Screen: Oxygen
If there's anything we're supposed to learn from weight loss-themed reality television, it's that we shouldn't make unfair judgments based on superficial first impressions, and in general, that's probably a good rule. In the case of My Big Fat Revenge, however, the trailer actually did do a pretty good job of preparing the viewer for how gross the show turned out to be.
In the series premiere, we meet Jen and Tamar. Both have struggled with their weight all their lives. Each has one particular antagonist who's made her feel especially bad about her figure. Both put themselves in the show's producers'/trainers'/nutritionists' hands so that they can drop as much weight as they're able in three months, at the end of which they get to show off their new bodies to their loved ones, and then participate in a scheme to get revenge on their chosen foes.
This is the kind of show that could only exist on a mid-tier cable network like Oxygen (or We, or E!, or possibly TLC). Though it's from the same producers as The Biggest Loser, it's too tawdry for a real network. And unlike The Biggest Loser, it doesn't actually have any educational or aspirational component: the workout segment is dispensed with in a very brief montage, so the viewer doesn't learn what changes Tamar and Jen made to reshape their bodies, other than that they worked out for two hours three times a day (a regimen that the average viewer who isn't able to take a three-month leave of absence from her life couldn't easily replicate at home).
Also -- and this is just a sidebar -- I don't love that the show emphasizes the women's start and end weights so much. I know I'm tilting at windmills with my wish that reality shows (and magazines and websites and blah blah blah) wouldn't put so much emphasis on numbers on scales; it just gives the consumers of these media a benchmark for what's normal or ideal when every body is different and comparing yourself to anyone is unproductive. I mean, I get that the weight loss is part of the series premise, but they could have just said what percentage Jen and Tamar had lost and still gotten it across to the viewer how impressive their achievements were -- or not, and just shown us how they looked in their "after" dresses; we can clearly see the difference, so why do we need to know the number each woman's going to put on her driver's license?
Anyway: as the series title suggests, the revenge is...you know, the point of the show. And you'd think that in order to hook the viewer from the start, producers would have premiered the series with a couple of corkers -- vengeance schemes perpetrated on real bastards who, by the end, fully appreciate that they brought this pain on themselves and go forward vowing never to victimize another person for her appearance again. However, that doesn't happen, in either story, at all.
First up is Jen, who's getting revenge on her ex-boyfriend, who never gets a chyron but whose name variously sounds like Hiran, Kiran, or Garren. Jen met (let's say) Kiran through a BBW dating site, and the two were together for nine months. During that time, they never socialized with his friends -- because, Jen says, he was ashamed of her appearance and didn't want to introduce her to anyone else in his life; he also told her at some point in their time together that even though he met her on a dating site devoted to plus-size women and the men who love them, he was actually into thin blondes, so would she consider losing weight and dyeing her hair? Naturally, Jen's revenge on him involves producers hiring a thin blonde to pretend to go out on a date with Kiran, which time she will spend making him feel self-conscious about his looks. Poetic?
Jen hypes this confrontation by gloating, "This is for the fat girls, motherfucker!" Except over her whole story, all the b-roll and still photos we see of Kiran show such an unassuming, unremarkable dude that you can't really believe Jen would give him so much power over her, retroactively. Of course words can be hurtful, and your romantic partner is supposed to be the one person in the world with whom you can be completely vulnerable, and Kiran broke Jen's trust: I get all that. But he just does not seem worth it -- and I'm not even sure that Jen thinks it's worth it, though she puts on a good show for the cameras, watching the terrible date on a monitor while Tara, Kiran's fake date, mocks his hair and lack of muscle tone and denies to "friends" who "run into her by chance" that they're even on a date. After Tara pretends to go to the bathroom and ditches Kiran, Jen comes out from her hiding place, needles him about the terrible date, and tells him she set up the whole thing. He is not even kind of chastened, doesn't apologize for what he put Jen through however long ago it was, and takes off with a final eloquent gesture.
Look, this guy is clearly a shithead (viz "You want an apology because I dated a fat chick and you're not fat anymore?"). But since Jen has been so hurt by verbal insults, she kind of loses moral standing by taking an eye-for-an-eye approach to try to bully him into an on-camera apology -- which would obviously be insincere were he to give her one, which he doesn't. "I don't care, I look fucking amazing," says Jen, sounding like a shithead herself. "I embarrassed him like he embarrassed me." Yeah! You're both terrible! At least he didn't humiliate you on TV!
The stakes are higher with Tamar, because the target of her revenge plot is someone she can't as easily cut out of her life: her mother. Makeba has verbally abused Tamar about her weight with slurs like "tire belly" and unfavorably compared Tamar's appearance to Tamar's sister's. To get Makeba to understand the effect this abuse has had on her, Tamar has written a fake play and brought Makeba to Los Angeles to watch a preview and give notes to Virginia, the actor who's supposedly playing the role based on Makeba. This is an assignment Makeba takes on with relish, and as Virginia screams "tire belly" at the director standing in for stage-Tamar, Makeba helpfully shares that she also used to call Tamar "tub of lard," and chuckles at the memory. Even when Virginia gets (or acts) overwhelmed by the emotional heft of the scene and the poison she's being required to portray, Makeba's smile never wavers. Things don't really get much better when Tamar comes out and explains what's actually going on, as Makeba spends Tamar's tearful announcement texting, and then doesn't know what she's even supposed to be apologizing for. Tamar quickly figures out that she's not actually going to penetrate Makeba and finally just says, through gritted teeth, "Can I just hear that you apologize. That you're sorry." Makeba shrugs: "Sorry." Unlike Jen, Tamar doesn't pretend that this exercise met all her expectations, but grants that it's about as much as she is ever going to get out of Makeba. It's rough.
And really, this is the problem: if the series premiere is anything to go on, the revenge is presented as justice being meted out to wrongdoers, bringing closure in its wake. But seeing Tamar deflate backstage as Makeba guffaws her way through a performance based on her emotional abuse of her own child, it doesn't seem like the actual deed even kind of lives up to the slavering anticipation of these manipulated participants. To me, Jen and Tamar start out sad, and end up thinner and sad -- in Tamar's case, maybe even sadder than where she started.
My final judgment on this whole misbegotten affair is that there's usually no reason to revisit the people who've wronged you in the hopes that they'll admit their wrongdoing, delivering the lines you assigned them in the script you wrote in your head. Living well really is the best revenge, and even if your enemies never know you're living well, you will know it, so fuck them. But I'm actually going to let Kiran have the very last word.
