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When the women of the Real Housewives, or anyone on any VH1 show ever, are forced into bizarre social situations (think the traditional final episode dinner party on Housewives, or the Real Chance at Love reunion) the discomfort of it is the point. It’s not really schadenfreude to want these women to destroy each other. It’s just the Rules of the Game. We’re nearly 20 years into reality TV as a regular genre of television programming. People should know what they’re getting into at this point. But on last night’s episode, when Camille (whoever that is) decided to “host a dinner party” and just happened to invite only the other castmembers of this show, there was a virulent strain of ickiness running through the whole thing. It wasn’t just PC’s shithead behavior, either. It was the fact that high school kids don’t throw dinner parties, and if they did throw dinner parties they would throw them with their friends. It’s one thing to watch women who don’t like each other throw tables and spill wine, but there’s something creepy (and dull) about watching high school children who don’t like each other forced to squirm in the silk-lined private dining room of a midtown restaurant, reserved by producers who do not have anyone’s best interest at heart.
And that begs the question of what these kids are even doing here in the first place. In last week’s New York Magazine article, PC, or PC’s representative, claimed that he agreed to be on the show because he wants to be an actor, and that he feels hurt by the way the show has manipulated him. Really? The tens of thousands of dollars of private education didn’t prepare you for the fact that reality TV is an awful thing to do with your life? Come on, Baby Geniuses. You’re never going to take down Babyco if you don’t OPEN YOUR EYES.
But whatever. OK. So, Camille organizes a dinner party. For her fellow castmates. At a “fancy” restaurant that was clearly picked out by the producers. Everyone sips water out of tumblers as if it’s aged scotch. Stop doing that, everyone. What is next, candy cigarettes? How gauche. PC keeps calling everyone “children” and making fun of everyone for how young they are, which would be fair, they are children, and they are all very young, but so is PC, so he needs to relax. Dude needs to recognize that wearing a tuxedo jacket in the middle of the week doesn’t make you a man. In any case, he hurts one girl’s feelings when she says it’s her birthday this coming weekend and he asks if it’s her bat mitzvah. That would be a funny diss if a) it didn’t sound kind of creepy coming from the non-Jewish scion to a billionaire fortune in an effort to humiliate someone who was Jewish, and b) shut up, PC. He also says that he wants to go around the table and have the virgin conversation, because he thinks a lot of people are going to be a yes. Yikes. Even though this conversation never actually ends up happening, I’m pretty sure we all have to go to jail now.
Later, Camille meets him at the museum (sure she does) to ask him to apologize, but he won’t apologize for someone else’s immaturity. Because it is immature to be upset with something stupid someone said, not to say the stupid things to everyone in the first place just to get a petulant rise out of them. PC is Professor Emotional Development over here, taking everyone to Psychology School. Camille then tells the girl (is it Kelli? I think it is Kelli. Whoever that is) that PC will probably apologize but that he isn’t really sorry. Well played, Camille. HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT ABOUT GOING INTO POLITICS? Kelli says that PC is acting the way a girl would act, not a guy, and Camille says “well, I mean, right. Think about it?” Because there cannot be an episode of this show without a bold, unsubtle suggestion that PC is a homosexual.
Camille, meanwhile, wants a boyfriend, but she thinks she has too high standards. “I want someone who is intelligent and funny.” YIKES, WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO FIND THAT KIND OF A COMBINATION?! What’s funny is that Camille wants someone with a sense of humor while she herself seems completely devoid of one. She spends most of the episode pursing her lips at everyone as if she’s got it all figured out, when the reality is she’s probably more confused than even PC. She goes on a date with some kid who asks her what her hobbies are, and if she is having fun. WHAT A DEALBREAKER. Camille thinks he is not intellectual enough, which is fine, except that people who complain about other people not being intellectual enough are assholes. Later when Camille tells her girlfriend Maite (sure, Maite) about the miserable date she went on, Maite asks if it was “stagnant,” and Camille says “that would be the SAT word to describe it. YUCK, Camille. I sentence you to a billion years in detention. GAVEL GAVEL GAVEL.
Jessie is mad at PC because he stood her up. OK. But then she confronts him and the two of them can’t stop giggling at each other. Get a room at the Plaza, you two. And I don’t even know what this is:
Yikes.
Meanwhile, Sebastian goes in for a kiss on Taylor and she gives him her cheek. And he spends the rest of the episode trying to pretend like he doesn’t even like Taylor and that she can have Cole, and WHATEVS, and he spits in the street because spitting is tough and he’s like “we’re not friends,” and Taylor is like “what?” and the reality is that Sebastian is a monster, yes, but he is also a child, and Taylor giving him her cheek was a surprising rejection for a pampered little boy unused to not getting what he wants. It stung him to his core, but he was also being followed by television cameras, and so he had to do his best to put on his big boy face. One could imagine that even without the cameras he would have acted arrogant and cavalier, but one can also imagine that when the cameras are gone, there are going to be more rejections, because that is how life works. Good luck, tiny Sebastian. You are going to need it!
Next week: PC takes his shirt off with another boy and a team of BRAVO adults high five each other.
