Because it was on TV: The Sweaty Charm and Sex-Fueled Ego of Secret Girlfriend

Tonight at 10:00 pm on Comedy Central you will see one of the greatest shows of our time, South Park. It will be intelligent, charming and crass, Emmy-caliber material here. At 10:30 pm you will watch Secret Girlfriend, possibly one of the worst shows of this or any other generation. It will be moronic, narcissistic, yet sexy. Such a difficult choice here, you will want very badly to change the channel but you can't, your hand is already down your pants and there it will stay for the next half-hour.

Secret Girlfriend isn't even a guilty pleasure of mine, more like a guilty torture I undertake every week. The show is disjointed, filled with incredulous characters and situations that could be saved if a single joke in the show was funny (which it pulls off maybe once an episode. Not bad when considering that's about The Simpsons' current ratio). I watch it for the T & A every week which is absolutely astoundingly awesome, as well as for simple curiosity. How the hell will this show sustain itself this week? It's incredible they still have plot ideas, although the storylines are so weak it took me three weeks to figure out each episode is comprised of two 11-minute stories. Yeah they blur together that much. The show remains interesting to me however, in regards to of pop culture sexuality, gender expectations and audience pandering.

Hitting the Sexual Peak

This show is ridiculously sexy. All the characters bang each other constantly and thoroughly. Secret Girlfriend drips with sex unlike anything else I've ever watched. Shows like Cheers or Friends milked entire seasons of sexual tension with critical acclaim. Secret Girlfriend never got that memo. As the product of a technologically advanced generation that seeks immediacy and instantaneous gratification, whenever the characters are not actually having sex, they talk about sex. I don't want to exactly tout this as a bad thing, fuck it's kept me watching this far. The sexiness of course however, leads me to gender roles.

Girls Pretty; Men Fat

Every girl in this show is a bombshell. Drop-dead gorgeous babes everywhere, all the time. In the park, in the hotel, at the pool, it never ends. Somehow the main characters bang all these chicks, too. It's really bizarre to watch, I can't picture these kinds of dudes getting that much ass...ever. The men are classically schlubby, fat, hairy, adolescent in character. There's absolutely nothing groundbreaking here. Most of the women are either insane, mere objects of sexual frustration or both. Often they're both, which at times is a clever commentary on male sexual obsession. Oftentimes this is botched by the perceived lackadaisical attitude of the protagonist (you). The only fleshed-out realistically acting girl is the eponymous secret girlfriend (fuck is her name? Jessica or something?), although you'd have to simply believe that the protagonist (you) is intensely good looking to land her without saying a word (I guess?). This leads me to my final point:

Hey! Our Audience is Funny, Charming and Gets ton of Ass! Don't You?

The premise of the show is clever for a few minutes into the first episode when it becomes a tiresome and laborious expenditure. For those of you lucky enough to have not seen the debacle at all, the basic premise is that all the stories are told through a first-person camera perspective with all the characters addressing the camera directly as if you are a character in their world. Thus, for some reason, you are the star. This presents a series of problems:

The first of which is simply the fact that about 80% of the time when watching the show you think "Hey...I wouldn't do that." This can lead to a bit of frustration (you know when a character in a show does something stupid and you're pissed off at him or her? In Secret Girlfriend you should be pissed at yourself. Constantly) while also inherently limiting the plot possibilities.

In many ways I believe the creators are pandering to their audience at a ridiculous level. The protagonist (you), as I mentioned before, is charming, witty and handsome and scores a ton of incredibly hot ass on a regular basis. I'm guessing most Wednesday Night Comedy Central viewers look much more like the protagonist's (your) friends, fat, dumpy and generally undateable. Thus the entire show is a childish wish fulfillment that compliments and then (literally) sucks the dicks of its audience. This is not to mention the fact that since the protagonist (you) is definitively male seems to limit viewership to that (albeit key) demographic. Based on the general content though, this isn't a woman's show anyway.

So basically this show sucks for a lot of reasons other than its shitty writing, lack of jokes and intolerable plot structure. It's generally the kind of garbage that should be limited to YouTube; as a matter of fact that is where the damned thing originated. Shit. I am pulling for at least a 20 - 25 (minimum) year run however, just to get that nice dose of ass once a week and see how long this insanely stupid stupid premise will last.

Until next time loyal readers, keep watching the screens. Good night.