Did you know that Bravo used to be a network committed to the arts, culture, and the independent film industry? I know what you’re thinking. “Wait, it hasn’t ALWAYS been about all things gay and expensive?” No! About 5 years ago, Bravo, “rebranded” (check your grocery store, everybody’s doin’ it) and became a top destination for reality TV with shows like Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, Project Runway, Top Chef and the Real Housewives franchise. And they had me at Queer. I am a religious Bravo viewer. I don’t cook. Ever. But watching crazy-eyed Carla whip up some avocado foam is my must-see TV. I don’t sew, but I can’t hear Christian Siriano say “fierce” enough times. And I’m not married but I would watch all 9 hours of a Real Housewives reunion special if they would air it.
But what used to be a parade of guilty pleasure shows featuring the filthy rich and morally filthy in their natural habitat has taken a wrong turn down Park Avenue with the summer series, NYC Prep. It is one thing to watch adults throwing down the Black Amex to buy a $4,000 Louis Vuitton doggie raincoat in the middle of a recession; I can laugh at that. But it is another to watch children running around New York City getting hammered, throwing benefits and playing “grown-up.”
Obviously this show was conceived as a reality version of Gossip Girl, the same way the Housewives franchise originally rode on the successful botoxed coattails of Desperate Housewives. But the difference is that Gossip Girl is a teen soap opera, a cartoonish depiction of affluence that inflates stereotypes for entertainment and Nielsen ratings. These NYC Prep kids are actual residents of the city I live in, that I have to share breathing space with, and they make me want to kick a kitten.
Two seniors in high school, the headmasters of which were crazy (read: responsible) enough to have declined letting their institutions be specifically named on air, seem to be the stars of the show. PC is a poor man’s Chuck Bass who constantly reminds us how New York prep school attendees are the "elite of the elite" but in the same breath talks about how anyone can get anything in NYC if they have enough money. So ipso facto, any idiot with rich parents can get into these "elite" institutions. I saw ample proof of this at my own college.
His best friend, Jessie, is allegedly the Blair Waldorf of New York City, if Blair had a wonk eye and an underdeveloped vocabulary. These two constantly bicker which is apparently due to residual sexual tension from their former relationship. I’m guessing they dated when they were 13 and in braces, or Invisalign, or had a new set of teeth flown in from the Maldives. Either way, PC makes it very hard for viewers to believe he is even interested in women as he sits front row at the Jill Stuart fashion show critiquing the couture and later declines to be set up with a “hot, tall, brunette” because it would be like dating himself. Would that this kid could meet the same end as his Greek counterpart Narcissus and drown in his own reflection in a glass of Cristal.
Another “character” is Kelli, a spoiled little sprite with designs on a singing career who lives, parentless, with her brother on the Upper East Side and giggles about how she does no schoolwork, because why should you work hard to excel at a school millions of kids could not afford to go to, and disregards all her punishments, because after all, who is there to enforce them? Certainly not her parents who were somehow mindless enough to allow their child to be cast in this show in the first place. She is often flanked by the Jessie Spano of the crew, a strange looking overachiever named Camille who has her post-high school life completely planned out. “First, I will go to Harvard. Then I will be the business head of a genetics firm. Then at 40, I will have a husband and two girls.” Hopefully her role on the business end of a genetics firm will help guarantee the latter part of her master plan but if not I’m sure a male child can be “taken care of.”
The other male star of the show is a reprehensible womanizer, er, girlizer, with a hair-flipping tic named Sebastian on whom I will only expend further typing energy to categorize as a douchebag. He later in the season seems to strike up a relationship with Taylor who attends—gasp—a public school. I initially thought Taylor was perhaps going to be the down to earth foil for the overindulged rich kids, our female Dan Humphrey, but she turns out to be a pathetic hanger-on, who takes social status more seriously than perhaps the rich kids themselves.
When I watch Gossip Girl, (I openly admit I do) and see 16 year-olds going to trendy clubs, banging in limos, and speaking in ridiculous puns, (see: Motherchucker), I am able to remind myself that I’m watching a fictional New York featuring fictional characters who are speaking lines written by adults. But NYC Prep show features real kids who most hip New Yorkers would be embarrassed to be seated next to at a restaurant as they inanely jabber about the SATs and type on their blackberries.
This show casts an embarrassing light on the children of upper class Manhattan, with whom I have first hand experience. Somehow Bravo has deemed their lives to be so glamorous that they’re worth televising. They are not. What this show does accurately depict is the general sense of apathy that most privileged kids are cursed with. They each drone on in the same slack-jawed manner about fashion, music, charity work and their lives in general the same way I would observe that I need to buy more milk. But I guess when you have everything handed to you, it’s hard to have actual passions, or develop a personality for that matter.
What is also authentic and sad about this show is the lack of parental presence and guidance, with the exception of one or two parents briefly featured caring about their kids’ lives. One of the prep schools attended by a cast member has recently sent home numerous letters to its students and their parents apologizing for the press caused by the show, as they were not informed that one of their students was involved, and begging students not to speak to the media. But now that the first episode has aired, can one parent who signed the release for their child to be on this show actually come forward now and say they are happy with how their child is being portrayed on national television? I guess it depends on if they get Bravo out in the Hamptons.
Check out more awesome material from stand-up comic and writer Kara Klenk at KaraKlenk.com... and if you'd like to write about something just email me and you might be the next Summer Friday blogger!
Related Things:
- iVillage- Gossip Girl vs. NYC Prep: TV Show Style Report Card
- Read all the Summer Friday entries