S1 E08: The Crown

[JayDub1987]

Everybody's (OK, there's like 7 of us) favorite shit show is back tonight! 

Nicky confronts Catt; Gigi makes a splash at a press event; Ace and Ana get closer; Albie lies to Tripp to protect Nicky; Luke is concerned Jamie is getting too close to the Roman family.

[JayDub1987]

Time for the live Monarch reaction post. 

• Opening with a 1996 country cover. Shocking. But if any 90s country kid says they didn't belt out the chorus to this song without fully knowing what it was about, they're lying. My wife, who lost interest in this show weeks ago said, "Are they just hoping the casual viewer won't know that these songs are all old?" I'm assuming that's the goal here.
• A storyline where an overweight person doesn't wanna go to a pool party. Yay? 
• 11 minutes into a 60 minute show (not counting commercials) and absolutely nothing has happened. I guess the pacing of the last episode may have set me up for disappointment. 
• "Fancy Like" is at least a newer song. And it's catchy...so now I'm gonna be singing that all evening. 
• 26 minutes in...and there's still nothing happening. Just feel like we're having random conversations here. 
• More "newer" songs during the pool party scene. Kudos for that. Nice to know someone at this show knows that songs have been recorded in the last 15 years.
• "Let's Give Them Something to Talk About" 1991. That's more like it. 
• I think we're supposed to like the fact that Nicky's daughter is so "rebellious." Too bad she comes across as whiny and entitled. 
• Albie having something on the guy investigating the murder was expected. Nothing wrong with the good ole' soap opera trope of a corrupt person in power.
• Not entirely sure how we're supposed to take the teen sex scene. He's adopted so they're not really related, but the whole thing still felt a bit...icky? 
• Alright, now we're working in an anxiety disorder storyline? I guess we're just trying to come up with something other than some sorta/kinda/not really incest to make Ace interesting. 
• "This One's For the Girls" 2003. I know we're at a debutante ball, but having a teenage boy sing this seems so odd to me. 
• OK, kinda cool of Luke and Albie to step in, and the "Family Finds You" song was fitting. 

That may have been the toughest episode to get through yet, and that bar was set pretty low. Ah well, I'll force myself through another episode next week. 

[bybrandy]

I was fine with Gigi being Meh about the pool party.  I get the point that it would have been way cooler if it hadn't been an issue at all and she just went and slayed it but I don't know a lot of women of any size super excited to strut their stuff in front of press at a pool party.   I just wish GIgi would ire her stylist (and the shows) and her wife because the suit was fine, the coverup was meh, but literally nobody told her including her spouse that the only people at the party who would be dressed for the pool would be some teenagers who were occupying the pool?    Her whole team should be fired.   FIRED.   

I didn't find the daughter (whose name I don't know) whiney.   I mean her protest would have felt less overdramatic if we'd seen her make a failed attempt at a conversation with her mom first... but seriously, smash the patriarchy... but this show won't because this show is all about the patriarchy.   Know what would have been way more smash the patriarchy than looking sad until her uncle showed up?  Her pulling her mom out onto the dance floor.    Way, way, way more cool.   Way more.

I get that the contest was a farce and there is no way daughter whose name I don't know should have won but I don't quite get how Nikki can just go in and award the crown to somebody who didn't place.   Is she in charge of who wins and I missed that?   Because...   

I wasn't squicked by Ana and her cousin because they didn't grow up in any kind of familial relationship and as far as I know neither of them know Albie is even maybe her granddad at that point.   I mean it is going to get messy but I wasn't squicked.  And I liked that she was clearly more experienced than he was and he wasn't all macho gross about it.  

I feel like I'm barely invested in these two as characters and not at all invested in their relationship so the only reason they did this now was so everybody can be squicked later, but I'm not squicked now.

NIcky's son's anxiety dissorder isn't new.  It has been discussed on the show before maybe in the pilot?   

I think Gigi will be sleeping with the reporter she slapped at the pool party by the time she finds out Luke's been banging her wife.
 

[Retired at last]

Thank you both for the timelines and summary. I was watching election returns and kept switching back and forth and managed to miss a lot, and yet, I feel like I missed nothing. Do we truly have 3 more shows? I feel like this show just keeps sneaking on the air because no one realizes it still exists and everyone keeps waiting for someone else to pull the plug.

[JayDub1987]

30 minutes ago, Retired at last said:

Thank you both for the timelines and summary. I was watching election returns and kept switching back and forth and managed to miss a lot, and yet, I feel like I missed nothing. Do we truly have 3 more shows? I feel like this show just keeps sneaking on the air because no one realizes it still exists and everyone keeps waiting for someone else to pull the plug.

You didn't miss anything. Literally, one hour and nothing of any real consequence happened. I think it's 4 more episodes, as I think we're set up for a 12-episode season. 

1 hour ago, bybrandy said:

but this show won't because this show is all about the patriarchy.

Isn't it really about the matriarchy? Dottie is still running the family from beyond the grave. We can't get through a single episode without a dozen "mama said" quotes or "what mama would want." Albie is apparently always was Dottie's lapdog. 

