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City Spin-offs That Need to Happen Now We're officially past the half-way mark for the maiden season of The City (does this show ever friggin' end?) and I'm still not convinced I give a French flip about our protagonist Whitney Port. Seems to me her only real function is to wear hideous outfits and stare blankly at her vastly more interesting friends, enemies, lovers, employers and cohorts. The problem with Whitney as I see it is that she seems like a relatively functional, stable human, and therein lies the reason she's so goddamned boring to watch. When someone crosses her, she doesn't freak out and smack a bitch. She doesn't plot revenge or cry 'til the mascara streams down her face. She calmly and maturely deals with it like a normal person. And I don't care how many porn shots of the good life in New York City the producers splice into this show, that makes for some dull-ass TV. Her cracked crew of friends and associates are all sorts of flawed, and that's why I'm proposing a handful of spin-offs that I'm hoping MTV will create so I don't have to look at Whitney's zombie stare anymore.

Erin Lucas: OMG, Boys!
Whitney's quasi-BFF Erin (who incidentally is the daughter of AC/DC's bass player Cliff Williams but no one saw fit to mention that on Music Television) has been dating two dudes at once and is constantly offering up love advice that boils down to a reasonable argument for polygamy. She actually told Whitney that if you date three dudes at a time and extract only their best qualities, you'll have the perfect boyfriend. It's plain mathematics! Why not give her her own damned show which focuses on juggling as many boys as humanly possible? There will be boy-on-boy altercations defending her honor, pregnancy scares, visits to the AIDS clinic, and hopefully a cameo from Angus Young.

Nevan Donahue's Louche Life
People hate on socialite Olivia Palermo's layabout cousin Nevan, but honest to Mildred, this breed of parasitic rich boy is an urban phenomenon that is endlessly fascinating to me. Nevan's self-aware loserdom and outsized sense of entitlement is sort of charming in a way, because he knows he's an asshole and he embraces it, all while maintaining his artfully mussed hair and scattering witty barbs about the downtown contingent of hipsters in his wake. He's a modern day dandy, and I want more! His couch-hopping, plus-one persona would make for a great story arc as he tries (and fails) to get his shit together, offending people endearingly along the way.

Diane Von Furstenberg's House of Faaaaaaaaahbulous
To my mind, a show documenting the mordant, barely intelligible DVF's life and work would be appealing the same way The Rachel Zoe Project is -- a pleasurably voyeuristic look at the alien lifestyle of a crackpot quasi-celeb. The few times DVF has made an appearance on The City, her thick European accent and general disdain for everything she encounters leaves a lasting -- and fairly hilarious -- impression. 'Member when she breezed into the showroom, conspicuously ignored stupid Olivia and rattled off the looks she wanted Whitney to put together for some shoot like she was telling her to take out the trash, then replied to Whitney's chirrup-y "You look so pretty!" with a gruff "No I don't"? That is the stuff of reality TV gold, people!

The Model Diet
Barring Olivia, Whitney's insect-like friend Allie is possibly the most irritating person on the show, what with her insane skinniness and insistence on rolling her eyes at everything anyone says, ever. She's a model, after all. But who the hell doesn't love a deluded smart-ass who incites conflict everywhere she goes? Anyone who can go toe-to-toe with bitch-on-wheels Kelly Cutrone has a sterling silver set of balls, which is no small feat considering how tight her jeans are. Her Achilles heel seems to be insidious douchebag Adam, who needs to disappear stat. As long as there are a hefty amount of fashion-shoot montages featuring early Nineties house, prolonged scenes in which Allie prepares her monk-like meals of green sludge and vitamin pills, and a smattering of curbside screaming matches with her douchebag of the moment, this show will be a surefire hit!

1 Comments

February 28, 2009 6:08 PM
Alex
Reply

NewsWeek actually made a fake spin-off called "The District" with edited Barack Obama news footage and a pretty decent voice over. It's fantastic.

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