ADHD Recap: The Bad Girls Club

I have ADHD and find it helpful to have the television on while I’m writing on the weekends, which leads me to watch shows in spurts while taking focus breaks from the computer. The result: ADHD recaps, like this one.

This morning, I woke up and decided to flip through the TV on Demand section in order to find a show to half-watch while writing posts. In doing so, I came across the season 5 premiere of The Bad Girls Club and decided, against my better judgment, to give it a whirl. The show, according to Deadline Hollywood, is more popular than ever, with the recent premiere breaking previous ratings records and bringing in roughly 1.4 million viewers, so I thought I’d see what the fuss is all about. Roughly one hour later, my eyes are sore, as I just rolled them approximately 17,000,000 times.

Here’s the premise of the The Bad Girls Club, if you don’t already know: producers apparently went out with a casting call that read, “Are You The Worst Ever? Come Live In A Tacky Ass House And Fight With Other Obnoxious Women Who Already Hate Your Face And Think You’re A Stupid Bitch,” and seven women eagerly responded, earning them a spot in a club where the only membership fee is that of a 25 cent attitude.

I don’t really care enough to describe every single one of these women in detail, but to sum it up, they’re kind of like the Spice Girls of Awfulness: There’s Bitch Spice, Angry Spice, Mean Spice, Obnoxious Spice, Fake Spice, Passive-Aggressive Spice, and Judgmental Spice. They enjoy drinking, and dancing, and fighting, and saying things like, “I’m not a lady, I’m a bad bitch, and if you don’t like it, go fuck yourself,” and apparently hold doctorates from the Eric Cartman School of “Whateva! I Do What I Want!”:

and they all live together in Miami, which apparently recently changed its city motto from “The Gateway to the Americas,” to “The Gateway To America’s Drunk And Violent Reality Stars.” Their primary motivation, from what I gathered between eye-rolls, is to be the baddest girl in the house, which one can only accomplish by being a terrible as possible and by turning simple conversations into dramas that could probably be scored by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The entire show is based on fighting and being mean. That’s what makes a bad girl, in the eyes of the Oxygen network: women who drink, fight, bitch, and mock each other relentlessly. It’s essentially an hour of grown women acting like kindergartners, only instead of apple juice, they’re drinking vodka, and instead of learning any lessons, they’re just getting more and more awful with each passing second. They fight over everything, and hate each other for the dumbest reasons possible: someone’s voice is too annoying? FIGHT. Someone has blonde hair? FIGHT! Someone wears cheap clothes? FIGHT! Someone breathes? FIGHT! Someone has an allergy to dust mites? THE JEWELRY IS COMING OFF. Toot toot, aww, beep beep!

Here’s a guide on how to start a fight, Bad Girl style: take a basic sentence, yell part of said sentence, and then tack on the word “bitch.” Observe: “I like ice cream,” becomes, “I LIKE ice cream, BITCH!” If you’ve done this correctly, someone will then pull your hair and come back with something really classy and clever, like, “Your FACE looks like ice cream, ho!” And then someone else will try to break up the fight with soothing words like, “You’re BOTH dumb bitches, you stupid whores!” And then all hell will break loose until everyone gets bored or tired and heads back to their bedrooms to plan another fight for another day.

Anyway, here’s how the first episode went down: the meanest girl in the house, Morgan, thinks she’s the queen of Miami and immediately hates everyone who isn’t pretty or rich enough to hang with her, which really takes over the entire first episode, as she’s declared war on anyone who isn’t up to her standards, which is roughly 60% of the house, barring Kristen, the obligatory Paris Hilton wannabe, and Catya, who immediately dismisses the poorest girl in the house, Danielle, for her “cheap clothes.” At this point I kind of zoned out and started thinking about that survey that went up the other day about Wheat Thins being more popular than Cheetos, and was just kind of stunned and horrified by it, to be honest, and by the time I snapped back to the show, the ladies were on a yacht, which looked like a public transpo ferry, I have to say, back to their McMansion, which is decorated to look like a Planet Hollywood in 1994. I kept looking for framed guitars on the wall, or souvenir t-shirts by the front door, but alas, they must have hidden them during filming.

So, as the show goes on in Tacky Town, Morgan and her crew terrorize everyone by mocking their weight, their looks, their clothes, and their overall “trashiness,” which Morgan seems to be an expert on, because everyone knows that women who tear each other down all day and hang out with dude-bros who wear sunglasses at night, indoors, are the pinnacle of classiness, and should be respected for their ability to find the trashy side in others. Fights break out, and while Morgan and her two friends are out dancing, the other ladies her stuff outside and lock her out, leaving a Post-It note that reads, “Goodbye Hoe,” a gardening threat for the ages. The house is so cheap that they actually have to tape the doors shut, because there aren’t any locks on some of them, or something, I don’t know, at this point I just wanted everyone to leave the house, and for the house to go back to being an overpriced theme chain for tourists who really liked that one Sylvester Stallone movie that one time and who enjoy eating their fries while looking at a costume Amanda Bynes wore in “She’s The Man.”

As expected, Morgan eventually gets back into the house whole thing ends with a brawl at the bottom of the stairs and quite a bit of yelling. Everyone ends up staying, I think, though I’m not sure why, because it’s totally a sleepaway camp for jerks. I started thinking, halfway through the show, that I’d rather watch a Bad Girls Club that consisted of Wednesday Addams and Carrie and the Bride of Chucky and Jessica Wakefield and Regina George, because at least they’d come up with something more interesting than throwing a drink in someone’s face.

The show makes Jersey Shore, itself a drama filled fight festival, look classy by comparison: at least Jersey Shore attempts to offset its stars obnoxious sides by showing their funnier sides, whereas The Bad Girls Club hits you over the head with awfulness at all times, lest you forget that these women are “bad bitches” who, you know, aren’t here to make friends. And that’s probably a good thing, because you wouldn’t ever want to slip and think there’s anything redeeming about this how whatsoever. Surely the terribleness of the show will continue to aid its success, but the only thing truly bad about this show is how fake and predictable it is. I’ll never get that hour of my life back, but hopefully I just saved an hour of yours. Because I CARE, bitch! Don’t make me throw my herbal tea in your direction! Because then I’ll have to buy a new computer! And that is EXPENSIVE, bitch! And…scene.