Saturday, April 03, 2021

Weekend Post

This is a re-post from ten years ago.  I used to review bad reality shows, and this was one of my favorites.  PREGNANT IN HEELS.  I imagine you can find it on some streaming service.  Either way, it's a review worth reviewing.  Enjoy.

 

Rosie Pope

In my never ending quest to bring you the absolute worst, most appalling reality shows on television, I present PREGNANT IN HEELS on Bravo. Thanks to reader Matt for turning me on to this argument for why rich people are buffoons and shouldn’t be allowed to have matches much less children.

The show centers around Rosie Pope, a willowy opportunist who calls herself a “Maternity Concierge” to the “million dollar mamas” of New York’s Upper East Side. These rich sheep now have consultants for everything. I imagine these self-proclaimed experts are selected by which cable network their reality show is on.

Here’s Rosie Pope’s qualifications for guiding you through pregnancy and parenting: She’s a maternity clothes designer.

In last night’s premiere episode she handled two very difficult cases. Sarah & her probably gay husband, and power couple Samantha Ettus & Mitch. I’d say SPOILER ALERT but either you’re not going to watch this crap anyway or you are just to see if I’m really describing this accurately (I am).

Sarah and Jon live in a swank loft. She’s eight months along. Their problem is that they don’t want this baby to disrupt their lives in any way. Is there a social worker in the house??? Babies have been called little miracles and bundles of joy. Not before Sarah have I ever heard them referred to as life force sucking parasites. Seriously, Joan Crawford would flinch.

Sarah Dearest asks Rosie to design a nursery that doesn’t cramp their style, a nursery that “isn’t too…baby.” The kid’s due in three weeks. They’ve done virtually nothing to prepare.

And then there’s Samantha & Mitch. She’s a best-selling author and talk show guest, and he’s a big business success as evidenced by some Lucite award he once won. They’re having their third child. But they’re in serious crisis mode because they can’t seem to come up with the perfect “marquee” name for him. Samantha says, “We want our baby to have class surrounding their brand.”

For their first two children they compiled a list of names that major “thought leaders” had selected for their kids and debated over each one. That’s 12,000 names. 12,000 separate discussions. (Little wonder that Samantha has a blog called OBSESSED.) 

But that was very time consuming (life force sucking), so they’ve called upon Rosie Pope – the Lone Ranger of the Stupid Rich – to do the legwork for them for brand, I mean baby number three.

This is so much easier for Jews, by the way. Who’s a recent dead relative? That’s the name. Let’s eat.

Rosie takes Sarah and the lovely Mister shopping. Trying to teach Sarah how to fold up a baby stroller is like teaching a monkey how to be a Benihana chef. Rosie convinces her that she needs a baby toy in the crib and suggests this big pink stuffed teddy bear. Sarah is repulsed. The toy she selects: one wooden alphabet block. At least it wasn’t a wire hanger.

Rosie the Riveting assembles a “think tank” for Samantha & Mitch. Among the luminaries sitting around the conference table are Rosie’s fashion expert assistant L.T., (who looks and acts like Hollywood Montrose in MANNEQUIN but weirder... and with a hairstyle that can only be described as a mare's tail hanging down to his nose so his face really does look like a horses' ass). Sam & Mitch are horrified. Others on the panel include a linguistics expert, a baby name blogger, a poet, and some other woman – I have no idea what she does and it wasn’t worth hitting rewind.

Samantha spelled out some moniker guidelines. It must be easy to spell but not too popular. No decorative names, no names that start with J, E, or R, and no names that end with S. Also, no names that are only two letters. They tossed around names and settled on about ten.

Back at Sarah’s stylish flat, Rosie shows up with a therapist. She delicately confesses she has some “concerns” that perhaps Sarah’s baby might not be born into the most loving and nurturing of environments. I think her unstated real concern is that Sarah will sell the baby for a new iPad2.

Sarah, of course, is livid but after five minutes of whiz-bang therapy Sarah is completely turned around. Edited out was probably the part where the therapist hypnotized her with a shiny object.

Next we see that Rosie has arranged a Focus Group to whittle down the ten names. By now my jaw's on the floor.  Sam & Mitch are very excited and sit in the next room observing through the one-way mirror. Within minutes they’re calling the members of the Focus Group idiots. I would submit that the bigger idiots are the ones who commissioned them in the first place… and probably for a cost of about ten thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money to hear what strangers think of the name Tucker.

Rosie and L.T., her assistant (who RuPaul would say butch-up), go to Sarah’s apartment to set up the nursery. Sarah and her husband leave while the transformation is being done although I would have bet even money it would have been Sarah’s husband and L.T. who leave together.

