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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
ABC's clumsy new reality series takes a cartoonish swing at class and cultural difference. But the Italian-American family at its center won't play the network's game.
Mar 27, 2003 | Americans don't discuss class, we telegraph it. "She looks like a guest on Jerry Springer," we say. "He's a thug in gold jewelry who drives a souped-up Lexus." "She blasts 'Achy Breaky Heart' in her Pontiac Firebird on her drive home from Hooters every night."
In keeping with this policy, ABC's new reality series "The Family" (Tuesdays at 10 p.m.) isn't about class. This is not a show about thrusting a working-class Italian-American family into a glitzy setting and editing the whole experience down to confrontational, vainglorious or ignorant comments. "The Family" is about, uh, money ... and family! How far will these cretins, er, family members go to win a million dollars? Will they openly challenge each other for the money like common trash, or play nice and seethe under their breath, like well-behaved WASPs? Is Italian blood thicker than bottled bubbly spring water? Stay tuned and find out!
Think of it as "Survivor: Palm Beach," only the contestants are related to each other, and the judges (aka the "secret board of trustees") are the house staff. There are reward challenges, in which the family competes on the unfamiliar turf of tennis courts and polo fields for unfamiliar prizes like yachting trips, and elimination challenges, which place two family members on the chopping block for one to be voted off by the staff. Replace Jeff Probst with what appears to be a robot replica of George Hamilton, and prepare to be underwhelmed, both by the ratings and by the dippy "Falcon Crest"-style spectacle.
Naturally we're presented with the same cartoonish TV wealth we saw in the laughable waltzing and fine dining of "Joe Millionaire," a "Little Orphan Annie" vision of wealth that must've sprung, fully formed, from the head of some middle-class housewife during the Depression and has somehow survived ever since. The family is fed snails and frog legs; challenge winners are rewarded with a ride on a Lear jet, during which they're served champagne and strawberries dipped in chocolate. Ringo Allen, the social secretary, gives the group a lesson on which forks and spoons to use. Rich folks are so nutty, aren't they? With their crazy silverware and their weird foods and their champagne! But when family members tell the camera, earnestly, "I could really get used to this," you wonder if they're referring to getting drunk on champagne around the clock (who couldn't?) or having more than one fork on the table at the same time.
Realistic or not, this is haute-capitalist porn at its best. One by one, each player gushes over the thrills of blatant excess -- how the Lear jet can take off in, like, literally, two seconds, or how beautiful the interior of the yacht is. "I was like, wow, I cannot believe people actually have the money just to go on these things for fun," says 22-year-old Cousin Anthony, more or less the series' leading man. Forget that a million bucks in today's society means early retirement and a summer home at best, not butlers, yachts and private jets.
Not surprisingly, the show's creators go out of their way to make the family members look like jerks. Why, they hardly know how to play tennis! Listen to silly Cousin Dawn Marie referring to the U.S. Open as the "U.S. Opening"! Watch how Aunt Donna has the gall to tell the French chef that her family prefers dried basil to fresh! "None of us had ever sailed before," offers Cousin Robert. Never sailed before? Just imagine! Who are these clods?
If you're still not getting the message, who better than the house staff to pipe in with petty observations and empty snobbery? Ringo proclaims that he's personally offended by Cousin Mike's tattoos, as well as his foul and deeply reprehensible act of reinserting his dirty napkin into a napkin ring. In deciding whether to eliminate Cousin Melinda, the French chef, Frank Porcher, offers this evidence against her: "The only time I saw [her] in my kitchen, that was to ask me for ketchup!" The horror!
