"I'd sooner eat lunch with a mutilated corpse from CSI: Miami or Dexter than be trapped at a table with the Miami Social cast"--Glenn Garvin, Miami Herald TV critic

 

Oh boy, the show hasn't even aired yet and the reviews of Bravo's Miami Social just keep getting worse. Well, the LA Times didn't loathe it like the NY Times and Miami Herald did, but it's LA and bad TV there is like a 3 p.m. rainstorm in the summer here. And with that, today's round up of the critic's take on the show that may actually be more responsible for the demise of Miami's popularity than the economy.

The New York Times: Nothing so far has managed to capture the most gruesomely distasteful aspects of the city’s aimless capitalism quite like “Miami Social” (beginning on Tuesday), the newest reality series from Bravo, the cable channel that is subversively summoning Americans to proletarian revolt . . .

Ariel thinks of himself as a person of considerable importance: he produces fashion shows in Miami-Dade County. But as long as Miami isn’t New York or Paris or Milan, saying you are the biggest fashion producer there is like saying you are the biggest auto maker in Tuscaloosa  . . .

Delusion is the lingua franca of the men and women on Bravo’s reality series, and like Ariel, his compatriots, although well into their 30s, seem to have little conception of a world beyond the Miami branch of the Gansevoort Hotel.

 

George does something at a mortgage corporation but makes only a passing reference to the current difficulties, never suggesting that arranging mortgages in South Florida in 2009 is like selling muskets in a nuclear war.

 

The Miami Herald: I'm not saying Miami Social is so bad it's good. I'm saying it's so bad it will make you regret being born with eyes . . .

A stupefying concoction of idiotic hubris, faux glamour and neurotic self-absorption, Miami Social purports to follow ''a close circle of seven friends who make this city spin,'' including such civic heavyweights as a freelance editor, a freelance photographer, a South Beach party-planner and a real-estate agent who doesn't know how to figure square-footage costs. (At last! An explanation for the collapse of the South Florida housing market!) . . .

I'd sooner eat lunch with a mutilated corpse from CSI: Miami or Dexter than be trapped at a table with the Miami Social cast.

LA Times:  It is a comely enough group, and the "Miami Social" cocktail-hour conversations seem less fake than other show-enforced cast get-togethers, with Cohen happily burbling Addison DeWitt-meets-Paul Lynde banter and Stein providing central-casting bitchy . . .

Instead there will be a lot of shopping, drinking, parties and talk-talk-talking, and the conversations will rarely stray from the self-absorbed rut worn smooth by the semi-scripted alliances of docudrama friendship. Oh, the wearisome fabulousness of it all. 

NY Daily News: Big Brother and The Apprentice retreads aren't nearly as interesting on Bravo's Miami Social.

You'd think we'd be getting tired of TV shows about people whose only apparent on-camera skill is behaving like dopes. But Bravo apparently doesn't feel we've hit that tipping point yet. And Bravo may be right. In which case, to be blunt, all the dopes aren't on the other side of the camera . . .

And so it goes. And like so many "reality" shows that have little to sell beyond neuroses and obnoxious, self-centered behavior, "Miami Social" in the end feels tedious and a little sad.

The pink-and-teal pastels of Miami have rarely felt so dull. 

Comments

[Duran]

Can I just say Garvin's review of Miami Social is probably the best thing I've read all year. Hahaha! I can't get over the fact how mean the review is but at the same time HE IS SO RIGHT!

[Lesley Abravanel]

I'm not saying Miami Social is so bad it's good. I'm saying it's so bad it will make you regret being born with eyes . . .

[DanielJose]

Oh, how this made my day! Anti-Social Miami viewing party at my house.

[Bernard Bonomo]

It's to bad that Bravo has chosen these characters to represent our "magical city". As the producer of "South Beach VIP" DVD series, I've filmed hundreds of hours of Fun, Sexy, Aspirational content that really shows why Miami is one of the best places on earth. -Bernard Dino Bonomo.
http://www.hotsos.tv

[G]

But will you watch again next week, that is the question.

[pod]

For every critic panning this story, there's two tourists calling up VISA to see if they have enough left to use the Priceline Negotiator to get some plane tickets to Miami.

They see the shallowness of the characters as something to emulate, and the glitz and glam as the "real" Miami. The real Miami was shown on The First 48. I'm shocked the GMCVB didn't chase them out of town. MPD did tht themselves though when they didn't renew the contract.

Conversely, the tourism bureau in question will welcome Miami Social with open arms. Miami couldn't ask for a better shot in the arm. Locals will just have to grin and bear it like with every other inaccurate portrayal of the area.

[Jerry]

Will I watch it next week? I see on my calendar I've already scheduled a toothache so I'm afraid I'll miss the show.

No, wait. Let me rephrase that. I won't miss the show. I won't watch it, but I won't miss it.

[Teresa]

They come across as a bunch of self absorbed airheads.