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#Richkids of Beverly Hills is #Painfultowatch

#Richkids of Beverly Hills: Sundays at 10 Eastern on E!

Over the last six or so weeks, between the holiday gap and a smorgasbord of new scripted series, I managed to get a nice break from the reality genre. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. With only a handful of scripted series left to debut before the Olympics create a second mini-break in the middle of the season (including the very hyped Rake later this week), it’s time to look back over to cable, where inexpensive reality shows typically rule the roost. Tonight, it’s E!’s turn to bring us to the relative warmth of Southern California with it’s newest series: #Richkids of Beverly Hills.

#Richkids of Beverly Hills (from herein being referred to as #Richkids) follows five twenty-somethings, all of whom are the children of multimillionaires or billionaires. There’s Johnny, the aspiring musician, interior designer Roxy, grounded real estate magnate Brendan, party animal Dorothy, and Morgan, a follower of the most noble of pursuits (that would be internet writing for those of you keeping track at home). Together, the five shop, party, and try to achieve their wildest dreams in the California sun.

#Richkids of Beverly Hills is the emptiest show I have ever had to watch. It is vapid, self-important, completely inarticulate, and plays to every bad stereotype imaginable, whether it’s obnoxious legacy kids, ditzy blondes, or the entire millenial generation (get used to language I’ve only heard in those Sprint commercials with James Earl Jones and Malcolm McDowell, because it’s omnipresent throughout the hour). Many of the key problems come from the shallowness of our principal cast: we’re led to believe the show focuses on five main rich kids, but the show seems to revolve around the two least interesting of the five: the shopping and party obsessed duo of Dorothy and Morgan.

Normally, this shallowness has been played off for comedy in the past, whether being sent off on adventures (The Surreal Life) or fish out of water situation (The Simple Life), but #Richkids doubles down on this audacity by not really providing much in the way of action, instead settling for tepid drama (our premiere focuses entirely on a spat between Johnny and Dorothy over a BLOOD DRIVE). Even worse are Morgan’s attempts at manufacturing drama, which seem to either go nowhere (an attempt at making Brendan pay for some pretty decent life advice backfires horrendously), or are incredibly petty (mostly built around being obnoxious to anyone placed in a role of authority in a manner basically the same as that of a petulant teen).

So without any real plot or even likable characters, is it possible that the show could work as one large lifestyle piece showing off where the obscenely rich go out to play? Sadly, that is also a negative, as the show tends to focus on the mundane, whether it is small sangria gatherings, wasting screen time on Dorothy and Morgan taking selfies, or watching people agonize over donating blood. Even when the show does go to exclusive places, such as a high-end party or down rodeo drive, we glean little from it, as the show places the entirety of it’s focus on the self-centered cast.

The Final Verdict: Vain, vapid, and worst of all boring, #Richkids of Beverly Hills fails horrendously by trying to create a cult of personality around people whom are neither charismatic nor interesting. The end result is a show that doesn’t have a logical audience: The people who would watch Simple Life to laugh at Paris and Nicole won’t glean humor, and the people who would Jersey Shore to watch the cast raise hell will bored to tears by the tepidness of the show’s drama. Skip this one at all costs, there’s a decent size chunk of me that’s wishing I did.

The Drama Queen is Surprisingly Low-Key

by Michael Tyminski

The Drama Queen: Sunday Nights at 11 Eastern on E!

In the recent past, we’ve seen the reality genre do everything possible to remove the wires behind their machinations (and how well the producers manage to do so has become one of the key areas in which I tend to grade reality TV). We rarely, as a result, see the kingmakers, the people behind the people whom guide their clients to success. E!’s newest reality show, however, is banking on the notion that people are interested in the business of star-making by shining the spotlight on the process with it’s newest reality show.

The Drama Queen follows the life of celebrity manager Marki Costello (granddaughter of Lou Costello of “Who’s on First?” fame) as she tries to bring her celebrity clientele to new heights of fame. This means not only elevating her clients careers, but also to help develop the brands that will give them the boost they need in a busy Hollywood climate. We also get to meet her family, including her boyfriend Tommy and her two kids whom she tries to make time for in between her heavy work-related demands.

Since I brought it up, the first thing I noticed with the show is that it hides it’s machinery extremely well. Marki seems to have a very heavy amount of agency in the major plot drivers of the show, to the extent that any producer meddling seems fairly seamless. Furthermore, the genuineness of everyone’s reactions seems to also indicate a lighter hand behind the camera than what I’ve been accustomed to seeing lately, including some very adept plot juggling that touches on both two main plots as well as setting up some smaller side-stories.

The Drama Queen also benefits from Marki being the near perfect centerpiece for a show like this. While the show opens and reinforces the brash super-agent stereotype (her reactions to the open talent search are priceless), there also seems to be enough humanity in her that even at her most tyrannical she remains likeable. This striking contrast becomes even clearer when set against the backdrop of her incredibly (and annoyingly) catty support staff at CMEG.

