Trigger Warnings: rape, sexual assault, family, friendship and relationship drama.
Mulholland High School, where pretty teenage girls meet pretty teenage boys, and you can always expect drama when it’s the setting for one of the most popular reality shows.
The ‘it girl” of the show, Chole Winterheaven, is the mean teen as she struggles to make it known to her co-stars and the millions of viewers watching that she and heart-throb Blade Mathers are no longer dating. In actual reality, she’s struggling to be taken seriously as a young wanna-be actress because of her reputation on a reality show. There’s not a single piece of reality in sight. When her step-father adds a new chef and business partner to their staff, Chloe has to get used to another family around the Winterheaven estate.
Ali Havist is the youngest of the Havist family and is a massive fan of the Mulholland High reality show. Like her friends, she believes Chole Winterheaven and Blake Mathers to be Mulholland High’s golden couple, but she’s quickly proven wrong.
No matter what we think as a teenager or watching a reality show, we don’t honestly know what’s happening in people’s lives and heads. Reality shows have been part of our culture since the nineties; at least, I remember hearing about them. I was born in the mid-nineties; just making that clear. The question is, do we, as viewers, know what’s going on? That most likely answer is no. I immediately felt like I was on a seesaw when I finished this book. I fell in love with the high school drama group preparing for a play and that both girls are involved heavily. I didn’t care for the back-and-forth drama with Ali, Chole and the reality show, and that could be because I’m not a reality show fan. By that, I’m talking about shows like Big Brother, Love Island, I’m a Celeb etc. Having said that, there are reality shows that I have or had watched, such as Dance Moms (only to the end of series 6), Strictly Come Dancing (might be Dancing with the Stars in some places), Bake Squad on Netflix; I could go on, so I’m not anti-reality.
What I didn’t vibe with was the teenage girl drama and insecurities, which I guess is understandable given that Ali realises that her favourite TV show isn’t exactly reality at all after she gets stuck in the middle of it and that Chole is trying to prove to Ali that she isn’t that Chole Winterheaven she’s been watching on screen. Perhaps reading a book like this in my mid-twenties, it’s a given that the bickering will irritate me. What did happen was I began to think about two podcasts I listen two (one loosely), unpicking the behinds of one of these reality shows from twelve years ago.
Screenshots from Instagram & Spotify
If, like me, in your teenage years and similar to Ali watched a US reality show called ‘Dance Moms‘, you might have come across the podcast ‘Because Mom Said So‘ and, the more in-depth podcast, I would say, ‘Back to the Barre.‘ Both comment about the behind-scenes of the show and how particular producers and a specific studio owner at the time did things off-camera to make it look different on camera. I don’t know if I’m explaining that great, but I don’t want to get too deep into it. If that’s something you want to uncover, I recommend the podcasts. More so, ‘Back to the Barre‘ takes on the actual reality behind the reality show. Although, a few episodes of ‘Because Mom Said So‘ gives insight into some behind-the-scenes.