Child labor laws! Seedy reality TV waivers! Legal loopholes! With all the controversy swirling around this show, I buckled myself in for a thrill ride down the delicious depths of network exec depravity. What I got was marginally more compelling than JD Roth's "kid Survivor" program, just set in a fakey Olde West ghost town. Turns out the only shocking thing is how boring Kid Nation is.There are occasional "eww" moments, like when the kids have to haul carts full of "frontier supplies" and we watch one writhe in the pain of a charley horse. There are occasional "aww" moments, like when the youngest kid decides to leave, quivering out the words "I'm only 8. I'm a third-grader. I think I'm too young to be doing this." But mostly there are... no moments. Just a bunch of kids participating in poorly-themed competitions for a gold star and a phone call home. While I'm not one who's been sounding the drums against this show from the start, it does turn out to be a little icky to subject children to reality show scrutiny. When the ten-year old beauty queen says she wants to "make this a better world by bringing world peace to Africa with all the orphans" and that "the No. 1 place that needs world peace," it's laughable, but it's that need-to-take-a-shower-after kind of comedy because, you know, she's ten. Slotting the punkass 14-15 year olds in as the show's "villains" feels similarly unseemly. Overall, this societal experiment is about as effective as Peter Brady's volcano.
Sex! Power! Money! Teenagers! You'd think it'd be a tasty mix, but unfortunately this cocktail doesn't go down anywhere near as easy as the martinis that main character Serena swills in the opener. It's got a good pedigree, too - developed by the The O.C.'s Josh Schwartz from a successful book series starring a lead from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, narrated by Veronica Mars herself, Kristen Bell. And it all adds up to... nothing. It's not unwatchable, but the pilot provides no compelling reason to tune in. It's well-shot, so the locations look almost as pretty as the cast, but it's got no teeth. A bitchy drama set among the privileged prep school set is fine, but it'd be nice if you had someone to, you know, root for. Plus the titular hook (hee hee... titular) is way overplayed. The conceit of a blog that everyone reads that tracks everyone in it prolly plays pretty well on the page, but on screen it paves the way for silly scenes where the camera tracks around a bar as everyone reads their Sidekicks and says things like "what's Gossip Girl saying?" or "did you read Gossip Girl?" or "OMG Gossip Girl!" while the narrator says things like "seen at the bar - S and B reading their Sidekicks like they were the latest Harry Potter - who knows what it's about? Well, me... Gossip Girl!" Yeah, yeah, it's the myspace/facebook generation... I get it already. What I don't get is why I should care.
3 comments:
i don't know... i think gossip girl has great trash potential. it's a pilot, give it a break. let's see how this week's is.
I missed both shows...not that I was planning to watch either of them.
But glad to hear that I won't have to try and "catch up."
Ellen - I'd hoped so, but it was just so flat and dull. And I hear you, pilots are problematic, but I watch too much TV to give it time ;)
Valerie - yeah, not missing much.
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