It's Almost Too Late To Talk About Gallery Girls
Even without watching any of the Real Housewives series, Bravo is having an exceptional Q3 and 4 when it comes to the casting on its reality shows. From all the entitled bitches on Pregnant In Heels (particularly this hag -- quit bragging about your fancy lifestyle; you live in New Jersey) to the crazies on Miss Advised to this con artist of a design assistant on Flipping Out. But for assembling the bonkers bouquet that is the cast of Gallery Girls, someone deserves an Emmy and a Lifetime Achievement award and a Nobel Prize.
What makes Gallery Girls so addictive is that you're convinced whichever one of them you're watching is the worst until the next one starts talking and is somehow worse. And then the next one is worse still. It's like that game kids play where they pile their hands on each other to make a bigger stack, but the stack can't get any bigger and then they're just frantically slapping each other's hands. This analogy also works because the viewer spends every episode of Gallery Girls wishing she could slap sense into everyone involved. And because they are all privileged dickheads (unlike, for instance, Amber Portwood), one doesn't feel guilty wishing for each of them to get their comeuppance. I mean, I started chortling out loud during this scene last night.
Homeless and she just spent two grand on trying to make the End Of Century girls like her? Oh, it's delicious.
Gallery Girls has complete contempt for its cast, and rightly so: they are a passel of entitled idiots with completely unearned pretensions. ("Mr. Brainwash is my favourite artist," said Claudia last night, efficiently if accidentally explaining why she hasn't made any art sales at her gallery.) And the girls are all contemptuous of each other, too. Claudia hates Chantal for being so lazy and contributing so little to their doomed "business." Chantal hates Angela for being so attractive to Chantal's longtime boyfriend Spencer, so she racistly dismisses the crush as Spencer's "Asian fetish." Angela hates Liz for being blonde, and her equal in beauty. Liz hates everyone, but especially Amy for being a grovelling drunk, and Maggie for having no control of her meathead boyfriend. Maggie hates Liz for replacing her in the job Maggie blew off for two weeks. Amy hates Kerri for replacing her at her job, even though Amy was chronically late and generally unprofessional. And Kerri probably hates all of them, but since she's the only one who seems to have a modicum of grace or character (and, not coincidentally, the only one who actually needs to support herself financially, from what we can tell), she has wisely kept that to herself.
Nothing momentous ever happens on the show -- these are art gallery assistants, not ice road truckers -- so basically all we're watching is gossip, backstabbing, and misguided striving by six terrible people and one who's kind of okay but still guilty by association. And because their pursuits are as rarefied as they are inconsequential, they are really hurting no one but themselves and each other and therefore the experience is pleasantly uncomplicated for the audience. Our job is to hate these girls, and we do. Oh boy, do we. It's not a worthwhile or defensible use of our time, but that doesn't mean we won't mourn it when it ends next week. Too soon!