Television Of The Weak: Special One Show Only Edition

The Bad Girls Club "Off The Wall"

The Bad Girls Club has no narration opening the show, it merely begins. Animated paper dolls smoking, drinking, a song, and you're off. Being the first episode, it introduces the cast & the house.

The House: The house is similar to the mansion from the previous year, it may in fact be the exact same house. The walls of the gigantic entry way are decorated with expensive shoes resting on Ikea shelving, there is a faux fur lining the banisters, one room has a stripper pole, another has indoor swings, also decorated in faux fur. There is a small confessional room, where the girls will sit throughout the season, often for the purposes of smacktalking their fellow roommates. As in previous seasons, the limited amount of bedrooms will force the girls to bunk together, while the backyard pool and jacuzzi area will be a second home for the girls, as Bad Girls Club castmembers are usually smokers. The show is set in some proximity to Los Angeles, although it's never been clear exactly where the house is. The limousine service provided for the Girls remains, as does a freely available quantity of alcohol.

Alcohol, the house, limo service to the club. There is no other point to the Bad Girls Club.

Kendra:

  

Kendra's from North Carolina, and while she is depicted as if she is the first girl to arrive, this is merely a production trick. Kendra figures this out herself, after seeing various bags and open liquor bottles laying around the house. She then finds the "poster" room, a place where multiple Warhol-esque portraits of the cast members are hung on the wall. There are white dialog balloons on the portraits, and Kendra sees that someone--another castmate, she rightly assumes--has written "Too Black" next to her face. At this point, it is revealed that the dialog balloons are made of a dry-erase material. She is upset that someone who she hasn't met would write that. After seeing the fur covered banisters, she excitedly refers to the house as "classy." In her self-produced audition tape, there is a close-up shot of a tiara.

Amber: 

From West Virginia, Amber's audition tape shows an aggressive brunette, raucously proclaiming her love for her imported mid-grade sedan. She explains that she loves attention and drinking, as well as being loud. When she enters the house, she has dirty blond hair and immediately requests alcohol after a cursory meeting with Kendra, who later questions Amber's status as "a bad girl" in a private confession. Kendra shows Amber the poster room, where Amber finds that her teeth have been drawn on in an unattractive fashion. The girls agree that this sort of graffiti is unacceptable, and they ponder where the responsible parties might be.

At this point, the show "rewinds", returning to earlier in the day, and we are introduced to Annie & Natalie.

Annie:

 

Upon opening the front door, Annie yells "Hello? Anybody here--SHOES!" (A few minutes later, Annie's voice and vocal pattern will be negatively described as being like that of a "second-grade teacher", and there's some accuracy to that.) In her first confessional, Annie describes how she "loves plastic surgery", and then her laundry list of favorite procedures is smash cut into a speedy monologue. Breast implants, botox, liposuction, tucks, etc. She is in her early 20's. "A little is good, but a lot is better. I don't know where to stop." She runs around the house, jumping on various beds and couches, given the viewer their first taste of another Bad Girls Club tradition, the blurring of exposed genitalia. Then, another confessional: "You know those Facebook quizzes about what Disney character you are? I'm always the villain."

Natalie:

From Oakland, California, Natalie will serve as this episode's primary antagonist, and her arrival at the house is the true beginning of the season. Drinking copiously in the limousine, with liquor spilling on her pants and out of her mouth, she spits out the standard monologue about her credentials as a Bad Girl, how "hard" she is, and we hear the first mention of her catchphrase: "I run LA. This is my town." When she meets Annie, her third sentence is "you're annoying, you'll have to change that around me." Upon finding the poster room, she writes "lame bitch", "too black", "big NOSE", "two kids" and various other insults on all of the posters. Annie writes "yay for today" on her own, to which Natalie responds, "That's really annoying." Natalie refers to her racial heritage with a list of various countries, a sneering "Ain't scared", and writes "Rock Star!!!" on her own poster. The two girls begin drinking, and Natalie orders Annie to be her roommate. (In a later confessional, Annie makes it clear that she dislikes Natalie immediately and therefore has no interest in being her roommate.)

