral matters, always in the most obvious ways. The task this week is to create a "Vegas alter ego" for themselves, with $200 to spend on a costume. The morality comes into play when the "stylist" who helps each of them pick their outfit encourages them to steal an item that they couldn't afford. Predictably, some of them complied, and others didn't; after the first "will they or won't they?" moment, the whole thing got pretty boring, with the interest coming more from trying to discern why the actress playing the stylist pushed some harder than others to commit the crime, or the relative values of the potentially stolen items, which ranged from a hair clip to an entire spangled outfit.
The contestants then got all dressed up in their cliched personas (Elvis impersonator, slutty bride, Marilyn Monroe, pimp, etc.), which didn't seem all that different from their usual personalities, especially the ones who just wore something skin-exposing, and displayed themselves in plexiglass enclosures on a sidewalk, with pedestrians encouraged to "vote" for them by inserting novelty casino chips into the slot of their favorite zoo creature. This entire bit was cringe-inducing, as the morons begged for attention, the women bending over to display cleavage to leering men and the guys thrusting their crotches at any drunk middle-aged casino-goers, everyone whining all the while about not getting enough chips, somebody stealing one of their poses, or whatever other idiocy the editors can pass off as interpersonal intrigue. It seems to me that anyone with real "inner beauty" would refuse to participate in such a degrading activity, but obviously none of these assholes have a self-regulating bone in their bodies.
The winner ended up being the bitchy Liz, who is already shaping up to be the show's villain; her victory was attributed to the expensive outfit she stole. The two lowest-earning competitors, both guys who chose lame costumes (drag queen and lackadaisical Elvis) went on to be judged for elimination. This brings up the obvious question: for a show about "inner beauty", why are the people to be eliminated chosen via a contest consisting solely of a judgment of outer beauty? The judges try to justify it by saying that "true beauty" is a combination of the inside and the outside, so the winner has to be the "total package", which is a bunch of bullshit. They also get hung up on whether one of the two dorks "really wanted to be there", since he seemed to lose energy after a few minutes of a really bad Elvis impression; obviously, for them, drive to compete is a definite sign of upstanding character. The choice between the two should be simple, since of the douchebags stole something and the other didn't, but they still can't decide, so the host unveils another, secret challenge: as people were entering the boutique, an actress blocked the door pretending to be struggling with her dog's leash, which was tangled up in a sidewalk sign. One of the assholes took two seconds to help her out, while the other blew her off. So the question was, which was more morally reprehensible: theft, or refusal to aid a moron who can't walk down the street without assistance from strangers? The judges decided to send the thief home, but probably just because he was the slightly lamer of the two, an over-friendly (in a really forced, awkward way) idiot who chose to dress up as a drag queen for some reason. Hilariously, when the real host revealed herself to him, he seemed to have the same reaction as I did, having no idea who she was; Chris Hansen this lady ain't. And then, when they explained that he was really eliminated for being a criminal, he protested, saying that he really thought he should have been the Face of Vegas. This idiot didn't just lack inner beauty, he apparently lacked anything going on inside his cranium at all.
So, what the fuck is up with this show; is it worth spending any more time on? Obviously not, but I'll probably end up plopping myself down in front of the next episode, if only out of a sense of astonishment at the things these horrible, horrible people do with full knowledge that they are being observed at every moment, and a sense of amusement at the simplicity of the "morality" that the show pretends to promote while mostly ignoring it in favor of the usual vapid Hollywood emphasis on surface. It's loathing all around, for the contestants, producers (Tyraaaash!), and myself, for wasting time and mental energy on such nonsense. That's life in 21st-century America for you; see you next week.
Breaking Bad - "Half Measures"
Sean Witzke
Endgame time. Spoilers like a crazy thing.
Walt doesn't understand - "Plausible deniability" is something that Skyler doesn't understand. The shit she's pulling right off? It is almost impossible to like this character (or maybe its the actress?).
Jesse Pinkman moralizing about how these drug dealers use kids? Maybe not intentionally, but it recalls Wire season 5. Jesse and Walt discussing murder is what this series was made for. Walt talking down to Jesse when he tries to treat him as an equal, Jesse struggling to do the right thing. Jesse's season arc has been the extreme of what Walt is doing - slowly becoming the bad guy. The difference is that Jesse made a decision to do so he's down for selling drugs, being a murderer, stealing from his partner. Whatever he needs to do, he'll do it.
Saul and Walt plotting to fuck with Jesse's future - it's exactly the kind of thing that Walt would think is a good idea. Walt is all about delaying problems, putting them out of sight and out of mind. He's also about teaching lessons. The PI with the beard, him showing up and talking to Walt the way that no one has talked to him since Saul told him to put a dollar in his pocket. His lesson - no one learns anything, no one gets scared. He tells Walt to quit fucking around.
