When word hit the street that Lauren Gussis, one of the “geniuses” behind the TV series devoted to heroic mass torturer/murderer Dexter, had come up with something even more shocking—a Netflix original about a fat teen-ager who became not fat and hence “Insatiable”, the howls of outrage among the easily outraged—those who seek to expel Nature with a pitchfork in particular—rang so loudly across the internet that even I heard them. The trope of “fat girl becomes gorgeous and goes wild” has always struck me as exceedingly wan in the first place, so I made a vague mental note not to see Insatiable, even by accident, and went about my business.
Then, however, I read a review in Reason by Glenn Garvin, “Ignore the Outrage Mob and Watch Insatiable”, which definitely hit me where I live—at least some of the time. Glenn assured me that Insatiable was a laff riot, and any contrarian like myself ought to watch the show, both on its own merit and as an opportunity to stick it to the pitchfork crowd via a witty review. Well, I’m always in the market for non-heavy TV,1, and, even though some of the funnies that Glenn offered up as proof of his argument—praising the show for “filthy” nicknames like “Bag of Boners”—didn’t strike as, you know, that awesome, I thought I’d take a look.
Well, be careful what you wish for—or, maybe, just be careful, because Insatiable is awful. It’s as if the producers said “we want Two and a Half Men kind of stupid, but gay it up, a lot, and make it southern. That’ll by funny.” Because Insatiable is not about being fat. It’s about being gay, and about the sort of rejection kids experience for being fat as a metaphor for the rejection they experience for being gay.
But why, three years after the Supreme Court ruled that gays have a constitutional right to marriage, are we making TV shows that are metaphors for being gay? Why not just make a show about, you know, being gay? Because, you know, people have been doing that already!
But I guess someone forgot to tell Lauren and Netflix, which used to be considered hip and edgy, rather than sleazy, dopy, and banal. Insatiable is not so much a bag of boners as a bag of gay clichés. Straight men are lecherous oafs who like to work on cars. Straight women are lecherous bitches who want to be president of the Junior League. Gay men are bitchy on the outside, sweet on the inside. Lesbians are, well, flannel.
Ostensibly the story of former fatty now teen femme fatal Patty Bladell (Debby Ryan), Insatiable is really about her beauty pageant coach Bob Armstrong (Dallas Roberts) and her best (and only) pal, Nonnie Thompson (Kimmy Shields), set in a sort of “Southern Living” suburb of (maybe) Atlanta, where conspicuous consumption is a way of life. Through a set of plot contrivances too lame to consider, Disgraced Lawyer Bob sees the now svelte and ready for revenge Patty as his vehicle for social redemption. As for Nonnie, well, as long as she can breathe Patty’s carbon dioxide, she’s happy.
I don’t know if Dallas Roberts is straight or gay, but everything about Lawyer Bob—his body language, his clothes, his fussy mannerisms and speech—screams gayness. He puts down a pair of vulgar broads—because all straight women are vulgar broads—by telling them “some people think red doesn’t clash with pink!” Feel the burn! When a sulky Patty says she’s going to skip the first day of school, Bob leads her back to the straight (so to speak) and narrow by offering her a “makeover”. He then opens a makeup case that springs open in multiply cantilevered glory as if it were the makeup case of the Great God Hermès himself! Behold these wonders!
Although the show makes mechanical fun of the southern beauty pageant “scene”, which to my mind is almost as lazy as making fun of someone for being fat, it can’t help taking Patty’s pursuit of pageant greatness seriously, because what are beauty pageants but show business? And what is show business? It’s not everything. It’s the only thing!2
Lonnie and Bob effectively appoint themselves as Patty’s entourage. She’s their meal ticket out of the suburban hell of conventional life that they both despise. She has the looks, and the selfishness, to be a star! A star! A star of our very own, and we won’t have to share her with anyone!3
Meanwhile, back in the real world, we see busty wives—virtually every woman in the cast except for Shields could get a job at Hooters—tearing open their cleavage at the drop of a hat, while the dudes show off their six-packs with equal regularity. Does anyone watch TV for this any more?
As for the jokes, well, we have obvious cheesy jokes—Patty’s up for “Miss Magic Jesus”—haw, haw, those damn rednecks and their damn Jesus—and inside cheesy jokes—she’s also in the running for “Miss Bareback Buckaroo”—“bareback” being gay slang for unprotected anal sex. Also funny!
Insatiable comes up with imaginative (sort of) ways to finesse the whole racial thing. The social queen of wherever it is we are—the president of the Junior League—is a black woman, though married to a white guy. And there’s an Asian girl whose mom is white, as though we entered some sort of post-racial Nirvana without even noticing.4 Everybody’s equal, everybody’s rich! Problem solved!
I originally planned to watch the entire season of Insatiable to prepare this crushing putdown. But half-way through the fourth episode my soul cracked, and I surrendered—to common sense—and quit. Insatiable is a painful fraud, a “shocking” show that’s afraid that if it revealed its true subject—being gay—no one would watch. “Gender is not just fluid in this show,” exclaimed Glenn in the review that duped me into wasting four hours of my life, “it’s Niagara Falls at peak flow.” “Gender fluid” is just the current euphemism for “gay”. How about letting the love that dare not speak its name, you know, speak!
Afterwords
New York magazine thoughtfully offers a list of the ten “most scathing” reviews of Insatiable. Switching gears considerably, over at American Conservative, Harry J. Kazianis has a piece, “I Was That Morbidly Obese Guy”, that describes the many downsides of being “really fat”. For the most part, the piece is painfully honest, but I have to disagree when Mr. Kazianis remarks on the burden “of not fitting into a culture that worships beauty more than anything else.” Because it isn’t just “our culture” that makes fun of fat people.
When I was in Vietnam, our battery was sometimes invaded by a group of four-year-old Vietnamese kids, who would wait for the appearance of our one fat soldier. When he came in sight, they would shout delightedly “Beaucoups kilo! Beaucoups kilo!”
Yes, little kids will make fun of you if you’re fat, if you smell bad (“You stink!”), if you speak with a southern accent, or if you don’t speak with a southern accent. They will make fun of you if you can’t keep up, or don’t fit in.5 And, of course, it isn’t only little kids. When I was in law school, I once shouted “What’s the matter? Are you deaf?” to a young woman who I knew had limited hearing. I just forgot, because it was rarely noticeable. Innocence is not the same as virtue. In fact, it’s often the opposite.
1. See Jeeves and Wooster, Pretty Little Liars, The Windsors, Call My Agent! Season 1 and Season 2, and Archer. For the perils of “heavy TV”, go here and here.
2. When Patty masters the “pageant walk” (thanks, of course, to Bob’s persistence), the soundtrack swells with triumph.
3. The recent death of the great Aretha Franklin provided the occasion for the telling of a number of not so great anecdotes about the Queen of Soul, strongly suggesting that the average diva should be regarded as a natural wonder along the lines of an erupting volcano and best viewed from a distance of several miles.
4. To further combat racial stereotyping, the Asian girl is dumb as a post.
5. Johnny Carson used to say “Comedy is not pretty” because he knew how much of it is based on heartless ridicule. Once when the pleasingly plump Dom DeLuise was a guest, Carson made some joke about Dom’s weight and the audience booed. “It’s his job!” Dom admonished the crowd