[Lethallyfab]

I thought there would be some consequences or blowback to the stylist playing both sides by offering his  services to both Nicki and GiGi, but no…

Nicki doesn’t even attempt to bribe a judge?!  Find the missing votes?  Pull a Warren Beatty and accidentally read the envelope that the winner is ‘La La Land’ when it’s really ‘Moonlight?’
 

She just unilaterally claims that Ana Phoenix is the *true* most deserving winner of the debutante ball and we have to accept that she is?  
 

The needle drop of Ana’s performing ‘Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About’ at a party where she is trying to sneak off to have an illicit affair with Ace made me laugh harder than any deliberate attempt this show has made at humor.

Gigi is 100% going to sleep with that reporter.

Eva Amurri is the *true* beneficiary of the matriarchy here.  She better hope that projects keep needing younger versions of her mom, because her acting is yikes on bikes.

[bybrandy]

Like genuinely did Susan Sarandon agree to do this so her daughter can work?

[babyrambo]

10 hours ago, Retired at last said:

I feel like this show just keeps sneaking on the air because no one realizes it still exists and everyone keeps waiting for someone else to pull the plug.

I knew it wouldn’t be a masterpiece but it’s  baffling that it’s this bad.

I know network TV has become extremely bland and formulaic in the last few years and I definitely expected some of the typical soap opera cliches and some over the top acting but somehow it’s both underwhelming and too much? And feels super dated. The 25+ year old songs the force feed the audience every episode don’t help. 

Beth Ditto (Gigi) who I’m aware of because of her music, was the reason I gave this a try but they’ve saddled her with every mid aughts ‘girl power’ cliche in the book and it’s pretty superficial. Making her gay was unexpected and I was interested in seeing what they’d do with that but man, her wife can barely hide her contempt for Gigi. A couple episodes back, when Wifey genuinely hyped Gigi up for that insane magazine cover, even though know they didn’t mean it to be comedic, I couldn’t help but laugh—she came off stupid at best and callous at worst. Her clear lack of interest paired with Gigi’s unbelievable obtuseness makes the familial affair believable but it’s a lot. I get that the entire family being terrible people is the point but yikes. Or maybe I just feel bad for Gigi because she’s the only one I somewhat care about.   

Also what is with the pacing on this show? There are full episodes where nothing happens and then episodes where every second is crammed with action. 

I kept watching because I wanted to know what happened back when it seemed like there would be a big twist about Dottie, but I think this might be where I bow out. 

The characters are flat, the emotional arcs are limp and the the conflict is beyond laughable. Which is a shame, because most of the actors are pretty solid; with a slightly bigger budget and tighter, relevant writing, this show could be watchable. 
 

[HighQueenEB]

I only became aware of this show due to Joshua Sasse and I have to say, he's a real trooper (or his publicist, I guess) to keep promoting this show because it's just terrible.  

I watched on Wednesday because Tue night was all about the election results.  The first twenty minutes was so pointless, I paused it so that I could was some of the US Figure Skating Sectional competitions (where skaters qualify for Nationals), then came back to it later in the evening.  The pacing of the entire episode was absolute crap. 

I could have given a rat's tail about the debutante ball and while I would have believed the presence of a local news crew thirty years ago at one of their garden/pool parties, there's no way I would have believed it twenty years ago much less now.  Find a better way, show, to introduce us to the woman Gigi will be cheating with in three episodes when she randomly reappears.  

Furthermore, about the deb queen storyline...  This is my issue with this show in general...  They just throw stuff out there without any buildup.  The "smash the patriarchy"/my mom and I are at loggerheads would have been way more effective had the setup for it consisted of more than just one scene where Tatum complains/yells about how no one cares that her dad has just up and disappeared and a second scene where she tells the DA/Albie's BFF that her family is good at keeping secrets.  

Ace singing "This One's for the Girls" was beyond bizarre.  But, again, the whole anxiety disorder thing...  The writers need to do better than throw it out there ten episodes ago and never follow up on that thread through the intervening episodes until it's conveniently necessary for this week's random excuse to have musical performances.

And I suppose Albie blackmailing his DA BFF probably means that DA BFF isn't the anonymous blackmailer after all, but knowing this show, the writers will find some convoluted way to make that make sense.  Oy.

I'll keep watching this until the bitter end, but I'm going to be perturbed if this shitshow gets a second season with nary a bat of an eye from the Fox executives while we fans had to fight hard to get ABC to greenlight a second season of Galavant all those years ago.  Even Smash, which also barely got a second season, was a much better show than this, and there was a lot of WTF writing there both seasons, lol.

[gaPeach]

Every person on this show is awful.  Especially the sisters.  One minute they are loving "I got your back" sisters, the next they are backstabbing each other.  Their mother was total self-centered bitch to everyone even her own children.  Her love was so toxic, her son is or was screwing his own sister's wife, her daughters stab each other in the back every chance they get, only to fake make up and her husband is emotionally unavailable to his kids.

Terrible show but I will watch to the bitter end.