Sticky Girls: Reality Bites

I will guiltlessly admit I've had the pleasure of spending more than one weekday morning indulging in a few hours of daytime reality talk shows.  Yes, I know I that I live in a city of fine museums and that weekdays are the least crowded times to visit, but that would require getting out of bed.  Besides, what thousand year old piece of tapestry can inspire the same thrills as Maury Povich turning to some trash-talking punk who has spent the last five minutes calling a women he once slept with a slut and informing him that the DNA test has proved, "You are the father!" 

 

Though shows like Povich and Jerry Springer and the like technically involve real people telling true stories, there's a winking quality that tells you there's been a certain amount of backstage preparation to make sure the truth doesn't come off as boring as real life.  (In one infamous edition of The Richard Bey Show, the host chastised a white supremacist guest for wearing a nazi uniform on the program.  The racist answered back that the show's producer asked him to wear it.) 

 

A favorite subject of these exploitation extravaganzas is the beloved "out-of-control-teen."  Usually girls, these violent, sexually active tykes are scared straight by motivational speakers, former prostitutes or a week in boot camp. It's a natural subject for satire.  In fact, two days before catching Linda Evans' Sticky Girls:  The Anti-Reality Show, I enjoyed a perfectly hilarious episode of South Park, which accurately spoofed the genre by simply replicating its most clichéd features.  ("I do what I want!" continually repeats a troubled youth, quoting the watch cry of 80% of the kids on those shows.)  Unfortunately, Evans' attempted dark comedy fails to supply any decent laughs and the evening has all of the edge and wit of one of those time-filling sketches that take up the last fifteen minutes of an episode of Saturday Night Live. 

 

Sharon O'Connell plays the ratings-minded host of The Roxy Rose Show, who we see early on coaching NYPD Sergeant Manley (David Copeland) on the most crowd-pleasing ways to instill a fear of the law into her afternoon's guests.  Manley is taking classes in social work, but Roxy will have none of that namby-pamby sensitivity and by the end of their scene she literally has him practicing growling for the camera. 

 

Her first guest is Geo (Jennifer Loryn), a 17-year-old Queens girl abandoned by her fashion designer mom and enamored with a criminal bad boy.  Geo's greatest offence seems to be her annoying talent for bad rapping.  ("He's a lona' with a bona' / You're a lady with a baby.")  Also on hand, direct from Arizona, is Harley (Robin Long), also 17, who has given up all sex and alcohol to market her own homemade salsa.  ("First taste is like a virgin revealed.")  But when Geo tries to sabotage Harley's salsa promo and it's discovered that Harley isn't exactly reformed, the growling sarge is called on to lock up the juvies in the show's on-camera holding cell.  (Don't ask.)  By the time I started envying the fellow sitting in front of me who was nodding off every five minutes, the author seemed to start going for a serious message with Manley trying to apply his sensitivity skills and Harley spewing philosophical gems like (t-shirt makers of the world, take note) "The hole your mother left can't be filled by a boyfriend." 

 

The blameless actors do competent work despite being saddled with Evans' bland dialogue and Constance George's lethargic direction that seems to favor meandering over blocking.  The exception being Loryn, a walking edition of Soul Train who provides blasts of energy and a real comic presence.  Mark Mitchell makes two appearances as the show's stage manager, who is oddly low key in his job warming up the TV audience.  Though his underplaying is somewhat amusing, his character's lack of enthusiasm for The Roxy Rose Show was an unfortunate foreshadowing of my reaction to Sticky Girls. 

 

Photos by Kelly Haydon:  Top:  Jennifer Loryn and Robin Long

Bottom:  David Copeland and Robin Long