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Privileged Review
by Doom
"I was the CW's first victim!"
Goddamn. Why the fuck does the CW exist? I know it appeals to teenagers, but I'm of the opinion that teenagers should be sent off to camps on trains and summarily killed. If that means killing the next generation, fine. I don't think humanity deserves a next generation if they express interest in Myspace, Dane Cook and Privileged. They're a lost fucking cause. The shit my generation thought constituted entertainment was retarded, certainly, but this one is much more fucking retarded. Now I know why the Native Americans drink themselves to death. They take a look at the people who stole their land and what they've amounted to, and then they look at themselves, an ethnic group that had an actual culture before casinos and free enterprise cajoled them into becoming Whitey's novelty dealer race, and what they've got, and the only sane response is to drink into oblivion. I had to drink too or else I wouldn't have made it through CW's new shitty program. I'd have either killed myself, others or perhaps one of those sought after ", self" deaths. What am I trying to say? I'm stressing that THIS SHIT IS FUCKING EVIL.
You might think my reaction over the top or hyperbolic. It's not. Privileged provokes such a reaction. It provides a window into everything wrong with America - the celebration of wealth, the celebration of decadence and the supremacy of faux individuality, all bundled together with the premise of the classic American evil romance. If you mix The O.C.'s toxic social structure, the promises yuppiedom gives to its patrons, the dream of multiple romantic options in which your hardest decision is choosing who to go with, and you throw in some tired and falsified class conflict, you have Privileged. This is rags to riches if you consider rags an upper middle class existence with ironic slogans, coffee shops, TiVo and futons, and the demographics of The CW do consider that a miserable existence they must simply escape in favor of more wealth, more opulence, more decadence. Why be bourge when you can become an aristocratic plutocrat, sipping martinis with the blood of the poor? Privileged shows how you can do such a thing if you just believe life is like a dramatic television program aimed at teenagers.
Dorothy enters the wonderful world of appropriated Indian property turned into palatial estates for the rich. As opposed to her previous world of appropriated Indian property turned into tightly packed apartments for the upper middle class.
This show stars an idiot Yale educated chick who tries to do some serious journalism at a shitty tabloid rag, and thus she gets fired by Debi Mazar, who I thought was Vince and Drama's publicist, not the owner and/or operator of a tabloid. What the hell. It's understandable why the idiot (named Megan, yet I feel 'idiot' is more descriptive) got fired, since she is unlikable, annoying and carries on a positive attitude belying her pathetic failure of a meaningless existence. (It takes a lot to fail at meaningless existence, believe you fucking me.) But, unfortunately a sad truth of life, she gets hired for a new position offering far more opulence than the last one. Dennis and Dee's mom hires the idiot (who is like Julianne Moore with an incredibly sad, pathetic, cat loving life) to watch over her two teenage granddaughters who are the typical stupid fucking sluts with no redeeming qualities. She is supposed to tutor them so they can get into Duke University soon enough to get raped by the lacrosse team. They are such bitches they taze anyone who enters their room. I know. What the fuck? But of course they must be given feigned differentiating personalities, so one's a horrible bitch and the other is a spineless ninny goaded by horrible bitch into being a horrible bitch. Deep, deep characterization there, writers.
There's nothing behind those eyes.
A discussion of The Great Gatsby sums up the 'comedic possibilities' of the fish out of water using unorthodox means to get the girls to read shit. Megan wants them to read the book but they don't want to. They would rather spend time lolling about, improving their physique for objectification purposes and uttering trivial inanities (such as texts received and what they mean in the broader scope of social interaction with like-idiotic peers!). "Daisy is a gold digger and Gatsby is a scam artist who's probably gay anyway." the one has to say about one of the most celebrated works of American literature. (I hate it, but I hate it for the right seasons.) Then the other pipes in about Megan's background, with Megan assuming they 'Googled' her name. "Oh, we tried, but you weren't very Googleable." She and the girls bond once she tells them her sister took her boyfriend from her. It's kinda like those "And a White Man will lead them" inner city school movies, only more hideous.
But she doesn't care that her job is shitty and impossible, for she gets to live in a posh environment any superficial moron would just fucking love to have. That provides a very important lesson for youngsters: who gives a shit if you enjoy your job or do anything meaningful to society as long as you live in a big house with a live-in catty gay cook. Unearned social climbing is fucking awesome. Megan/idiot has a bevy of possible love interests to fuck, such as the next door neighbor and the male best friend who just so happens to live in the part of Florida she moves to, and I'm sure she'll attain more possibilities as more episodes unfold. The biggest drama in her life is reconnecting with her sister, who is an uptight rich bitch who hates her. Man, I wish that was the fucking extent of my problems, and so does the rest of America, hence the inevitable respectable ratings for this trash. Americans want to live in a fantasy, a delusion that their lives could improve since good life appears on the television, more and more a supposed reflection of reality. It might be mean to shatter the delusion, but these fucks behaving like Montag's wife, solitary figures living in four walls of media, thinking fiction gives them love. Disgusting.
This is the douchebag party line networks adhere to in the rich backlash era. The plunder of America by Bush and his buddies makes the citizenry wary of the upper upper upper class. The transparent criminality of the corporate types and the economic crisis has made the rich as a discrete class 'uncool'. But this doesn't mean the idea of riches has lost any favor with the petty bourgeoisie. Hence the narrative of Privileged - a woman like us joins the rich class by basis of her apparent merit. She deserves it from her work, Privileged says (even though she doesn't, but that's another topic). This shows there are 'good' rich people. The bitchy girl and Megan's sister get tagged with the bad rich because they act like bitches, whereas Megan and the personality-lacking girl use their wealth but are not bitchy about it, the significant distinction. The Daily Raider knows the evil of the rich cuts across surface differences between the 'good' and the 'bad'. There is no benevolent rich. They all cater to their self-centered interests at the detriment of everyone else. Line all the motherfuckers up against the wall and sentence actions proportionate to their crimes.
She needs a few Ike Turners to the face.
I recall only one music artist used for the soundtrack in the first episode. Nellie McKay features in the opening of the third act (I think it's the third act). I don't think Nellie McKay, a very talented and awesome artist, should be on the CW because it devalues her music, turning her into pop commodity for consumption by vapid teenagers who, again, deserve quick and mercy-free death. (For those of you who will no doubt question how I can say this when I was a teenager a few years ago, well, I think my past self would've understood sacrifices need to be made for the species' greater good.) Privileged is shot and directed like any other non-superhuman/paranormal drama on CW, which is to say shittily. I may have been incredibly drunk, but I know the director's job is to both convey shit happening and keep the audience's interest. The director did neither in this case, boring me and compelling me to check the time every few minutes in order to see how much of my life had been wasted and how much more I'd need to waste for the completion of the pilot.
"Boy, it sure is great to make money for, essentially, chiding rich girls into reading summarizations of elementary level high school books!"
Oh, to think the budget allocated to one episode of this shit could feed an impoverished village for a year. Who gives a shit, though. Certainly not America. We need our McDonald's and we need our circuses! Fuck the poor. They didn't earn it like we did. If they didn't want to live dismal, short, awful, painful lives, maybe they shouldn't have been born where they were born. Privileged will show the joys of living the lifestyle of the rich to this country, in case the filthy Americans didn't receive enough propaganda from The O.C., Gossip Girl and the Republican campaign.