Netflix Swung and Missed. Twice.

Netflix is the world's leading internet entertainment service with 130 million memberships in over 190 countries, according to Google. It’s produced some absolute gems, from my all-time favourite Stranger Things to the smash hit Orange is the New Black (which I’ll admit I’ve never actually watched), and you aren’t just limited to Netflix originals either. But you know this. Netflix is great and well worth the subscription fee – and that’s coming from someone stingier than Stingy from Lazy Town – but not everything on there is perfect, which is where my opinion no one asked for comes in.

Recently I’ve watched two Netflix originals and for lack of a better word, they both sucked. So – and this is where a big spoiler alert comes in – I’m going to rant about the series Insatiable and the movie Sierra Burgess is a Loser, which collectively adds up to about fourteen hours of my life I’ll never get back.

We’ll start with Insatiable. If you asked me to describe Insatiable in one word I don’t think I’d be able to. As a show, it doesn’t know what it wants to be. At times it’s a clunky social commentary on how hard it is to be fat in high school, and I think at its core it’s supposed to be a story of a fat girl who gets skinny and wants revenge on her bullies. Which, while overdone, I don’t actually hate. Most people who’ve taken a dislike to the show have issues with the whole ‘fatphobia’ thing but it doesn’t bother me. Apparently people were so offended by this concept that a petition was created to cancel the show before it even aired, which is just ridiculous. We live in a cruel world; fatphobia exists. It shouldn’t – a person’s weight is nobody’s business apart from their own – but as humans we’re generally quite judgmental. And I’ve been teased before about my looks – I was blessed enough to have acne, braces and a fair bit of chub on me as a teenager – and I used to think I’d quite like revenge on those people. So, even if the core story is preachy and overused, at least it’s realistic. Ish.

My issue with the show is how unrealistic it gets. But I’ll move on to that shortly.

I want to talk about the show’s main characters – because here’s a problem, there isn’t one to follow. There are two main characters with equal dominance. There’s Patty, played by Debby Ryan, who I’m inclined to hate because she’s unfairly attractive, and Bob Armstrong, an overly camp lawyer-by-day and pageant-coach-by-night. Two rather weird things to do simultaneously but each to their own.

This is Patty, before and after. 

So ‘Fatty Patty’ punched a homeless man who tried to steal her chocolate bar. He punched her back. She had to get her jaw wired shut, which led to her spectacular weight transformation, but she was due to appear in court for the whole assault thing. She needs a lawyer and hires Bob Armstrong, whose career is basically going down the toilet because one of his pageant prodigies claimed he ‘touched her hoo-hoo’ (revolting thing to lie about, made me angrier than any fatphobia) and Patty’s is the first case he can get. He sees her, reckons she’s a bombshell and he can put her in pageants, and she falls in love with him even though he’s old enough to be her dad because he’s the first male to ever call her pretty.

Plus, all this nonsense happens within the first fifteen minutes of the pilot. And this is why the show is such a headache to watch; too many things happen in an episode, so it gets a bit confusing, but they keep adding new things to compel you to watch the next episode. Hence why I actually stuck with it; I was curious to know what would happen next. The narrative, which is delivered in the ever-annoying form of voiceover, switches between Bob and Patty so rapidly it’ll leave your head spinning.

I do quite like Bob Armstrong. He’s a little goofy, very camp, but ultimately is a simple man; he just wants to coach pageant winners and be a good husband. The other character I tolerated watching was Nonnie, Patty’s sweet best friend who’s very obviously in love with her and struggling to come to terms with her sexuality. The actress plays her convincingly, her storylines are pretty realistic; I just thought she was a highlight of an otherwise murky show. But she is, by no means, great.

Insatiable is just weird. At one point, Patty’s past violent behaviour, perhaps a cause of the twin she absorbed in utero (if you’re wondering why I’ve just thrown that in there, that’s how the show delivered it, too) leads her to become convinced she’s possessed by a demon, and a preacher’s son and a former Rabbi perform an exorcism on her. I'm not making this up. An actual exorcism.

Bob Armstrong turns out to like the men – way to perpetuate the stereotype that all camp men have to be gay, Insatiable – as he kisses his rival Bob Barnard. Bob Armstrong’s wife finds out her husband is sleeping with another man, understandably isn’t happy, but when she sees the two kiss she gets turned on and initiates a THREESOME with them! I didn’t think a threesome could be more out of nowhere than the one in House of Cards but there you go. Regina Sinclair, the mother of the girl Bob allegedly touched up, sleeps with Bob’s teenage son regularly as revenge, even though SHE'S the problem here. So that’s eating disorders, exorcisms, false allegations of child molestation, threesomes and statutory rape all in one show.