The show then fastforwards, returning to the moments following Amber and Kendra's arrival at the house.

Katie/Kate: 

 

As Katie arrives at the house, Kendra asks Amber where she is from. When Amber responds that she hails from West Virginia (the Fightin' 35th), Kendra cockily asks her is she has ever even met a black person before. Amber's immediate response, "My boyfriend's black.", comes graced with a sneer.

The first thing that Katie says: "I lost my virginity in my church. Just looked up after I was done and saw Jesus Christ looking at me." [Giggles] "Would you ever get a speeding ticket if you had these?" [Squeezes her breasts, leaning into the camera.] "I need attention all the time. Male attention. It feeds my ego."

"I'm in therapy for it."

Amidst the squeals and heavy petting that accompany the arrival of a new roommate, the producers cut to Amber's confessional, where she expounds on one of her requirements for friendship, specifically that she has no friends with fake hair or breasts. The irony of her cheap bleach job seems lost on her, but introductory judgments are not the purview of this writer. Kate eventually explains the beginning of her relationship with her current boyfriend--they met at a strip club called The Golden Banana, and Kate brusquely explains their current status by saying that she has never NOT cheated on a boyfriend.

Returning to earlier in the day, Natalie questions why Annie hasn't eaten anything yet, arguing for the beauty of a plump ass. Annie responds by saying, "I like skinny girls. I wanna be like Mary Kate, or whichever one the anorexic one was." Following this remark is, there is the possible hint that there is a certain depth of thought concealed under Natalie's aggressive manner. When Annie responds to Natalie's oddly delivered question regarding reading preference by saying "I like books that have pink covers", Natalie's face falls for a brief second before screwing back up into a contempful mask. She tells Annie that she's being "annoying" again, but for a second, something else was there, something that was soon to make a reappearance.

Portia: 

 

Filling the difficult and uncomfortable-to-watch role of the Aggressive African American Woman Who Refers To Herself As Ghetto Constantly, Portia's initial entrance comes replete with stereotypical claims of being "hard", "having a short fuse" and promising that "I don't want to fight no more", Portia ends up behaving as a quiet placeholder for the remainder of the episode, excepting a later imitation of argument. Part of Portia's calmness stems from the introduction of Flornia.

Flornia: 

While she's introduced with the age of 26, Flornia appears to be at least 35. A bisexual woman from Staten Island with a bit of an overbearing personality, her immediate attempts to befriend the girls comes across a bit forced, with Amber turning to Kendra and curtly criticizing Flornia's looks. Amber also reveals a bit of homophobia, claiming that she's a bit grossed out by Flornia's bisexuality. When Kendra admits to making out with girls, Amber rolls her eyes and says "I kiss girls too, but I don't want them licking my cooter." Flornia and Portia bond almost immediately, the two laughing and tossing back and forth the various forms of punishment they will dispense after they see the graffiti on their pictures. At multiple points during the episode, they are seen having quiet conversations in the background, none of which were interesting or offensive enough to be depicted on camera.

And that's all of them. The five at the house--Flornia, Portia, Kendra, Amber & Katie--begin drinking and exploring the residence. After picking out roommmates and bedrooms, they adjourn to the back patio, and Amber shows off her breasts, bringing the blurred nudity count of the episode to six. (Annie's short dress is responsible for what will ultimately be seven out of a total of eight blur moments.)

Earlier in the day, Annie is being coerced, threatened and basically manhandled by Natalie, who has decided that the two should be roommates. In an aside, Natalie claims that Annie is weak and "easy to push around", and Natalie would rather have her for a roommate than someone who will challenge her authority. In her own confessional, Annie admits she has grown desperate for other roommates to arrive, and her fear/weariness with Natalie is obvious. However, when Natalie opens the door to Annie's confessional and forcibly drags her out of the room and towards the door, Annie merely ejects lame disagreements, acquiescing to Natalie's decision to "hit the clubs." The two leave the residence, and if the times of day the show's producers write on the screen are true, they left only minutes before the arrival of Kendra.

