The Kardashians’ smooth-brained, smooth-faced mercenariness has always struck me as dispiriting, and yet it’s also true that they’ve been masters at their game, second to none at transforming their lives into a never-ending content and revenue stream that seems, at this point, almost as natural as the air we breathe. Even if you find the Kardashians’ doings mundane or their values repulsive, there is something undeniably magnetic, and surprisingly difficult to replicate, about their enduring kerfuffles. Partly, it’s their sheer number. (As the reality star and recent Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt said when I profiled him some years ago, of the Kardashians’ ability to generate multiple gripping story lines, “There’s, like, twenty of these people. They are legitimately like a Viking clan.”) Partly, too, it’s their easy willingness to bare much if not exactly all onscreen, almost as if they’ve taken to heart Warren Beatty’s testy comment to his then girlfriend Madonna, in her 1991 tour documentary “Truth or Dare,” “Why would you say something if it’s off camera? What point is there in existing?”
I had the opportunity to mull all of this over as I sat down to watch “The Girls: a Khloé Kardashian Project,” a new six-part reality show on Hulu, and the latest entry in the “Kardashians” universe. Over the years, some of the sisters have tried to launch their own spinoffs. There was the one-season wonder “Life of Kylie,” and “Kourtney & Kim Take New York” (not to mention “Kim & Kourtney Take Miami.”) But the worst offender might be Khloé, the youngest Kardashian daughter, who has given us not only “Kourtney & Khloé Take the Hamptons,” but also “Khloé & Lamar,” “Kocktails with Khloé,” and “Revenge Body with Khloé Kardashian.” In her most recent attempt, Khloé, now forty-two and a mother of two, brings together her “incredible real-life circle of besties” to provide us with another dose of Kardashian-coded glamour and drama. Starting with the theme song, the show promises the same high-femme-business-bitch energy familiar from the sisters’ origin series. (Among the gorgeous lyrical highlights: “High heels, diamond rings, success! Limousines, boss moves, good sex!”) But as I continued to push through the episodes—and “push through” is unfortunately the correct term here—I was struck by the near-complete, print-to-order deadness of “The Girls.” Watching the show, I truly felt as if it was created by Khloé throwing the terms “reality show,” “Kardashian,” “women,” “BBL,” and “money” into Claude and hitting Enter.
“The Girls” stars six L.A.-area influencer-businesswomen types, who, Khloé tells us, have been “part of me and my sisters’ lives for years.” There are Natalie and Olivia, cousins who starred in the twenty-tens reality show “WAGS LA,” when they were both dating professional athletes, and who are now promoting a hair-extension line; there’s Nicole, a Sports Illustrated model and mother of one, also a “WAGS LA” veteran, and now married to a former N.F.L. player; there’s Yris, a mom-of-two lash-extension-and-children’s-deodorant entrepreneur (“no one’s talking about musty kids!”) who’s engaged to a former N.B.A. player; and, finally, Malika and Kadijah, identical twins, both single mothers, who are longtime B.F.F.s of Khloé’s and have appeared often as a kind of Greek chorus on “K.U.W.T.K.” and “The Kardashians.” As for Khloé herself, she checks in mostly over FaceTime here and there, as if grabbing a moment while on bathroom breaks from more important meetings, to coax the girls to tell her “all the tea,” while also providing the platitude-heavy narration that’s supposed to tie the show together. (“I’ll Carrie Bradshaw this thing and break all this drama down for you,” she says, following up with lines like “The thing about expectations is that they’re basically just pre-planned disappointments.”)
The relationships among the cast members, like the narration, feel stiff and false, and the performances on camera have a clocking-in-at-an-office-job vibe. Over the years, shows like “Real Housewives”—and in fact, “The Kardashians,” as well—have increasingly begun breaking the fourth wall, with cast members occasionally admitting that they’re following the requirements of a show rather than, say, hanging out with one another organically. This is fine, and even refreshing, as long as the relationships that develop on camera have the heat and texture of real life. On “The Girls,” the women speak openly of filming-day schedules, and attend Hulu-related events like a promo shoot and a showcase party for advertisers. So much airtime is given over to such gatherings that, in effect, making and promoting the show become the beats of the show.
