The Awl http://www.theawl.com/ Be Less Stupid Tue, 12 Oct 2010 12:40:44 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.2 Bravo's In-Development Shows: Is This Still the Golden Age of Reality? http://www.theawl.com/2010/10/bravos-in-development-shows-is-this-still-the-golden-age-of-reality http://www.theawl.com/2010/10/bravos-in-development-shows-is-this-still-the-golden-age-of-reality#comments Tue, 12 Oct 2010 12:40:44 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2010/10/bravos-in-development-shows-is-this-still-the-golden-age-of-reality THE HOUSEWIVES CHANNELBravo this morning announced a few new "INNOVATIVE AND DIVERSE DOCU-DRAMA AND CHARACTER-DRIVEN PROJECTS," which we assume means "a whole load of new reality TV"! I mean, nowhere does it say that any of these are "scripted," so. They include:

• A show about Hollywood hairstylist Dean Banowetz, whose name will be frequently misspelled, and who works "with rocket scientists inventing his next must have hair product."
• "An up-close look at the over-the-top world of celebrity fashion designer Chris March."
• Chef Roblé Ali becomes a caterer to New York "socialites"!
• And something tentatively called "Thicker than Water" which is apparently about some really large family, so we'll just call this X + Y = 8.

This all sounds kind of small to me! But then, small is what's good about docudrama. And if you pitched me a show "about, you know, some kids living in a beach house in New Jersey," I'd turn up my nose and probably call it "small" too. So I guess: meet your future tabloid stars while you can. In just a few short months/years, surely many of them will be gracing your In Touches and TMZs and local criminal justice providers.

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]]> THE HOUSEWIVES CHANNELBravo this morning announced a few new "INNOVATIVE AND DIVERSE DOCU-DRAMA AND CHARACTER-DRIVEN PROJECTS," which we assume means "a whole load of new reality TV"! I mean, nowhere does it say that any of these are "scripted," so. They include:

• A show about Hollywood hairstylist Dean Banowetz, whose name will be frequently misspelled, and who works "with rocket scientists inventing his next must have hair product."
• "An up-close look at the over-the-top world of celebrity fashion designer Chris March."
• Chef Roblé Ali becomes a caterer to New York "socialites"!
• And something tentatively called "Thicker than Water" which is apparently about some really large family, so we'll just call this X + Y = 8.

This all sounds kind of small to me! But then, small is what's good about docudrama. And if you pitched me a show "about, you know, some kids living in a beach house in New Jersey," I'd turn up my nose and probably call it "small" too. So I guess: meet your future tabloid stars while you can. In just a few short months/years, surely many of them will be gracing your In Touches and TMZs and local criminal justice providers.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2010/10/bravos-in-development-shows-is-this-still-the-golden-age-of-reality/feed 17 Nation's Seat of Government Secretly Very Boring! http://www.theawl.com/2010/08/nations-seat-of-government-secretly-very-boring http://www.theawl.com/2010/08/nations-seat-of-government-secretly-very-boring#comments Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:00:53 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2010/08/nations-seat-of-government-secretly-very-boring LOLPoor D.C. is really being torn apart by the invasion of Real Housewives. (It's like K Street never happened!) Writes Mike Riggs: "In reality D.C., everyone who steps into a Cadillac Escalade might wind up sharing canapés with Al Franken at a reception for the Finnish finance minister. In real D.C., even Kal Penn-caliber celebs find themselves balanced out by slack-jawed number crunchers, dumpy lobbyists, and disillusioned activists hustling opaque, fine-print agendas." SOUNDS FUN.

