TV critics are both raving and tearing apart the new Netflix original TV show, “Insatiable.” The show, starring Debby Ryan, Dallas Robert, Alyssa Milano, and Kimmy Shields, tells the story of a girl, Patty, who has struggled with bullying her entire life because of her weight. She gets punched at a gas station, which breaks her face and requires her jaw to be wired shut. She then loses all the weight, becoming skinny for the first time in her life.
Later, when she has to go to court for punching a guy who called her fat, she falls in love with her 45 year old lawyer, steering the show in a slightly creepy and uncomfortable direction. That same lawyer then doubles as her pageant coach, as she wants to win the regional beauty pageant, Miss Magic Jesus. What is supposed to be a coming of age story about a girl who finally feels beautiful turns into a story of revenge, murder, and pedophilia. Her coach, Bob Armstrong, is falsely accused of being a child molester, which is punishable by law.
The show addresses numerous problems that deal with fat-shaming and eating disorders. “Insatiable” is filled with phrases like “skinny is magic,” and shows instances that make people, especially girls, believe that they can’t get the guy they like because they’re fat. In response to girls who love their bodies, at the very beginning of the first episode, Patty says “Screw those bitches!” which makes everyone feel uncomfortable in their own skin.
The character of Patty, who started the show as overweight, is played by a skinny actor, which now is completely behind on the trend of having overweight people play overweight characters set by Hollywood, like the TV show “This is Us” does. It would have been hard to lose that weight in a short period of time, but there are ways to work around it and it is evident that the writers of “Insatiable” just truly don’t care.
All of these things fuel the eating disorder epidemic that teenagers are going through right now. The show is trying to say that skinny equals happy, when it should be saying something along the lines of healthy equals happy. This only motivates girls to do anything they can to make themselves skinny, which is not a mindset you want to put in a teenage girl’s head.
All that being said, weight is the least of the problems that “Insatiable” faces. The show was originally intended to be satire, but it doesn’t come across as such. It’s a common trope in movies, TV shows, and books, where a young teenage girl will have a crush on a teacher or older man in her life, but it’s never acted upon, like it is in this show. And while Bob doesn’t reciprocate feelings, it’s honestly just creepy to watch. Later, Patty’s mom is then shown sleeping with Bob’s son, which is statutory rape.
This type of show is showing teenagers and even adults who watch it that it’s okay to break the law in so many uncomfortable ways. The satire in the show is so poorly written that it can’t even be counted as satire, but in fact just an inappropriate show. The characters all have obviously fake accents, besides Patty, and the actors as a whole just aren’t good. “Insatiable” is filled with bad humor, which makes the show painful to sit through for 12 episodes.
It’s also filled with crazy ideas and morals that are being put in teenagers heads, such as the fact that a good way to get revenge is violence and blackmail, that lesbians are just girls who are always in love with their best friend, and that lying in court is reasonable and allowed as long as you want to have sex with the girl who was arrested.
Overall, “Insatiable” just isn’t worth your time. I wasn’t impressed. With bad humor, offensive jokes, creepy older men, and bad influences on teenagers, it’s just another show that’s full of controversy and bad acting. It has everything that you don’t want in a TV show.