Samantha & Mitch now have a dinner party of their snooty friends to narrow down the names even more. And who knew? They all have conflicting opinions. Poor Sam & Mitch. This being a parent thing is HARD!  By the way, Samantha also gives parenting advice on THE TODAY SHOW. 

Flash forward three weeks and both women are new mommies. Samantha & Mitch selected the name Bowen, which is the one name that everybody in every group hated. And Sarah & Jon are blissfully in love with their new baby – named Fox. Now they could have used a Focus Group.

PREGNANT IN HEELS. I look forward to the follow-up reality series – EASTSIDE RUNAWAYS.

17 comments :

Troy McClure said...

I'm gonna go ahead and guess that Fox is now a young Republican who believes the election was stolen.

Jeff Boice said...

Naming the baby in the 18th and 19th century was simple: Eldest son named after paternal grandfather, eldest daughter after maternal grandmother. Second son named after maternal grandfather, second daughter named after paternal grandmother. Subsequent offspring were named after their aunts and uncles. They also knew this would frustrate the hell out of descendants in the 21st century trying to research the family tree on the internet.

maxdebryn said...

Lest we forget the British series called LOVE ISLAND. It's also known as STD ISLAND by some wags.

Joseph Scarbrough said...

Reality TV gives unscrupulous people so much power that they can eventually make their way into the world of politics and even get into the White House, as a certain orange imbecile has already proven, and a certain tit and ass-injected lawyer daughter is also trying to achieve.

Mike Bloodworth said...

At its inception BRAVO tried to air classy programs. Sort of like a cable version of PBS. But it didn't take long for the channel to degenerate into shows about "Real Housewives," the show Ken is writing about and others that political correctness prevents me from commenting on. I believe the term used to be "Trainwreck Television." At one time BRAVO was an appropriate name. Now it's merely ironic.
I look at it this way, while watching BRAVO one can always say, my life sucks, but at least I'm not those people.

Troy McClure: You're as predictable as a sitcom punchline.

M.B.

Brian Phillips said...

FRIDAY QUESTION: Musicians have favorite studios, do you have a fondness for a particular sound stage or studio when you direct?

blinky said...

The rich are different. They are clueless, selfish assholes.

sanford said...

Blinky said

The rich are different. They are clueless, selfish assholes. I think that is a minority of rich people Of course I haven't knowingly meant any wealthy people. The late Sam Johnson o Johnson wax (from where I live) was known to be a pretty down to earth person. Obviously there are people like Trump and his son in law are pretty much jerks. They never had to work for any thing.

James Van Hise said...

I wish someone would have the now grown children from Kid Nation sit down for a behind the scenes interview. While I'm sure their parents had to sign non-disclosure forms, they can't hold someone who was ten years old when they appeared on the show to that. One of the children revealed a few years ago that while only 2 adults were seen on camera (thereby trying to make it appear that the children were largely on their own) that there were in fact more adults behind the cameras than there were children in front of the cameras. One girl revealed that some of the more outrageous things the children said came from producers who would feed them lines just before the cameras rolled. This is the show which became notorious for making the parents sign contracts which would keep producers from being held responsible even if a child was eaten by a shark (who thinks up things like that?). After the fact the show got into trouble for never getting permission from the state where it was filmed to adhere to the state's child labor laws.

Unknown said...

Thanks for the re-run. TRY to keep up with your postings, but great to see an oldy, and in this case, a goody!

It would be nice to have a follow up show to see how the 2 kids are doing, how much has been spent on therapy, and interviews with the parents divorce lawyers.

scottmc said...

Thank you for posting this again. I've never forgotten the part'This is so much easier for Jews, by the way...' but I'd forgotten the context.

LMNtrees said...

This blog might be a good place for us to develop our master plan to rid the world of reality tv series. Who's with me!?!?!?

Sue said...

I just laughed and laughed. Marquee name! So funny. Thank you.
Sue

Philly Cinephile said...

"Bad reality shows" -- isn't that redundant?

Mike Bloodworth is correct -- back in the day, BRAVO was a high-end cultural network, and I believe it was commercial-free. As a gay teen sorting through all of that, I especially loved that BRAVO featured a lot of full frontal male nudity -- much more than you'd get in those softcore porn films that the premium channels used to air. And the nudity was always in the context of an art film or a performance piece, so I could convince myself I was there for the culture. I knew the end was coming when the network started editing out the eye candy and interrupting the programs with ads.

Joe said...

Ken:

if you haven't already seen this article, you will enjoy it!

https://www.gq.com/story/how-did-frasier-afford-his-apartment?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits


LES U

sumerlad said...

A&E also had wonderful programs but their content has been garbage for so long I don’t even bother to check the listings anymore.

Unknown said...

Are there a lot of two letter American Caucasian first names? Jo, then Bo, came to mind, but those are nicknames, as far as I know. The other rules sounded stupid, but that one jumped out.