Having caught up with each other, the two narrative threads become one. At the house, Flornia asks the girls what kind of family everybody has, and her ulterior motive becomes obvious--after going around the circle, Flornia points out that none of the five girls have any real relationship with their fathers. It's a disturbing moment, one that carries with it a thread of sociological criticism that the show is incapable of fully exploring.

So they just keep drinking.

 
Annie and Natalie are attempting to do the same, but have run into a bit of difficulty, as Natalie has left her ID back at the house. After getting kicked out of a bar for throwing Red Bull onto someone who had spilled a bit of their drink on (or possibly just near) her, the two leave to find another hang out. Although Natalie claims "I run LA, Everybody knows me here", that doesn't seem to pan out, and Annie has resigned herself to a night of boredom. The two roam from bar to bar. In the middle of this occurs the conversation that has already achieved a bit of notoriety for Natalie.

Natalie: I can get us into Hyde. Chris Brown is at Hyde. Do you like Chris Brown?

Annie: No.

Natalie: What! WHY!

Annie: He beat up his girlfriend. Why would I like Chris--

Natalie: WHO CARES! cuz she was a punk bitch! Rihanna is crazy!

The conversation ends there, and the girls end up going to Area instead. Using a rather deft license switch, the two fool the doorman into letting Natalie into the club. (Notably, there seems to be no use of name-dropping, the line isn't very long, and the doorman seems to only care that the patrons are of-age.) Natalie eventually gets a private room at Area, and while cynicism is unneccessary when viewing the Bad Girls Club, it seems unlikely that this is due to Natalie's control over Los Angeles, and more likely because of the television cameras. They call the mansion, where it's revealed that the Bad Girls Club now have a gigantic pink pay phone covered in Bad Girls iconography, and Natalie "orders" the other castmembers to come join them. Amber hangs up the phone while Natalie is talking, just to make it clear how little she likes being ordered around. Then the girls pile into the limo to go meet Natalie and Annie.

There's a tiny moment of truth here, and it may not have even happened, but I think I saw it, and it makes sense. It's the moment when the door to the backroom at Area first opens, when Amber and the rest of the five enter the backroom--they're loud, they're aggressive. Natalie has this look on her face, a look that lasts maybe a half-second. It's the same look of regret, of sadness, that she had when Annie said she only likes books with pink covers. It's as if she realized that this is the spectacle she is a part of, that this is the spectacle that her behavior (the graffiti) created, and it's just finally clicked that this is the life she has chosen, the role she has created. It doesn't last long, and it's debatable whether it's there it all, or if I'm just hoping that there's something buried underneath all this degradation, something human, something identifiable, something that isn't broken quite yet.

All of the girls yell at Natalie, Annie catches a little herself, but the arriving five grasp almost immediately that it's Natalie that they hate, Natalie that they have to punish. Annie just shuts down, hiding in plain sight. In the midst of the yelling, during a moment of brief silence where they all take a breath, Katie's voice rises out above the clamor.

"Boys are awesome!"

Like that, the fight is over. They all agree, the breach is cleared, and they exit the backroom, in search of love, in search of fun, in search. Of boys.

And as they walk out of the back room, some random girl tries to yank Portia's hair out. The cameras go into street fight mode, the bouncers swarm the dance floor, there's a maze of fists and slaps, pulled hair, and the Bad Girls are ejected from Area, and they agree that they should continue the party back at the mansion.