While The Drama Queen is a fairly strong reality show, it also has some clear flaws. The first half hour has a tendency to feel a little repetitive at times (there are limits to the number of times that one can bang home variants on the term “head b***h in charge”), which is hopefully just an issue that occurred as a function of trying to establish Marki’s personality. However, what feels horrendously off is the lighting in the talking head segments which seems to age everyone who happens to step in front of that camera a solid ten years.

The Final Verdict: The Drama Queen feels mildly ill-fitting as this show’s title as in lieu of hysterics we get a surprisingly well grounded workplace show about star making and star marketing. While I could see E! trying to make this show splashier (i’m guessing that’s what all the intra-office awkward sex banter is for), I kinda hope it sticks to it’s main premise of one woman vs. Hollywood. Check this one out, particularly if show business piques your interest.

Take Reality and Wrestling, Add Soap And You Get Total Divas

by Michael Tyminski

Total Divas: Sundays at 10 p.m. Eastern on E!

One of the more intriguing stories in entertainment over the past decade has been WWE chairman Vince McMahon’s attempt to move from undisputed king of pro wrestling into other media outlets. While many of these moves have not ended particularly well for the company (with the XFL being the most notable failure) McMahon has not stopped trying to put some diversity into the E (for Entertainment) of his flagship company. Sunday night, he partnered with a different E! (the network) in a much smaller jump that could help build some credibility for his non-wrestling ventures.

Total Divas is a reality-style (it’s tied to pro wrestling, so I’m willing to take a wild guess and say the majority of it is likely scripted) show following the lives of it’s women’s division, also referred to as the Divas division. Headlining the show are the Bella Twins (Brie and Nikki), whose on-screen characters often have them being catty and manipulative. However, in real life they each date one half of this Summerslam’s main event in WWE poster child John Cena and former indy sensation Daniel Bryan. Also heavily featured are Natalya Neidhart (daughter of Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart) and tag team the Funkadelics (Ariane and Trinity, who also double as valets to male tag team “Tons of Funk”).

Our opening episode touches on a lot of areas. Our first main plot involves the run-up to Wrestlemania, where the Bellas and Funkadactyls are slated to face off in eight person tag action. However, we also focus on the relationship sub-thread, after Cena buys Nikki a Range Rover well before he buys her a ring, making Nikki insecure about the future of their relationship. A storyline plot line sets up Natalya with two new Divas, Eva Marie and JoJo Offerman, leading them around the town and mentoring them while dealing with the disappointment of not having a match at the big show.

On a positive front, the show is incredibly well produced, full of slick production work and well designed video packages. These packages are a key part of an exposition heavy full segment, as the show has to introduce two new divas to the audience, but also focusing on giving sufficient backstory to the Funkadactyls, whom do not typically see a ton of TV time (the Divas usually only see about one to one and a half segments of a 3 hour episode of RAW), while ensuring that Natty and the Bellas are properly introduced to an E! target audience that probably runs scared from sports entertainment. That being said, I was quite irked by the fact that they couldn’t be bothered to refer to Jim Neidhart as anything other than “Natalya’s Dad” when they introduce Natalya by bringing up the fact that she comes from a strong wrestling pedigree.

That being said, the show tends to have a little bit of an identity conflict. On one hand, it seems like half of the time the various Diva’s are acting in character, but then the other half of the time you peel back to see the person inside in a more human and fourth wall shattering manner than your average reality show. The end result is some degree of muddying of our characters, which seems disorienting for someone who follows WWE’s other products, and has to be even more confusing for someone who doesn’t follow the product. This is made even worse by the fact that they tend to flip pretty regularly between stage names and real identities of almost every character on the show (most notably Ariane and Trinity, whom for the longest time have gone by Cam’ron and Naomi on WWE TV respectively) with minimal rhyme or reason.

The show seems to shine most in those moments where it lets the Divas be more honest. As wildly entertaining as it is to see Brie and Nikki get stuck performing their arrogant, alpha female shtick in other settings, it seems like we truly get to know Nikki best when she’s being both optimistic but also a little preoccupied about her relationship with Cena. Similarly, the Funkadactyls arc (which gets wrapped up a little bit too abruptly) ends up becoming the strongest line in the episode due to how much less scripted it feels as the two close friends get into a heated discussion over a mishap backstage, both being equally justified over the situation.

