Brief Thoughts on PoweR Girls

For those who didn’t witness the grand guignol debut of MTV’s PoweR Girls, the show follows four primped PR interns and Lizzie Grubman – the suppurating spin doctor, that leathery, bottle-blonde grotesquerie – who is established as the show’s object of aspiration. It seemed impossible that a reality-show godhead could get more nauseating than short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump, but with PoweR Girls, MTV’s endlessly innovative programming incubi have found reality TV’s latest emetic. Is it Lizzie’s factory-made face, the impossible sense of entitlement, or, lest we forget, the fact that she drove Daddy’s Mercedes into a crowd of people?
To her credit, neither Lizzie’s nature nor her nurture is all that – her father (who represents Barry Manilow) has a portrait of his wife’s nether region hanging over the bed – seriously. And she is the one who discovered hip-hop.
For a group of people whose entire job is to kiss ass, these women don’t quite manage to ingratiate themselves to the audience. The half-hour was enough to make me wish her offices weren’t on Lafayette but were instead in the World Trade Center. PoweR Girls was like watching a quick-cut adaptation of Bret Ellis’ Glamorama, but at least you could imagine those ciphers were attractive – with Power Girls we get four repellant wannabe’s and one revolting queen bee. God knows I’ll watch it next week – it was excellent.