Riding back to the house, "We Run LA" plays over a montage of Los Angeles street scenes. The girls split into various teams--Flornia is in the back with Portia, chain smoking, Amber has drunkenly manipulated Natalie into carrying her suitcases upstairs. Annie and Katie have bonded, mostly over various eating disorders and the proven qualities of pharmaceutical medications and vomiting. Kendra wanders around the house, looking for trouble, eventually settling on attacking Portia's claim over Annie's bed, to the surprise of Portia. The two girls scream at each other, threaten one another, and then both are shown in confessionals expressing a general sense of play regarding their behavior. Testing one another, nothing else. The argument ends in a technical win for Portia, as Kendra doesn't actually care enough about Annie to take a stand for the girl's bedroom claims, and Annie seems to have decided to accept that she's stuck rooming with Natalie, whether she likes it or not. When Natalie returns to the room to discover Annie talking to Katie about how much she ate that day--"five pretzels, four chips, some pills"--Natalie begins yelling at Annie about "talking about that fucking shit", and the noise drags a falling down drunk Amber onto the scene. 

The two girls--Natalie and Amber--go from room to room, with Amber doing her best to instigate a fistfight, screaming "hit me, hit me hit me hit me hit me hit me", putting her hands up and preventing Natalie from entering the room, so on and so forth. Natalie calls Amber "the weakest link" a bunch of times, in reference to a game show that hasn't aired a new episode since 2003.

Cut back to Annie and Katie. Annie turns to Katie and says "really, i could've just said like, Hitler is good, and it would've caused a fight." Katie nods, along with the viewing audience. Besides the drinking, this is the show. These are the girls. This is who you cast if you want a fight to go down.

It ends there, with Amber calmed down by Kendra, with Natalie trying to scream her point of view into the faces of a bored Flornia & Portia. There's nothing more to say, so the producers play a 90 second clip of the upcoming season, which will include a fight on an asphalt driveway, a fight with a picture frame, a fight in a club, a fistfight in a limousine, and all the other sorts of things that this show is known for.

(Which is really just fighting and drinking.)

Comments

[seth hurley]

Like The Economist, it really does deserve it's own post.

the holidays are here.

[Duncan]

While I always enjoy write-ups of The Bad Girls' Club, a show I have never watched on TV (I don't know if I can get it/stealing it might be time-consuming,) by far the most on TVotW, this really did feel special. Sociological and shit.

I mean - I guess you choose sides, and they largely do read like hilarious grotesques and monsters, the women. The WIMMUn. It's like Dark Reign: The List: X-Men; but this was quite sympathetic and affecting, really.

[Matthew J. Brady]

Flornia. Flornia? Is it possible that that is actually her name, and not some bizarre stripper affectation? Of all the mind-boggling things described in this post, for some reason I find that to be the most unbelievable.

I'm sort of glad to see write-ups of this show return, but I'm also dreading the revulsion of humanity that it will provoke. Even so, it's obviously compelling, in an unbelievable, can't-look-away, train-wreck way. I don't dare ever trying to actually watch it, or I'll be hooked, like a junkie, on something obviously bad for me but impossible to quit.

[Matthew]

Yeah, this is total train wreck watching. Reading. Whatever. I cannot believe these people have a tv show.

Are there any more economist vs idiot posts coming? I missed those. It'd make me feel better to read this if I read something "smart" too.

[Sean Witzke]

Man, I know I'm late reading this, but if you stopped doing these forever I'd lock myself in the bathroom and cry a little.

[Capri]

Natalie was the flyiest bitch in that house. She was the same all day everyday,a real bitch! And she got everything popn,she's the real bad girl.

Kendra was the prettiest girl in the house but she was dry didnt have enough flavor until, of course, she teamed up with Natalie.

Flo was pretty to but way too emotional for me. I dont think she was a bad girl just your tipical tomboy chick.

Kate was a flyy bitch she Rocks!

All the other girls were extra and just added to the enterteinment of the girls above..lol

oh wait! Annie she was a real bad girl. She played the innocent, geeky role the whole time but was sooo sneaky, thats a real bad girl..
Bad Girls Neva get caught!