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Maybe I just haven’t seen enough of this show, but it’s almost reassuringly boring in the sense that the kids aren’t really vicious enough to make it interesting in the normal “real housewives” reality tv sense.
The real question about PC is “when is his eyeliner?” He’s like the Richard Alpert of this show. Maybe he really is old but ageless so he can call them children. I’m not even making sense. Can I fuck PC now? Do I have to go to jail?
gabe the videogum writer IS PC.
thats why he goes so easy on that annoying, insecure piece of shit.
cant you just see gabriel arrogantly trying to be funny and asking a group of people if their virgins, desperately trying to elevate himself to some semblance of a social status beyond class fuckup??
i can.
pathetic.
epic fail, gabe, epic fail.
“We’re nearly 20 years into reality TV as a regular genre of television programming.”
Oh, fuck us all. I’ll just be over here in the corner cutting myself.
“Oh, fuck us all. I’ll just be over here in the corner cutting myself.”
That’s really interesting. That could get you on Real World if you also have a six-pack.
Did Jessie receive too much oxygen as a baby or something? Why are her eyes so unfocused in that clip?
That girl in the first video reminded me of a girl I went to elementary school with who was OBSESSED with horses. She would gallop down the hall like one, and one time, this boy in class made a comment about horses being made into glue, and she BIT HIM. IN CLASS. Anyway, she talked just like this girl, and now I’m scared.
Ah, just like a horse, that one.
“Dude needs to recognize that wearing a tuxedo jacket in the middle of the week doesn’t make you a man.”
Of course he needs to wear a tuxedo jacket. What is he, a farmer?
He could be a farmer in those clothes!
good one!
What’s up with a high school kid having a beard? Is there some earlier onset of puberty I don’t know about. Back in ’87-’91 when I went to high school there was one kid that could grow a beard and we made fun of him that he must have flunked 10th grade 3 times.
The most disturbing part of the whole episode was when “Dan” was hanging out with PC the morning after the date with Camille (who, I’m sorry, I know she’s awful, but it’s deeply sad to watch someone so young who is still so clearly uncomfortable in her own skin), and he was saying things went well afterwards, and I swear, it cut to a shot of him suggestively licking his lips for a second, and it became clear that this show, produced by grownups for the consumption of grownups, was asking those same grownups to speculate about whether or not a profoundly awkward sixteen year old girl went to “third base” with some dude. Or maybe I’m reading into it, and I’m the one who should be in jail. But I don’t think so!
I think so!
Yes, agreed. That whole “did Camille hook up with Dan” part made me incredibly uncomfortable. Remember high school? When people lied about sleeping with people and it could get really hurtful and mean? And remember how that was broadcast into the homes of millions of adults for their judgmental viewing pleasure? Oh wait, I think that last part is just for these kids. Good decisions, parents of these babies.
I think the thing that we really do need to pay attention to here is the blurring of the behavior line between these children and their adult counterparts on other Bravo shows. While we clearly have produced situations, I think this is showing a pretty clear trend of rapid maturation followed by a stunted emotional sophistication going on in America. Robots and vampires, folks, robots… and vampires.
I think the thing that we really do need to pay attention to here is the blurring of the behavior line between these children and their adult counterparts on other Bravo shows. While we clearly have produced situations, I think this is showing a pretty clear trend of rapid maturation followed by a stunted emotional sophistication going on in America. Robots and vampires, folks, robots… and vampires.
If Jessie were my ex-girlfriend/best friend (and if I were also a guy), I’d totally be gay, too. So it’s not the eyeliner and the fashion and wanting-to-have-sex-with-men that makes PC gay; it’s clearly Jessie the Monster.
“Everyone sips water out of tumblers as if it’s aged scotch. Stop doing that, everyone.” hahaha
This show is makes me laugh out loud on a consistent basis. These are horrible, horrible people. Sure, they are young, but still very horrible. Also, at one point in last night’s episode PC can be quoted as saying, “This is such a dope umbrella”. Whaat? Umbrellas aren’t dope, they’re umbrellas.
This show better be the Apex of Reality TV as a genre. I am ready for the downward spiral. Maybe next we can suffer through “The Real Monsters of Bravo”. A competition between PC, Kelli Bensimon, the frankenhooker from New Jersey, The Whig Chick from Atlanta, the finalist mother from the 1st Project Runway. Puck hosts. Richard Hatch judges. We sacrifice the winner to the TV Gods and shut this nightmare down.
I’ve never watched NYC Prep, but I love the Gabe recaps. Although, I have one logistical question … how was Gwyneth Paltrow able to name every single person on this show?
I know it’s seven months away, but what does everybody have lined up for Presidents Day?
Seriously though, that line killed me.
“Come on, Baby Geniuses. You’re never going to take down Babyco if you don’t OPEN YOUR EYES.”
Yes! Baby Geniuses ref–never forget!
does anyone just cringe the whole time watching sebastian and girl(s) conversate? theres zero eye contact. ahhh it makes me so uncomfortable watching how uncomfortable they are. and THEN the poor giggly public school girl says dont look in his eyes! he’ll turn you to stone! you never did dude. you never did.
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