Team PCheng

“Being skinny, don’t mean sh*t if you are ugly on the inside” is probably the best thing to come from the Netflix Original series “Insatiable” -which I am probably dropping from my #NowWatching list (I officially gave up on episode 6) but just continued watching so my review will have some merit.

The dark comedy from ‘Dexter’ producer Lauren Gussis tries to be relevant and earn “woke points” by having an overweight lead character who deals with themes like body image and bullying. The show having a racially diverse and queer cast but they seem to be doing more harm than good as they present a plot wherein the female lead, Patty Bladell (Debby Ryan) -who used to be overweight; can only be happy if and when she becomes thin. She loses the weight by punching a homeless guy who was trying to take her chocolate, breaks her jaw and goes on a liquid diet for a number of months.

The show manages to make fun of religion, sexual identity, body image, Southern society, statutory rape, molestation, adoption, pageants and honestly, abortion and honestly every topic under the sun.

Patty says: “Now that I’m thin; its my turn to get the guy”

I actually know of couples wherein the cute boy next door goes for the chubby girl. There is such a thing as “chubby chasers” you know and its disappointing to think that the boys in the series only take a second glance at Patty now that she’s thin and pretty but wouldn’t have given  her the time of day before.

Now that Patty is thin, all that she wants to do is to get revenge on all those people who ever made fun of her but she ends up just hurting everyone around her. She is a selfish character with no redeemable quality whatsoever. Its so hard to root for her, when all that she thinks of is herself.

When the trailer dropped I didn’t that there was a lot of backlash with the possible fat shaming that the show will be projecting. It got so bad that there was even a call to cancel the show and probably Netflix should have.

With the backlash from the series, Netflix has defended it saying that it is all ‘satire’ but the thing with satire is, in order for it to work, it has to be intelligent, your audience must be in on the joke, you must be winking at them and they should be laughing with you and with “Insatiable” trust me – no one is laughing.

The characters are all annoying, they are all selfish and seem to live in their own bubbles, its so suffocating that they all seem to run circles around each other, as if their small town in Georgia is the smallest place on earth. They all seem to all have done some twisted, sick, unforgiving thing to each other.

One of the few things that I liked about the show was the relationship of Patty’s pageant coach Bob Armstrong (Dallas Roberts) and his social climber wife Coralee (Alyssa Milano). Yes, they both are weird in their own insatiable needs, him to  be the best pageant coach and her to be the ultimate Southern socialite but they are both partner in crimes who love and support each other, until the show ruins it.

Also, all the parents in this show seem to allow their children to run wild and do as they please and alright just abandons them. No wonder these kids are so confused and just keep finding themselves in one bad situation after another.  I hate how the show leaves so many plots hanging and unexplored. Its as if the writers are just throwing everything at the wall and trying to see whatever will stick.

3/10. Given that the finale was a cliff hanger-I am curious about what will happen next but not out of concern for Patty that’s for sure. You just never get to like her to care about her. If the series survives another season, they should think of a major overhaul.