An Open Letter to Lara Bingle
Dear Lara Bingle,
Hey girl, what’s up? I wanted to talk about why I won’t be watching your show tonight and I felt an open letter would be the best way of expressing my feelings. Well actually I thought a musical ballad would be the best way of expressing my feelings, but I left my banjo at a friend’s house last week and I haven’t got it back yet. Plus I can’t actually play the banjo and I am shit at song writing. So an open letter it is!
First off I’d like to say that you seem like a nice human, Lara Bingle. You seem like a nice, cashed up young human with oceanic eyes and the whitest teeth I have ever seen outside of a neon light disco. Sure, you may not be the brightest maiden in all the land, and your ability to make good decisions appears questionable if not entirely absent, but you are at least almost certainly not evil. Unfortunately however, not being evil is not basis enough for a television show, a fact that someone should probably have pointed out to Channel Ten and the producers of Being Lara Bingle. Or more like Boring Lara Bingle, AMIRITE?
I went into the first episode of Being Lara Bingle ready to have many feelings about it. I went in ready to LOVE it and sing its praises to all who would listen, to be a positive voice amongst the naysayers. And I also went in ready to HATE it because of my preconceived belief the last thing this country needs is a reality show about a vapid (BUT NICE) sometimes model who spends her days driving around without a license and walking around her highly visible, waterfront, glass-covered house naked despite the omnipresence of paparazzi in her life. I was ready to tear the makers of the show a new one for inventing plotlines such as the (non-existent) sexual tension between your brother and your slashie (BFF/manager), and for constantly referencing your late father with all the subtlety of a photo on Brendan Fevola’s iPhone.
But I couldn’t love it or hate it, Lara Bingle. I couldn’t anything it. In fact I was so entirely underwhelmed by the whole experience that hating it would have been a welcome relief from the nothingness. The series of “events” that made up your first episode were so mind-numbingly bland I have now almost completely forgotten most of them. The only moment that inspired even a hint of emotion out of me was when your Nan told you you’d “never do any bloody good”, and I felt a bit sorry for you. And the viewer’s pity should never be a television star’s end goal.
Seriously, Laz – can I call you Laz? – the thirty minutes I spent watching your show last week were possibly the most boring minutes of my entire life. And I studied sociology. It just seems that in your quest to show people the “real you”, to be identified with as just a “normal girl”, you (or those responsible) forgot to make interesting television. Being nice and sweet and down-to-earth are wonderful qualities in a person, Laz (I’m going with it), but not in a reality TV show. Now in fairness I’m not a huge fan of keyhole reality television in the first place. I’m no stranger to the odd episode of Real Housewives, but in general I prefer my reality TV with a huge dose of competition, a washed out old rock star looking for love, or an orgy on a tropical island thinly veiled as a game of trust. But if I am going to watch a “Being So and So” or a “Keeping up with the Thingamyjigs” there better be some life-or-death drama and it better end in tears/a massive fake wedding and subsequent quickie divorce.
Oh, Lara Bingle, I hate that I can’t love or hate your show. I love loving things and hating things!
Suffice to say I won’t be watching your show again, and I suspect the same will go for many of the 900,000 viewers who tuned in to the premiere. Then again you are on after Masterchef and people are lazy so you might just be alright.
Goodbye, Lara Bingle. I wish you well,
Nadine von Cohen
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