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Early in the first episode of NYC Prep, Bravo’s new, Gossip Girl-inspired reality show about New York City high school students that starts tonight, PC, the self-styled Chuck Bass
of the bunch, says to the camera, “In New York City, money flows like
the wind.” It was at this, the moment of the overly knowing, slightly
off metaphor, that I realized it was going to be impossible for me to
hate him. Try as he and the five other teenagers featured on the show
might—and God they try—there is no talk of money, sex, or power, no
uncanny preciousness, no shopper at Barneys, no address on the Upper
East Side, no limo rides, and ultimately no reality show that can turn
these kids into adults. Despite their best efforts, and all of their
privileges, they are in a high school state of mind.
Take, for example, Camille, a senior at tony all-girls school
Nightgale-Bamford, who asserts about her own future: “I will go to
Harvard. Then I will be the business head of a genetics firm. And then
at 40 I will have a husband and two kids.” This is delivered with the
frightening intensity we have come to expect from Blair Waldorf, and is
not, exactly, typical of the average 17-year-old. And yet, it is still
wholly laughable. Check back in a few years, Camille, after life has
gotten in the way.
Even more of the series is taken up with genuinely unprecocious high
school antics, just enacted on the glamorous streets of New York City.
Taylor, a 16-year-old who attends, gasp, public school tells her mother that...(To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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Why is The Real Housewives of New Jersey a smash-hit? The season finale's 4.6 million viewers
in the 18-to-49-year-old demographic testify to its broad appeal, but
why are we so enamored with these table-tossing housewives? Is it the
big hair? The brash talk? The back stabbing? One thing's for sure. It's
not their manners.
Out of all the Real Housewives series—from Orange County to Atlanta to New York City—"New Jersey" is the breakaway hit. Because I have deeply bad taste in TV... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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The Real Housewives of New Jersey premiered last night on Bravo and it was just as gaudy, Mystic-tanned, and big "bubbied" as any trash-television lover could have hoped. The series, part of a growing Housewives
franchise that also includes New York, Atlanta, and the original Orange
County branches, depicts "real-life versions of Carmela Soprano, loud,
nasal, nouveau-riche wives who raise spoiled children and spend their
husbands’ money in vast marble and onyx starter palaces in Franklin
Lakes, N.J.," according to Alessandra Stanley at the New York Times.
Though Slate television critic Troy Patterson finds RHNJ
the most "synthetic" of the franchise because "the drama queening in
these parts is much too blatantly contrived," Stanley thinks that this
is... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website at DoubleX.com!)
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