I was excited when I heard Netflix was giving Ms. Ballinger a vehicle to more fully develop her Miranda Sings persona. When Marc Maron riffed on reality singing shows by saying "everyone is so easily impressed; they think it could be them," that is the gist of Miranda. An unrepentant and sociopathic narcissist, everyone keeping orbit around her delusion is what makes the show tick.
Ballinger is actually an incredibly talented singer, which makes the gimmick a strong sell for me; it's fun seeing how hard she has to try to sing poorly, and the hyperbolic facial expressions and bodily motions needed to get her there perfectly echo every "big fish, small pond" wanna-be you've ever seen giving it their all and falling flat in a reality show audition.
The show is very well cast; Angela Kinsey and Steve Little are basically method takes on their "Office" and "Eastbound and Down" characters, which is fine. Eric Stocklin is every hard luck puppy love teenager rolled into one, and Francesca Reale pulls off being the "genius among misfits" without being condescending or off- putting.
Where the show loses steam, to me, is in trying to take YouTube concept humor, and give it narrative heft. Kinsey, Little and Stocklin are the perfect personifications of enabling, and Ballinger's psychotic brat is great in spurts. While the show is pretty well-written, it becomes mired itself pretty quickly. Even a lovable brat throwing everyone under the bus wears thin after a few episodes, and Miranda is deliberately caustic, not "aww shucks."
I understand what Ballinger and company are after: a bombastic portrayal of the personal dishonesty and parental disinterest that has created a culture of ravenous wanna-be YouTube celebrities. By the end of the last episode, with everyone in the family having literally abandoned her, she *finally* gets the viral video success she sought. This moment of soul-selling truth comes across a bit too heavy- handed, though; Ballinger is a good actress with some dramatic chops, but she spends the entire first season being coy, immature, cruel and selfish. When she yells to a full, stunned auditorium, earnestly asking "why is it funny to think someone could love me?", and when Ballinger displays an incredible array of feelings in the final scene at her computer, it only makes me wonder how much more this show could be if it would tamp down the display of moral bankruptcy, and give more than two characters (Kinsey and Reale) an inner life that leads to moments of self-actualization.
It makes their characters matter; in the end, I'm not sure who else does--or to be honest, why I wouldn't rather watch a drama with this exact same cast instead.
Ballinger is actually an incredibly talented singer, which makes the gimmick a strong sell for me; it's fun seeing how hard she has to try to sing poorly, and the hyperbolic facial expressions and bodily motions needed to get her there perfectly echo every "big fish, small pond" wanna-be you've ever seen giving it their all and falling flat in a reality show audition.
The show is very well cast; Angela Kinsey and Steve Little are basically method takes on their "Office" and "Eastbound and Down" characters, which is fine. Eric Stocklin is every hard luck puppy love teenager rolled into one, and Francesca Reale pulls off being the "genius among misfits" without being condescending or off- putting.
Where the show loses steam, to me, is in trying to take YouTube concept humor, and give it narrative heft. Kinsey, Little and Stocklin are the perfect personifications of enabling, and Ballinger's psychotic brat is great in spurts. While the show is pretty well-written, it becomes mired itself pretty quickly. Even a lovable brat throwing everyone under the bus wears thin after a few episodes, and Miranda is deliberately caustic, not "aww shucks."
I understand what Ballinger and company are after: a bombastic portrayal of the personal dishonesty and parental disinterest that has created a culture of ravenous wanna-be YouTube celebrities. By the end of the last episode, with everyone in the family having literally abandoned her, she *finally* gets the viral video success she sought. This moment of soul-selling truth comes across a bit too heavy- handed, though; Ballinger is a good actress with some dramatic chops, but she spends the entire first season being coy, immature, cruel and selfish. When she yells to a full, stunned auditorium, earnestly asking "why is it funny to think someone could love me?", and when Ballinger displays an incredible array of feelings in the final scene at her computer, it only makes me wonder how much more this show could be if it would tamp down the display of moral bankruptcy, and give more than two characters (Kinsey and Reale) an inner life that leads to moments of self-actualization.
It makes their characters matter; in the end, I'm not sure who else does--or to be honest, why I wouldn't rather watch a drama with this exact same cast instead.