We’re a cheap therapy session. We’re the friend that holds your hair back when you puke.
Um, I might need you to hold my hair back right now because I’m mildly nauseated after watching this show, but then again, I don’t think I’m still part of VH1’s target demographic.
(Note to sensitive readers/viewers – there’s a bit of crudeness in this post, because it’s a crude show. You’ve been warned!)
VH1’s newest show, Walk of Shame Shuttle, premieres tonight (Wed. March 18 at 9pm ET/PT). Or, apparently, you can just watch it on their website now, because VH1 just couldn’t wait. If you don’t already know what the phrase “walk of shame” means, this show is probably not for you. Also, if you’re over the age of, say, 23, this show is probably not for you. If you’re into watching trainwrecks (the figurative kind, of course), this might be the show for you – it even has a “Trainwreck of the Week” segment.
The Walk of Shame Shuttle is the brainchild of college undergraduate-turned-entrepreneur Kellyann Wargo. I remember sitting on my front porch in my college days, watching, and often mocking, my fellow students as they stumbled home hungover (or, sometimes still drunk) after a night of hard partying and hooking-up. Whereas I merely saw an opportunity to be snarky, Kellyann saw an opportunity to make money, and created a shuttle service to take these wonderful specimens of humanity home. The show follows her, and fellow drivers Jordan Pease and Michelle Collins, while they interact with their passengers and discuss hookup culture, online dating and relationship red flags. In the show’s opening, along with the aformentioned reference to being cheap therapy hair-holders, Kellyann promises, “We can’t erase the night before. But we can help you with the morning after.”
Okay, so … show of hands: who here thinks that reality TV has any grounding in reality whatsoever? [looks around] Just you, miss? Oh, then this show is for you. The rest of you know that there’s nothing real about reality TV, and this show doesn’t argue that rule. It’s so, so, SO scripted. These passengers all seem to have much more witty bantering ability than you’d expect from someone who did 12 tequila shots and went home with a random dude last night. I’d imagine the target audience for this show isn’t as cynical as I am, so maybe it doesn’t matter, but it’s fair warning for anyone expecting actual, um, shame in the Walk of Shame Shuttle. At first, I was surprised (but then logic set in): the show isn’t actually set in Kellyann’s Michigan college town, but rather in Los Angeles. So, methinks these passengers are just getting bit parts for their resumes and aren’t really on their way home from anywhere. (It’s obvious that the producers of the show TRY to make these people look like hot messes, but hot messes don’t come from a makeup artist. Hot messiness can only come from too much booze, too little sleep and an unhealthy dose of “ohhh, noooo, what did I do?”)
Now that I’ve established that the show isn’t real, here are a few tidbits of what to expect if you watch tonight’s premiere. (I watched all 21 minutes of it, and was hoping my coworkers would present me with a medal for all I endured in that timespan, but I got nothin’. So don’t expect a lot.)
- A lady (and I use the term “lady” loosely) who tells her driver Jordan all about the Australian bloke she picked up last night who was turned on by being spat upon. Whilst she rants about her sexcapade, she asks, “When did good old vagina go out of style?” Jordan replies, “Oh my God. Is vagina out of style? Is vagina old school? Is vagina BASIC?” At this point in my viewing, my soul died a little bit and I wept bitter tears for the generations that follow my own. (And this was only the first passenger.)
- A lady who is “pushing 40” (at the tender age of 32) who swiped right on Tinder last night and, rather than being smart and meeting her date out, had him pick her up at her house, where it turned out he was a drunk dude with a car that had an ignition interlock device, which she then breathed into so he could drive his car. (No. NOOOOOO! This is not okay!) This leads to a whole montage about online dating and red flags, and this was the point in my own viewing where I picked up my phone and closed all of my online dating apps for a bit. Ugh.
- Steve, who is a Jenny Craig life coach and doesn’t fail to mention it about a million times, but turns out to have a fetish for larger women. There’s a lot of fat shaming here (which I don’t condone), including talk of Big Tracy: “She’ll slit your throat for 2 pancakes.” Steve has a threesome with Big Tracy and her friend Twila, and talks endlessly about how he’s on the down low, and nobody can find out about this, and if anyone knows he’ll get in trouble at work and everyone will make fun of him. Steve talks about this endlessly ON TV. Yeah, this is all very real.
- There’s also a nice (and I use that word sarcastically) segment about black women’s weaves, and another where a guy and the driver discuss hate-sex and make fun of valley girls for about 8 million* minutes. (*At least it FEELS like 8 million minutes.) The show is topped off by the Trainwreck of the Week: a very, very brash girl who just loves to drink. She works at U-Haul, but only when she wants, and talks a lot about her day drinking, her alco-hoe (I don’t know if that’s how it’s spelled but that’s how she says it) and how she likes to go HAM: hard as a motherf***er.
Hey, you guys, remember when VH1 played videos, and you’d flip over there whenever something you didn’t like came on MTV? Like, when Martha Quinn was just rambling on a little too long on MTV News and you really wanted to hear something good but, eh, George Michael was on VH1 so that would suffice until MTV started playing Beastie Boys again? Remember that?
Yeah. That was way better.
But then again, that was during MY upbringing, before I knew there was such a thing as hookup culture. I’m clearly not in VH1’s target demo anymore. If you are, maybe this show is for you.