Insatiable - July 24

So, ‘Insatiable’. Why take two cents on it?

Because it is reminiscent of the SW and its’ post-merger-with-Disney problems, that is why.

What did we see?

A trailer, which starred the main character of the upcoming show – Debbie Ryan. At first she is in a fat suit and everyone hates her; then her character loses weight over the summer, (got into a fight over food, acquired a broken jaw and had to fast all those weeks), and became ‘hot’. As in ‘sexy’. So?

Firstly, this story sounds already tropish and clichéd. The concept of an overweight, or a fat, woman, losing her bulk and becoming sexy, has been in use for a long while now, especially in various soap operas and the like. None of them use this concept as a fat-positive thing…because it is not. It is fat-negative, pure and simple, so for the ‘Insatiable’ crew to declare that their TV series will be so is either a lie, a straightforward one, which is bad, or their (first) trailer was just poorly designed and has currently shot the entire upcoming series in the foot, which isn’t very good either. In the trailer, to elaborate, we see Debbie’s character Patty decide that rather becoming a brand-new person, she would have revenge on everyone else, and we see footage of her punching another girl in the face at one moment and in another pouring…something (it can booze, or pee, or gasoline), over a sleeping boy, (after the two of them had sex). How exactly is this positive anything? It would make more sense to assume that Patty was always an unpleasant person, only now that she’s thin nobody notices it – not at first – and so she’s free to do whatever she wants, which is to say – be an unpleasant and a bad person. How is this positive?

…Meanwhile, Netflix airing another TV series, about another heavy young woman named Sierra, and this series is very different; it is another variant of the Cyrano story. In the original version, Cyrano was a very eloquent, but ugly man – he had a big nose, rather like HP’s professor Snape, but unlike the latter, he was very meticulous about his looks, (inasmuch as it could be helped), and a master duelist as well, so fewer people wanted to fight him than they did Snape…before Snape became a Potions’ Master, an Animagus, a Death Eater, and so on. He certainly had no problem in whipping Lockhart back in HP&CS either, but then again, we are talking about Lockhart here, so yeah. Where were we?

…One of the main plotlines of the Cyrano story was when he was helping another nobleman – a handsome man, who was as dumb as a rock…basically, a stereotypical rock – woo a maiden by being Cyrano’s mouthpiece – and the same we see in the Sierra’s trailer, where she uses one of her classmates – a pretty girl who is failing her classes – to act as Sierra’s mouthpiece to win over another one of their classmates…a handsome jock. How exactly this is more radical and fat-positive than ‘Insatiable’, exactly?

Actually, it is not. ‘Insatiable’ is the more radical one, ironically, but it just is not fat-positive. The word itself, ‘positive’, has a bunch of associations tied to it by now, and people know how to use them in a story, especially in a visual one – in a cinema, on TV or on a YouTube channel, to name a few sources. You try to subvert them…and you might succeed, or your followers might, where you have failed.

This is where that SW make an appearance. After their merger, Disney did not make a complete reboot of the series, rather they are continuing in the general direction of GL, but due to a series of surprising decisions (from Disney) that were discussed at another time, they were able to split their fanbase into a number of fractions, and it isn’t the case of a vocal minority – a single one; rather, this is a case of several fractions, all of whom are vocal and also warring with each other: the best case for scaring away new fans as well as for losing old ones. Both Disney and SW are media juggernauts, but their latest movie – ‘Solo’ – brought only tens of millions of income rather than hundreds, as expected, especially by Disney, so now Disney & SW are keeping a low profile as they are possibly figuring out what to do without appearing to be submitting to the fans’ desires of – whatever they want, for that would be a bad weakness, you know? Of course, this is also how democracy works – the people want something and they force it out of their politicians – but these days in real life USA has issues with democracy too, so let’s leave Disney & SW be… for now.

Back to Netflix? With ‘Insatiable’ and maybe similar TV series/movies/etc., they are trying to do what Disney did with SW, only go further and subvert the tropes in new ways. This actually will not be new, as the semi-reboot of ‘Heathers’, (appearing on various TV outlets earlier in July 2018), has already done – and it is already meeting with disapproval…which hadn’t stopped it from being aired, not entirely. Donald and his presidential achievements come to mind – they too are met with disapproval, and it had not stopped them, not entirely. How is that for a discussion topic on the U.S. society?

Back to Netflix again? As we discussed at the beginning, ‘Insatiable’ doesn’t come across very fat-positive; neither does Sierra’s series, but there Netflix isn’t subverting the tropes, but rather playing them in an old-fashioned way, and as a result that series is already being compared to ‘Insatiable’ in a favorable manner. Good for them…perhaps this is all a plot by Netflix to boost Sierra’s ratings for this and the future installments, while dropping ‘Insatiable’ off post-S1, (or sometime around that). In that case, where does it leave Debbie Ryan and the rest of her droogs? Probably pissed-off at Netflix and looking for some revenge.

More likely, however, is that Netflix is venturing into an unknown territory without a map and already getting some things wrong. That is not a problem, all they still need to do is to figure out when to cut their losses and retreat, or at least – re-think their strategy, just as Disney & SW might be doing right now. Otherwise, Netflix will arrive where Disney &SW currently are – in a position where they seem to be losing money rather than anything else.

Again, this is not exactly new territory for Netflix, as their misadventure with the ‘Gilmore Girls’ indicates – sometimes they actually do not succeed and need to do something. When the ‘Gilmore Girls’ reboot didn’t succeed, they quietly shelved any potential follow-ups, while ASP is currently running a different TV series entirely – and a successful one, just as the reboot was not. Sometimes all you need is to end something and start an entirely new thing instead. Good luck to her.

And equally good luck to Netflix with ‘Insatiable’, too. I don’t know what is going on with the series – maybe ‘Insatiable’ is going to be a great series and what we have here is just a badly made trailer – but until it comes forth, (August 10, 2018), we’ll just have wait to see how it develops.

This is it for this time; see you all soon.