The Final Verdict: Total Divas does not totally commit to any of the roads it could have taken. On one hand, the show could have easily been scripted to excess and played out the way the first quarter of the show did: as a weekly hour-long pro WWE puff piece. On the other hand they could have just as easily taken the opportunity to pull back the curtain and learn more about the people that inhabit the characters. Instead, we got a little of both, creating an uneven, if fairly unoffensive hour of reality-ish television with a little bit of soap opera thrown in for good measure. It’s actually pretty funny that the show possesses as many shades of gray as it does, because the WWE has been avoiding such dynamics in it’s actual wrestling programming. It’s the sort of show that I would wait-and-see on, since the ratio of over-packaged and rehearsed to natural really will affect how entertaining the show becomes.

The Soup Investigates is a Worthy Spin-Off

by Michael Tyminski

The Soup Investigates: Wednesday’s at 10:30 p.m. Eastern on E! TV

Believe it or not, there was a time when E! TV was defined by something other than the Kardashians. In this time, their entertainment news empire instead focused on a clip-driven comedy show (that would ultimately be the forerunner for shows like Tosh.0, Ridiculousness, I Love the…, and any number of any other ridiculously cheap series) called Talk Soup that was a cult phenomenon throughout the 1990’s. The series, which at that time lampooned trash TV legends such as Jerry Springer and Geraldo, would be revived in 2004 under the careful watch of Joel McHale, switch to mocking bad reality TV, and be rechristened The Soup. It’s success has led E! to generate a spinoff (much like it did for late night sensation Chelsea Lately) in the form of The Soup Investigates which debuted Wednesday night.

The Soup Investigates takes the basic soup formula of digging for the most ridiculous things you can find in order to mock them, and puts a laser focus on them. Instead of the quick riffing formula you see on the main show, Investigates tends to focus on more fully thought out pieces. Unlike similar mock news show The Daily Show, the show eschews a current events focus for pop culture mockery, and seems to derive its’ format from news magazine shows like Dateline and 20/20.

Our premiere provides a number of interesting conceits, including harassing a bunch of young Bieber fans about Bieber’s aging process. This follows up with a critical investigation into the roses from The Bachelor that ends up turning into a satire of the show’s format in which a correspondent takes his love of the show a little too seriously. The third and final story of the night involves a correspondent going storage hunting before stumbling upon Tila Tequila’s storage unit.

With quick and inexpensive shows of this ilk, the single most important question you can ask is: Did this make me laugh? Well actually, it did and did so in a surprisingly offbeat way for it’s network. While I expected that a lot of the pieces would involve lampooning pop culture, I could see a piece like Bieber’s age advanced photos sitting well in a Wonder Showzen-esque sort of show, playing as much of it’s subject’s discomfort as the audiences. The Storage Unit segment, conversely, seems like the sort of bit that will play well with the show’s intended audience: people who will watch this as a bridge between The Soup and Chelsea Lately

For a show marketed around McHale, it becomes apparent very quickly that he is not the centerpiece of the show, as he receives less screen time than any of his correspondents do and predominantly exists to set up the show’s prerecorded pieces. Personally, I would like to have seen a little more interaction between McHale and the correspondents, but for this episode it’s fairly understandable as the Bachelor rose segment benefited by straddling a commercial break at a key juncture (because reality shows have never been guilty of such a thing, ever, right?).

The Final Verdict: The Soup Investigates is a lot of things, but outside of a somewhat similar format, the one thing that can be safely said is that it’s not a Daily Show clone. Instead what you get is a mixed bag of surprisingly dark humor and spot on stealth parodies of much of the dreck that occupies the airwaves in this day and age. It’s not exactly that most groundbreaking television, but as something to occupy the space between the E! tent-poles that both lead in and out of it or as a show to watch when nothing else is on, you can do a lot worse. Check it out, you’ll probably laugh more than you expect.

What Would Ryan Lochte Do?: Take a Page from Jersey Shore Apparently

by Michael Tyminski

What Would Ryan Lochte Do? Sundays, 10pm on E!

The celebrity driven reality show is an interesting animal. This is because whereas most of the genre gives some degree of free will towards whom it designates as its’ heroes and its’ villains, the celebrity-centric shows (think Keeping Up with the Kardashians) are closer in nature to glorified publicity pieces. As a result, what you get is very little reality (or even “reality”) and more a glorified 30 minute infomercial that pushes whatever brand that celebrity is marketing (this brand doesn’t necessarily have to be positive, as a case in point see The Simple Life). This week we get to delve into the sub-genre a little more deeply, with the debuts of celebrity driven shows My Beautiful Crazy Life and last night’s What Would Ryan Lochte Do?.

What Would Ryan Lochte Do? (from here on out WWRLD?) follows Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte, his family, and his personal assistant Gene as he goes forth to pursue swimming, acting, endorsements, entrepreneurship, and the rigors of being famous for the sake of being famous. Additionally, the show shines a spotlight on the single Lochte’s search for love and family life, as his mother and siblings are all considered part of the show’s core cast.