Plus there’s a scene where Patty and a transgender woman talk about their body insecurities, and in what’s probably meant to be a sweet and empowering moment, stride out in their bikinis as confident women. And I’m sorry, but can the two really compare? Surely self consciousness still lingering from being fat - and Debby Ryan has a spectacular figure, I may add - isn’t even close to what it’s like to be trapped in the wrong body. No? Maybe I’m not the right person to comment on trans issues, but that scene got a lot of backlash for its ‘insensitive handling of a delicate topic’, and I can see why. 

Struggling to keep up? I don’t blame you. I haven’t even scratched the surface; so much more happens that I can’t even be bothered to get into. Unsurprisingly the show ends with yet another out-of-nowhere plot twist – I’ll save that spoiler just in case you want to watch the show out of a morbid curiosity – but I’m cynical that the show will get renewed for a second season. It got bad reviews, and not just from me.

Now onto Sierra Burgess is a Loser, which I had high hopes for because it stars Barb from Stranger Things, until a friend of mine (hi, Morgan) asked me to watch the film just so I could write this ranty blog post. I don’t have as much to complain about with this one because I can actually sum it up in one word; disappointing. The actors do their best but the characters are so lacking in substance and the writing is so bland.

The plot of the film centres on another insecure high school girl – why is this such a trend? – and we know she’s the titular ‘loser’ within the first minute because she calls herself a ‘magnificent beast’ in the bathroom mirror and kisses her pet turtle’s tank. The bullies of this film are painfully obvious, back-chatting their teacher and ripping down Sierra’s poster and calling her a ‘reject’. Plus, it’s infuriating because they look like dolls and we’re supposed to assume Sierra is ugly next to them, and she’s just not. So what if she’s tall and doesn’t have a thigh gap? That doesn’t make her ugly. Look at her beautiful smile!

The main bully, Veronica, is approached by a ‘hot’ guy from her class, and is asked for her number. But because she’s a bitch, she gave him Sierra Burgess’ number instead to mess with her (which, by the way, HOW did she know that?). Cue my pet hate of modern movie/viral video tropes – watching characters text. I HATE that. Hate, hate, hate, loathe entirely. She continues to text him even though he thinks she’s someone else, which her friend rightly points out is catfishing (and ILLEGAL), because, similar to Patty, she’s flattered by the male attention. Because, as women, we’re supposed to be desperate for that. Urgh.

There’s a really uncomfortable scene in which he sends her a shirtless pic. She audibly breathes – ew – and doesn’t reply straight away. Just as he’s getting all insecure, she sends him a pic of an elephant, which ok, is kind of funny. I, too, have compared my figure to that of an elephant for comic effect. Ha ha ha. But then, and this actually made me a bit nauseous, he responded ‘real women have curves’. No. NO. A ‘real’ woman is JUST A WOMAN. Flat-chested women are still ‘real’ women; women with 'curves' in all the wrong places are still ‘real’. And the film urgently attempts to establish this guy as likeable by having him talking in sign language to his child brother. It turns out he's actually quite a nice guy; clever, funny and not a meathead jock like you'd expect.

Sierra finds out the bully gave out her number, and instead of kicking off or reporting her, she strikes up a deal with her; she’ll tutor the bully in exchange for her help in maintaining the catfish illusion. Unsurprisingly, the bully has a horrible mother, who cares more about her daughter ‘getting far with the boys’ than her academic career. And that’s basically the plot. Catfishing. There’s actually quite a savage scene where he facetimes Veronica (the bully) with Sierra talking behind the laptop, which just takes the poor guy for a total fool. And, if that wasn’t evil enough, she PRETENDS TO BE DEAF to get out of speaking to him, fearing he’ll recognise her voice. Will ‘lack of a moral compass’ get her into Stanford? It’s just deceitful, really. He starts to really like her and asks her out on a date. Or, rather, he asks someone who doesn’t exist on a date. It’s neither cute nor funny. But maybe I’m a killjoy.

Predictably, because this is a cheesy film after all, Mr Hotty ends up choosing Sierra because of her personality, even though she CATFISHED him. So the film's message is your actions don't have consequences? I don't know, it just frustrated me. A LOT. No one's personality is so great that it makes up for being lied to. She isn't even that likeable. She says 'bonsoir' in a cartoonish voice when answering the phone and asked the guy what type of flower would he be and why, which is the weirdest question ever asked in history. Well, Sierra, I personally would be a lily, specifically at a funeral, because this film just about finished me off. Plus, her homecoming dress needs to be burned.

Like Insatiable, Sierra Burgess doesn’t really know what it wants to be. I think it’s meant to be a romantic comedy but then it goes off on this ‘feel sorry for the bully’ tangent. I think it’s meant to show that it’s personality that matters – since they have ‘great’ conversations – but that doesn’t make catfishing suddenly ok. Both products I’ve whinged about place way too much sympathy on genuinely bad people, which is too difficult for me to stomach. Bad people deserve to be punished, not rewarded.

In short, I’m a little disappointed in you, Netflix. You need to step up your game.


All images belong to Netflix