He also refers to Gus as "his boss, our boss". Which is unnerving, because now we know exactly where this guy's loyalties lie. When he and the quiet asshole from the factory in "Fly" show up and grab Jesse, and how slowly Jesse is marched toward Gus' trailer is awful. What happens next is Walt and Jesse both in the middle of a situation they have no control over. The PI sits enforcer-style, Walt sits alongside Gus, the two drug dealers along the side - Jesse is trapped. Jesse's "no more children" compromise feels like he got screwed, even after Gus tells him that Walt is the only reason he's not paste. This season is about Walt, Jesse, Hank, Saul, Gus being infantalized by the people around them and seeing how they react. Jesse being told to shake hands and play nice was maybe the worst of these scenes.
Marie giving Hank the hospital special from Crash in order to get him to leave? They play that so smart - him being emasculated and not at the same time. It's also an interesting dodge to see Hank's story move along without something emotionally or physically violent.
The thing that gets Jesse to backslide on his sobriety turns out to be the same thing that would cause anyone to - accidentally killing someone else by not acting. Jesse says he'll play nice and it gets the kid killed. Jesse's role in this show, especially towards the end of seasons - it's to get someone else killed. No wonder he's so far gone, this kind of shit happening twice would push someone to get high and go kill some competing drug dealers.
The last minute of the show is something that made me scream at my television in shock. It's the opposite of what happened last season, with Walt acting to save Jesse instead of letting something awful happen to him. With Walt shitting where he eats because he can't help but do it, and because the partnership between him and Jesse is quickly becoming the most important part of his life. Walt stops a Jesse/rival dealers gunfight by plowing his fucking Pontiac Aztec over the two of them and then shooting them both in the head at point blank. Walt is ready to fuck with Gus - who knows his family better than anything - in order to keep Jesse alive. The byline that sold the series - Mr. Chips turns into Scarface, and Vince Gilligan's assertion that the show will run 4 or 5 seasons - it's starting to be clear how that's going to happen.
It starts when Walt tells Jesse: "Run".
Hell's Kitchen - "15 Chefs Compete"
Tucker Stone
Nothing interesting happened on the episode. Well, that's not totally accurate. Two people left, and one of them was the crazy ass farmer-who-kills-his-own. He walked out after Gordon looked him in the eye and said "You're a fucking joke." That's a pretty big loss, as it leaves behind the exact same bunch of Type A shitheads that you've seen a billion times before, even if you've only watched five minutes of a reality competition show through cheesecloth while listening to the Yellow Swans. That farmer was special. He was aggressively full stop weird, a gnarly combination of clean cut Americana redneck with an upper class no contractions kind of serial killer sociopathy. You could see him coming back and spree-killing anybody wearing green shoes just as easily as you could see him asking a diner "for this dance" even though there's no music playing. He'll be missed.
The other guy that got sent home didn't have the same kind of special, although Lord knows he tried, like he's been trying all his life. Packing the sort of oblique abdominal that advertise regular gym trips, coated in a sea of tattoos (including a regretfully chosen Hell's Kitchen television show logo) and crowned with one of those Mohawks that just screams I'm Trying Really Hard To Appear As If Non-Conformity Comes Naturally To Me, "Mikey" was a genuinely nice guy, mostly because television producers still think its an expectation-bucker when they cast tattooed wanna-be punks who are, in an ironic twist of fate!, actually polite non-alcoholic nerds with superb personal hygiene. He was a shitty cook in some ways, and he'll always remain in our hearts, because he tattooed the logo for a reality show on his body. Enjoy freaking out all the squares, buddy. You'll go un-missed.
The only other thing that seemed noteworthy about the episode was the opening credits, which I missed last week out of not knowing the show had a new season. In the credits, our poor farmer gets stabbed in the right buttocks by a tiny chef flying by way of batwings, the Italian guy does something so stereotypically Italian with his hands and face (whassamatter? i don't-not-know-a!) that you wonder if they'd make an Asian contestant whiteboard up a math equation, and then Autumn (the girl who last week proudly said "I'm the bitch!") is depicted with a devil on her shoulder...but no angel, you get it? Because she's a BITCH. She's going to FUCK EVERYBODY OVER. Which she seems to be doing, yes, but it would be a lot more fun if the producers weren't so blatantly in it.
-Matthew J. Brady, Sean Witzke, Tucker Stone, 2010
Why am I the first to comment on this? I don't even have anything worthwhile to say, I don't watch television anymore...
Reality shows and Gordon fucking Ramsey?
Posted by: AComment | 2010.06.10 at 06:27
MJB - Niiiiice uses of "Tyrash." My favorite part of last year's True Beauty was that at the end of every episode they'd have some sort of weak test that the two up for elimination had to complete without knowing they were being tested. One week it was literally picking up a piece of garbage. The next week it was helping a lost little girl find her mom. But here's the thing: these things always happened on the EXACT SAME corner in Hollywood.
Also, if I walked around NYC doing all of the good samaritan shit they promote on that show, I would never make it out of my neighborhood. Plus, I would have stolen that shit in a heartbeat.
TS - I'm pretty sure that Autumn was also the lead chick in Ninja Assassin.
Posted by: Marty | 2010.06.10 at 09:03