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]]> LOLPoor D.C. is really being torn apart by the invasion of Real Housewives. (It's like K Street never happened!) Writes Mike Riggs: "In reality D.C., everyone who steps into a Cadillac Escalade might wind up sharing canapés with Al Franken at a reception for the Finnish finance minister. In real D.C., even Kal Penn-caliber celebs find themselves balanced out by slack-jawed number crunchers, dumpy lobbyists, and disillusioned activists hustling opaque, fine-print agendas." SOUNDS FUN.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2010/08/nations-seat-of-government-secretly-very-boring/feed 25 'Miami Social' Really Is "Stupid," Says Its Greenlighter, So Why The Heck.... http://www.theawl.com/2009/07/miami-social-really-is-stupid-says-its-greenlighter http://www.theawl.com/2009/07/miami-social-really-is-stupid-says-its-greenlighter#comments Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:39:24 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2009/07/miami-social-really-is-stupid-says-its-greenlighter THE RELEVANT PARTS OF THE CAST OF MIAMI SOCIAL"I actually think MIAMI SOCIAL is the perfect summer show. It's stupid and sexy fun," blogged Bravo exec and, uh, blogger Andy Cohen (who I find actually very hilarious) on Tuesday. Hrrm! Why you wanna put stupid things on the air? This show is so stupid (HOW STUPID IS IT?) that I won't even put a clip of it up on this website. And I mention this only because I am only now reading the rather amazing, hilarious Times review of the horrible show.

But nothing so far has managed to capture the most gruesomely distasteful aspects of the city's aimless capitalism quite like "Miami Social" (beginning on Tuesday), the newest reality series from Bravo, the cable channel that is subversively summoning Americans to proletarian revolt. If you listen to the reunion show of "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" backward, you will hear a call to arms: "Join brothers and sisters in tearing down the onyx and the chandeliers." Bravo is not run by faceless executives; it is run by the ghost of Joe Hill.

Let us see. Everyone thinks your show is despicable. You think the show is stupid. AND YET THERE IT IS ON TV, STUPIDING UP THE AIRWAVES.

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]]> THE RELEVANT PARTS OF THE CAST OF MIAMI SOCIAL"I actually think MIAMI SOCIAL is the perfect summer show. It's stupid and sexy fun," blogged Bravo exec and, uh, blogger Andy Cohen (who I find actually very hilarious) on Tuesday. Hrrm! Why you wanna put stupid things on the air? This show is so stupid (HOW STUPID IS IT?) that I won't even put a clip of it up on this website. And I mention this only because I am only now reading the rather amazing, hilarious Times review of the horrible show.

But nothing so far has managed to capture the most gruesomely distasteful aspects of the city's aimless capitalism quite like "Miami Social" (beginning on Tuesday), the newest reality series from Bravo, the cable channel that is subversively summoning Americans to proletarian revolt. If you listen to the reunion show of "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" backward, you will hear a call to arms: "Join brothers and sisters in tearing down the onyx and the chandeliers." Bravo is not run by faceless executives; it is run by the ghost of Joe Hill.

Let us see. Everyone thinks your show is despicable. You think the show is stupid. AND YET THERE IT IS ON TV, STUPIDING UP THE AIRWAVES.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2009/07/miami-social-really-is-stupid-says-its-greenlighter/feed 7 Reality In the Age of Michael Bay, Neda, Alexa Chung, Andrew Sullivan, James Wood, Twitter, 2 Girls 1 Cup and the Digital Surround-Sound http://www.theawl.com/2009/06/reality-in-the-age-of-michael-bay-neda-alexa-chung-andrew-sullivan-james-wood-twitter-2-girls-1-cup-and-the-digital-surround-sound http://www.theawl.com/2009/06/reality-in-the-age-of-michael-bay-neda-alexa-chung-andrew-sullivan-james-wood-twitter-2-girls-1-cup-and-the-digital-surround-sound#comments Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:04:35 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2009/06/reality-in-the-age-of-michael-bay-neda-alexa-chung-andrew-sullivan-james-wood-twitter-2-girls-1-cup-and-the-digital-surround-sound THINGS GO BOOM ALL THE TIME"I was that kind of bored the other night, the kind of bored where you want to see things explode. The first time I saw the movie Armageddon, I saw it in a movie theater, which is of course because of technical reasons the best place to see things explode, the loudness of the speakers and the largeness of the screen more realistically representing what an explosion feels like than the average television set, or at least I assume so, having never actually felt an actual explosion in real life myself. "

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]]> THINGS GO BOOM ALL THE TIME"I was that kind of bored the other night, the kind of bored where you want to see things explode. The first time I saw the movie Armageddon, I saw it in a movie theater, which is of course because of technical reasons the best place to see things explode, the loudness of the speakers and the largeness of the screen more realistically representing what an explosion feels like than the average television set, or at least I assume so, having never actually felt an actual explosion in real life myself. "

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