Scum rises to the top in CW's High Society
03/10/10 01:00 PM
By ED BARK
Premiering: Wednesday, March 10th at 8:30 p.m. (central) before moving to 8 p.m. Wednesdays on March 24th
Starring: Tinsley Mortimer, Jules Kirby, Paul Johnson Calderon, Dabney Mercer, Dale Mercer, Devorah Rose, Alexandra Osipow
Created by: Tinsley Mortimer, Andrew Glassman, Mike Aho
By ED BARK
The sickening, scummy, shallow, scurrilous socialites of Manhattan get a chance to shine in the new CW "docu-series" High Society.
It's virtually impossible not to despise them to the core, which is exactly the point. Being sneak-previewed in half-hour form after Wednesday's America's Next Top Model, this higher-end answer to Jersey Shore does a splendid job of making its real-life characters thoroughly despicable. Taken as a group, they have less depth than Paris Hilton's bejeweled handbag.
The narrator and co-creator is something named Tinsley Mortimer. She used to be married to a rich guy, but now can be seen play-sobbing in her Upper East Side loft after her recent separation from fund marketer Robert Livingston "Topper" Mortimer, whose face is digitized in Wednesday's premiere. Tinsley's lately dating a "German prince" named Casimir Wittgenstein-Sayn. Gotta make ends meet somehow.
Mortimer, whose snooty mother, Dale Mercer is appalled at her new digs, vows to do "everything I can" to reunite Tinsley and Topper.
Enough of them, though. Let's meet the aggressively gay Paul Johnson Calderon, also known as "PJC" and the King of the Bow Ties.
"I've been to rehab twice now," he brags. He's also kind of broke lately while on the rebound from a purse-snatching scandal. So he invites his enabling mother to the city to ask her for another $50 grand from his trust fund.
Momma agrees to half that sum after noting, "I would love it if he met someone like Anderson Cooper." But PJC is footloose and fancy-gay, treating himself to a shopping spree and a drawn bubble bath after the cash arrives in his account.
PJC later aims a shot of Jameson at "trust fund partier" Jules Kirby, but instead hits Tinsley's best friend, Alexandra Osipow. She squeals in horror, as though she'd just received a hot lead enema in an Iraqi torture chamber. If only.
Jules, bad-complexioned and regularly smashed, says people resent her because she's smart and pretty. She then adds, "I use the n-word sometimes, and I really think it should be OK to say."
The first half-hour comes and goes without the benefit of meeting another High Society regular, Devorah Rose. Her CW press release come-on goes like this: "A lot of people consider me the sexy social. I've got assets and like to show them off. I love my body."
All of the above mostly dedicate their lives to attending swank parties and bitching about their lots in life. Their overall contributions to society would fit in a thimble. In other words, what's not to loathe? High Society thoroughly succeeds in making viewers want to throw lethal objects at their TV screens. But please don't do that. They're not worth it.
GRADES: F (because they all make me puke). Or if you prefer, A (because that just has to be the show's overall intent).