We open on Lochte gushing about some shoes he designed. Within five seconds we learn how articulate our star really is, as he stumbles his way through an interview about the “Lochte Edge”, even being taken slightly aback at the question. However, we then get our first glimpse into the life of Lochte, with the bulk of the first half of the show devoted to partying and watching him awkwardly hit on females at his house and the club.

We’re then inroduced to the rest of Ryan’s family at a bowling event on a Monday afternoon. Ryan definitely takes a puckish streak, while his older sister Kristin plays mother hen and harasses him about his love life. This then leads us to Ryan preparing for a date with Megan, one of the girls he was awkwardly hitting on in the club. After discovering the girl is leaving for Los Angeles a week later (the show is set in Gainesville, known entirely as the home of the University of Florida), he decides that the long term picture is bleak and to not go further with the relationship (in a weird instance of a TV show telling instead of showing).

I want to hate this show so badly, but the truth is you can’t look away. Much like those early seasons of Jersey Shore, the show has a solid yen for peppering in large amounts of vulgarity (Ryan’s mouth gets pixelated out at least five times in our premiere) and a tendency for things to comically go bust (in this case Ryan’s football and bowling exploits). In this case, many of our interesting scenarios come as the end result of Ryan’s oversized ego, whether its making a bet and losing to younger brother Devon, his sister’s prodding him about taking girls’ out to a sushi place after Ryan makes the claim “all girls love sushi”, or worst yet, referring to himself in the third person in interviews.

Speaking of the interviews, I’m surprised to the degree that they let Ryan stumble his way through them. That being said, those awkward interviews are the highlight of the show, as Lochte’s responses to the questions being posed are often side-splittingly funny, if only due to a stunning lack of self-awareness. The editing does Ryan no favors either, as when he couldn’t recall what Megan looked like before her date, the scene flashed back to the night at the bar with a close-up of Megan’s chest, implying that was the only thing Lochte could recall.

The Final Verdict: As I mentioned above, WWLRD? has a vibe that feels not too far removed from Jersey Shore. A large part of this is due to the fact that Lochte’s frat boy nature, fairly large ego, and lack of discernible public speaking skills make him a dead ringer for The Situation. That being said, in between those moments of incredible ego you see a truly likable protagonist for a show of this ilk as he is generally good to the people around him. The editors in turn play this cartoonishness up, while playing the drama down, allowing for a brisk 30 minutes where there the stakes are low and you’re compelled to see how Lochte puts his foot in his mouth this time. If you’re into shows of that ilk, you’ll love What Would Ryan Lochte Do?, and it’s probably worth checking out otherwise just to get a peek into the mind of an Olympic Athlete whose show seems like the perfect mixture of every psuedo-reality show that MTV has released with a twenty-something male emphasis over the past decade.

Rihanna and Chris Brown Split- WHO THE F CARES

by Ryan Shea

I have had my fair share of stating how I feel about not only Chris Brown but Rihanna in the past couple of years, and when I heard all over the news this morning from The Wendy Williams Show to Newsday to E! that they had broken up yet again so Rihanna can focus on business opportunities I literally LOL’d. Here comes my rant about how I feel about these two, so buckle down everyone.

I have said this before and I will say it again, I DON’T GET HOW CHRIS BROWN IS STILL RELEVANT. How in gods name is a man who brutally and viciously beat the living hell out of a woman still celebrated, awarded and adored by millions of people who can blindly look past what he did? On top of that, he’s a wannabe thug who has gotten into so many altercations with people who actually merit respect and should be celebrated for their talent (Miranda Lambert, Frank Ocean, Robin Roberts). So once again, like Aubrey O’Day on Rupaul’s Drag Race this year, what is their appeal?

What is his appeal exactly? Can someone explain it to me? He wins the Grammy last year for Best R&B Album for an album that was all synth and nothing R&B. He won because The Grammy’s wanted to stir commotion and get viewers, so I get that. When every other person winning an award that night and getting standing ovations up the wazoo and people are barely clapping for you, how do you take that? When are you actually going to wake up and realize all of these childish, petty things you have done since you beat her up still don’t warrant a real apology or anything of the sort? I don’t get it.

As for her, I have my own personal feelings. She has her own issues with press I get it, but beyond that I really just can’t stand her attitude throughout all of this. If someone had beat up my sister and then tried to get back together with her, it wouldn’t happen. Doesn’t she have anyone around her telling her this isn’t right? A good girlfriend, family, SOMEONE. I mean I know she is grown and all, but the fact that no one seemed to stop this from happening over and over again really says something. And the fact that she really is “unapologetic” really says a lot about her character and how she really doesn’t want to be viewed as a role model no matter what.

This is just my gist on how I feel. Everyone is different, but quite frankly it bothers me that this continues to be headline news. It shouldn’t be. There are bigger things in the world to deal with than the modern day Ike and Tina continuously breaking up and getting back together for nonsense reasons. That’s it.

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