DietTribe!

If you are wondering why I have not contributed to this blog in an eternity, fuck you. However, my time away did give me the opportunity to visit my sister Leigh, a FANTASTIC illustrator who shares my love of the social pablum that is the Lifetime network. To celebrate my arrival, she purchased the first (and presumably final) season of DietTribe. According to MyLifetime.com, “’DietTribe’ is Lifetime's new reality series that follows the emotional journey of five friends as they attempt to go from ‘fat’ to ‘fit.’” In other words, you know that friend of yours with the really bad self-esteem that does not ever stop complaining about how fat they are getting until you refuse to drink with her anymore? Since you stopped hanging out with her she found 4 other similarly damaged people to sit and weep with her at the Olive Garden every Friday, and now they have a TV show. Thanks a lot, asshole.

As longtime members of the Husky Pants Club, my sister and I are sympathetic to their predicament:

Leigh: its going to be really sad when you get so fat that your tattoo falls off
Harmony: You're so fat that your tattoos were applied to you by kids in gangs who thought you were a subway car
Leigh: damn thats good
Leigh: *dies inside*
Leigh: *takes 23 people to navy pier on back*

Now that you know my sister and I are monsters, let’s meet some equally-damaged people from the tee-vee.

Anna: The queen of the DietTribe, she is getting married in 6 months and refuses to suffer the indignity of being fat at her wedding. This is unfortunate because she is marrying a man who tries to jolly her out of her weight-related depression by buying her a fucking sheet cake.

Harmony: OK, so fatty is getting married to her cake pusher, and she is crying because she doesn't want to be fat when she's married
Leigh: why does greg enable her?
Harmony: Greg buys her cake so he does not have to touch her
Leigh: ummm too bad cake is awesome
Harmony: "You want to have sex? Are you sure you don't want cake instead?"

Shawna: The craziest ho in the DietTribe. She is a former personal trainer who got addicted to McDonalds fries so hard she had to quit her old job. She is intensely unstable and prone to entertaining screaming meltdowns, and refuses to accept the fact that she has more booty then she used to. Her cognitive dissonance is best displayed when she is weighed in for the first time and cries and yells for about 10 minutes straight:

Leigh: umm shawna is clearly unstable fyi
Harmony: Yeah, I think Shawna could use a trip to that Charm School show where they give you therapy and shit
Leigh: "ohgodohgodohgod IAMNOTGOING TO CRRRYYYYYY I AM A MONSTER"
Harmony: YOU BUY YOUR OWN PANTS YOU KNEW THIS WAS COMING
Leigh: shawna pays someone like $100 to buy her pants for her and cut the tags out
Harmony: "Oh, I don 't know my pants size, I just have a blind tailor who sews them on me by feel"
Harmony: "He thinks I am a circus horse"

Megan: Megan is difficult to talk about because she doesn’t have much of a personality. She is asthmatic, an “emotional eater” and the self-proclaimed mom of the group. Her only real quirk is a really unhealthy relationship with French fries, which compels her to cry and commandeer the camera about 5 times in the first episode to beg them to come back into her life. I am not kidding.

Harmony: OH MY GOD SHUT UP ABOUT FRENCH FRIES
Leigh: umm this blair witch "I miss you french fires' shit is so creepy
Harmony: Most healthy people have co-dependent relationships with french fries
Leigh: "i love you french fries"
Leigh: *tucks french fry back into cleavage*

Lydia: Lydia, we can’t figure out why you agreed to be on this show. Your weight is on the big side of normal and you seem to be relatively well-adjusted. The only thing Lifetime can find that is odd about you is that you “don’t date”, but you also hook up with a guy over the course of the show, so what the fuck is that about? There is nothing funny about you until later, so we’re moving on to….

Morgan! Oh Jesus. This girl is a mess. This girl is Annie Wilkes with a social life. Not only is she the biggest girl in the group, she’s also the one who has put the most effort into losing weight. With a bah-zillion failed diets and a gastric bypass under her belt (pun intended), she STILL weighs close to 300 pounds. She also cries at the drop of a hat. This all seems inexplicable and sad on the outside, but it is all brought into depressing perspective when we meet her be-muumuued family at a picnic and they all mock her for being alive. Her mom is basically a plump Cruella DeVille, simultaneously scorning her daughter for her weight and being openly skeptical of yet another failed diet:

Leigh: hahahaha why is EVERYONE IN HER FAMILY wearing a caftan?
Harmony: Oh god, that is a question I do not want an answer to
Leigh: I love how her parents are making fun of her while she is being a dumbass
Leigh: "hey morgan, great caftan!"
Harmony: They all kinda suck. Her mom hates her for being fat, but she should REALLY hate her for being a whiny dumbass
Harmony: "I approve of your body and your stylish caftan, but you are still kind of retarded" "Thanks, mom!"

Anyone who comes away from DietTribe and doesn’t feel a little for Morgan is a heartless monster. On the other hand, she kind of digs her own grave by her non-stop pity party, as we’ll see in the episodes to come.

Since this is getting kinda long, I’m going to break it into parts. Come back later for a discussion of pilot episode. Same fat-time, same fat-channel!