Respect Authority

They came, they loved, they fought, they lost. They left alone, returning to strip clubs, trailer parks and housing projects across the nation, where they waited with bated breath for the call: not from Real, or Chance, or Bret, not from their bill collectors or baby daddies, not from the repo man or Chinese delivery person. They waited for VH1, for the network of lost souls, to ring them up and say the words every past dating show contestant wants to hear: “Do you want to be on Charm School?”

And so the ladies of both Real Chance of Love and the third season of Rock of Love joined forces for the first-ever Charm School to combine casts from different VH1 series. Hosted by the wisely-chosen Ricki Lake, who has no shortage of experience fielding verbal outbursts from women without pride, class or dignity, the show ran very little risk of being bad – and so far, it hasn’t been.

Although last week’s season premier was perhaps a more logical time to give my review – and indeed, lived up to expectations with Rock of Love ‘tomboy’ Beverly getting booted for pulling the hair of borderline-crazy porn star ROL-er Brittaney Star – it’s good that I’m able to give a more comprehensive opinion after watching this week.

As was to be expected, the show’s “cast” quickly split down the middle – with the Real Chance girls in one clique and the Rock of Love girls in the other. There remain a few wayward stragglers – Real Chance’s KO seems far too boring to even be on TV, and Brittaney Star quickly latched on to the Real Chance girls to avoid the verbal harassment coming from her own former cast-mates. Bubbles, the notoriously moronic Real Chance contestant, has also come under fire from her own people – who seem bizarrely offended by the fact that she speaks like a little girl.

What Ricki Lake, and fellow judge LaLa, were quick to point out was how cleanly the divide between shows became a divide between races—the majority of Real Chance competitors are black, and the girls from Rock of Love brought “white trash” to a new low this year. In this way, this season of Charm School has somehow become VH1’s déclassé attempt to address race relations in the country: the Real Chance girls are flabbergasted by the alcohol-fueled arguments between ROL ladies, whose development of verbal skills clearly tapered off somewhere around high school. Meanwhile, the ROL crew stages a late-episode mutiny over their inability to “conversate” when Real Chance cast members are screaming at them, or at one-another, or at nothing. At the risk of succumbing to the types of racial stereotypes this show simultaneously mocks and enforces – the white girls are petty drunkards and the black girls’ debate skills are primarily measured by the volume of their voices. Read More ›