Blonde Charity Mafia Review and Sophie’s Tattletale Dimples

Let’s get a couple of things straight from the beginning. There is the TV Show, “Blonde Charity Mafia” and then there is the real life clique of blonde girls that Andrea Rodgers labeled the Blonde Charity Mafia. Aside from Krista Johnson and Katherine Kennedy, the other members of the real BCM are not involved in the reality show. Second, this critique is coming from me — not Miss A. There was a bitter cat fight between Miss A and KK, but from what I hear they are both trying to mend their relationship. And third, Sophie Pyle’s dimples deserve their own tv show. Or at least their own channel on YouTube.

While watching Blonde Charity Mafia, there is one question you should ask yourself: Are Sophie’s dimples out? If the answer is no, then the scene that you are watching is boring. If the answer is yes, then it might have its moments.

Sophie’s dimples in Blonde Charity Mafia mean that she’s thinking about hooking up with your boyfriend, except she’s not, because

Sophie Pyle

it’s fake, but OMG, it would be so funny if she really were going to go home with your boyfriend, and gee, he’s kind of cute in a Justin Bobby with a Calculator kind of way, and being a bad girl isn’t so bad because at least you get to think about forbidden sex. Teehee, PING, :-:)

Sophie’s dimples, in other words, are wicked. I can respect that.

I can’t, however, respect the rest of the show. It is amateurish, and though I’ve seen plenty of complaints about the wooden performances of the leading ladies, and I’ll get to that in a minute, the technical aspects of the show were dreadful as well.

The women at PB&J Television certainly have producing credits, but they did not deliver for Blonde Charity Mafia. The dubbing is obvious in some places and the hair and make-up are disastrous. Dark eye make-up for the bad girl? how original. And giving KK a hairdo akin to a lady mullet in the last scene? tacky. I feel comfortable complaining about the hair and make-up on this show, because during the one taping at which I was present with Miss A, I watched a production assistant tell a cast member that she needed more lipstick (she didn’t). Yes, make-up for stage and screen needs to be heavier than day-to-day make-up in order to not be drowned out by bright

John Pyne and Katherine Kennedy

lighting. But it doesn’t need to be that heavy. In some scenes–the party and the final scene with Katherine Kennedy and her perfectly arranged coterie–the make-up aged the blondes. Any teenager with half a semester of theater arts could have done a better job with the girls’ make-up than PB&J’s make-up artists did.

In addition to bad storylines and awkward language, the pacing of the episode was off. Though clearly and unabashedly a The Hills and The City knock-off, Blonde Charity Mafia did not imitate the classic shot where the camera simply rests on the girls’ faces during awkward silences, letting their discomfort show; instead, BCM’s cameras wander across the room, showing people at a distance. BCM’s cameras are kind of name-droppers, in a way. They are more interested in trying to make DC seem glamorous instead of letting personalities and drama shine. Probably, this was a good call, because none of the main characters are that comfortable or natural in front of the camera. On the other hand, it was boring and it tended to ruin the flow between plot points. If you can call them that.

The storytelling is a bit heavy-handed. When Katherine Kennedy and crew are inspecting the hotel for the Welcome to Washington party, the manager spends an excessive amount of time stressing that their party will be exclusive and that the staff would see to it that the guest list would be observed. GEE. I WONDER IF SOMEONE WILL BE DENIED ACCESS TO THE COOL PARTY. Oh, and when John Pyne talks about polygamy–do we think he might be a cheater? Maybe? You think?

Then there are the characters/actresses.

Remember how people talked about New York as though it were a character on Sex and the City? Well, here, Late Night Shots is a character. A meaningless one. The voiceover describing LNS the show–the woman sounds like she is faking an orgasm when she says “Late Night Shots“–says that it’s invite-only, and the screenshot of LNS is done from a Mac. Why? Because we’re supposed to believe that LNS is an upscale joint.

Then there is Katherine Kennedy. Beautiful and poised, she comes across as though she is giving rehearsed speeches instead of having conversations with her mom, friends, or boyfriend. While she is fairly relaxed in front of the camera, she doesn’t have much sense of pacing or delivery. You can see her talking about “opening checkbooks” during the show’s introduction, when she is speaking into a microphone before a crowd. She is giving a little speech, there. But when she interacts with her castmates, her mannerisms and diction never relax. It’s like she is still giving a speech. It comes across as though she is too concerned with being faultless to ever bother being real. I can’t blame her, because the urge to prevent criticism is strong, but her acute awareness of being watched makes for dull television.

The scene where KK confronts her date, John Pyne, over his supposed canoodling with Sophie Pyle is especially disappointing. Katherine’s earrings are lovely, but her portrayal of accusation and forgiveness is thoroughly unconvincing. This is the producer’s fault in part, because their whole interaction is implausible, but it’s also a disappointing rendering of romantic angst on Katherine’s part. A girl just doesn’t accuse her boyfriend of sleeping with another girl and then smile and shrug it off when he denies it. She may decide to let it slide, she may decide that she thinks she believes him. But she stays pissed for ten minutes, at least, and there was none of that from Katherine Kennedy.

Krista Johnson is very hit-or-miss. Her raspy voice and big eyes mean that when she delivers her one-liners and firm declarations regarding Sophie Pyle’s character, she can be quite charming. But the rest of the time, she seems uncomfortable and doesn’t quite settle into her role. Her friend Adam wins the Best Actor on BCM award, for the delightfully morose way he says “of course” after Krista rejects him and tells him not to mess up her hair.

Rounding out KK’s clique are Nicole and Shayna. Nicole is a bit prudish, and it probably has more to do with her stiffness in front of the camera and less to do with how they are intending to portray her. Shayna, on the other hand, is an (unwitting?) cliched caricature of a pageant queen attempting to be vampy. I’ve met plenty of women in DC who are exactly like BCM’s Shayna character, so I don’t know what to make of her. Some of the lines that she delivers and the way that she delivers them seem designed to make her seem “sassy” and “relatable” but instead come across as insincere and contrived.

Back to Sophie Pyle. You haven’t forgotten about her dimples, have you? Because I sure haven’t. Her gang of girls (who, unlike Team Katherine, do not look like they were attacked by a vicious make-up artist desiring to make women look like sexy clowns) are mostly unremarkable, though Talia is a natural on camera and would not be out of line looking for television work.

Sophie herself is at a distinct advantage over the good girls. Because we don’t have to be on her team, because we don’t have to like her, she can be a little more realistic. Her devious, darling little dimples mean that when she is being smug or bratty or coy, she is also relaxing on camera. While it must be embarrassing to have one’s supposed sex life be the topic of a television show, if she wants to work in television, I think her experience is going to be more beneficial to her than the other girls’ experiences will be to them.

Which brings us to the closing scene with John Pyne. Sophie makes the approach in this scene. She smiles, she’s confident, and she’s gorgeous. Why? Well, because the show is fake and she knows that John Pyne has to at least pretend to be interested. She is money, and she knows it. The on-screen chemistry between the two of them is much more interesting than Katherine Kennedy and John Pyne. With KK, John Pyne just has to be there. He doesn’t have to act interested in her. But with Sophie, because she isn’t The Girlfriend, he can’t rest on the laurels of being her date to get the relationship across to viewers. He has to look at Sophie, appraisingly, and she has to look back. With dimples.