Vapid pretty people in Dallas give the city a bad name.
If you watch any reality TV regularly then you know that a lot of people cast on reality shows blame their “edit” for making them look like jackasses on a national stage. Sometimes they have a valid point due to the producers having their own agenda but sometimes the edit in question just comes down to the “talent” being boring so there’s got to be a slant or the show would be a giant snoozer.
But then there are shows like Bravo’s new reality lifestyle series, Most Eligible Dallas, which casts the kind of personalities that engender loathing that no edit could conjure from the ether. Modeled after Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise, Dallas follows around a close-knit group of late 20-something movers and shakers in the city’s yuppie elite as they party or eat. Really, they don’t do much of anything else except for the occasional navel gazing conversations between cocktails or forkfuls of food. They all say they have incredible jobs that they either “earned” because of their hooked-up families or because they’re “awesome” at what they do, but we never see them working in the pilot.
And just who are these magnificent specimens of Dallas social royalty?
Glenn is a NFL punter for the Raiders. Successful enough, handsome and well built, he knows it and flaunts it and plans to make his abs the backup career when his kicking foot fails him. Did you know that he also gets sexually excited watching hot girls compete on Family Feud? Yeah, no one ever wanted to know that, not even Richard Dawson.
Tara is as blonde as they come, living single with her plethora of shelter dogs. A crusader for all animals, Tara admits that she would always prefer to save a critter than a person in need. Swell. She’s also got a gay friend who reprimands her for letting her dogs eat off the Wedgewood. How hilarious!
Drew is the token gay of the group who was a former fatty and sells exotic cars at his family’s Dallas dealership. Taking the spoiled path to everything, Drew lost 200 pounds through lap band surgery, plastic surgery and now pregnancy hormones and a 500-calorie diet that keeps him slim. But Drew gives himself “points” because he knows a lot about cars, so that means he’s not a swishy gay so we can respect him more. Crickets.
Lastly we get the F and frack of UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension), Matt and Courtney. Friends for years, they jokingly say they are the only singles in Dallas that have never hooked up. Matt says it’s because they have the same temperament, and they would implode as a couple. Courtney smiles in agreement but really looks like she wants to have her way with him and raise his babies tomorrow. And that there is the driving conflict of the show.
Matt is a player (how dare you, he would say!) that likes to collect a harem of hotties to take with him to the clubs. He had his heart broken by an ex and now he’s a honest free-wheeler having fun by not settling down. He really thinks he’s awesome.
Meanwhile Courtney is ready to be MARRIED now and you get the feeling that she remains tethered to Matt’s orbit waiting for him to get that she’s the one for him. So she follows him around begrudgingly and gives the shank eye to every woman on Matt’s arm, including his old friend Neill who is now a single mom relocating back to Dallas. At a dinner get together, Courtney doesn’t even try to mask her disdain of the little blonde as she grills her with inappropriate questions and judgments about her single parenting choices. I have to say if there were lasers in Courtney’s eye sockets, Neill’s DNA would be part of the vapor in that sushi bar. Courtney is then called out by her male friends for being a bitch, which sends her into a fit of “poor me” tears in the ladies room as she tells Tara that she WANTS a baby NOW and it’s not fair that pretty bitch has one.
See, how can you not love these people? Oh wait, I don’t.
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.