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Maude Nificent · @maudenificent

723 followers · 5357 posts · Server aus.social

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#Watching (more like enduring) #FiveBedrooms (on paramount+)
mostly cos i’m between decent binge-worthy shows, amd i’m mostly ignoring it anyway (during the times i’m sitting in common area of a shared flat)

OMG this is the worst “reality TV” - without the sellairbrity, hype or ads, but still somewhere between torture and surreal

synopsis from wikipedia;

Five Bedrooms tells the story of five (melbourne) people at different times of their lives. They bond after they find themselves seated together at the singles table at a wedding. After a few too many drinks, the solution to all of their problems seems to be buying a house together; a five bedroom house

—-
in my 69th year but five bedrooms reminds me i still don’t understand:

*australia’s obsession with drinking

*the whole wedding thing - bucks and hens nights, coerced camaraderie of wedding groups, putting up with dysfunctional relatives, spending shitloads of money on weddings etc. and the ha-ha-funny laughing at anything shaped like a penis.
this place was invaded in 1788 and we are still laughing at poo and dick jokes (the anal stage of development is taking forever)

*the whole obsession with clothes/ fashion thing (especially women’s shoes). nails, make-up, removal of bodily hair (how dare you call me a mammal) and HTF does anyone cough up $500 or more for a pair of casual slacks? especially when even the unemployed people don’t seem to wear the same clothes twice.

*wankers upward mobility career aspiration and and social climbing (sure, it’s good to be financially comfortable, or do something challenging etm, but there is a point at which an increase in income doesn’t really improve your standard of living).

*who cares where anyone “studied” - i mean, tony abbott was a rhodes’ scholar but he’s still a total tool, right? education and qualifications are products, not the same thing as “learning”, intelligence, adaptability, vision, or decent values

*the casual cluelessness of “tolerant racism”

okay - suspending disbelief for the sake of creating “drama” sort of makes sense, as does allowing characters to be human and make mistakes,
but how do people lie to themselves/ each other so relentlessly and with such ease? a few (very few) themes of this show are “worthwhile” but mostly urban australian lives are portrayed as unbearably banal and shallow, and i fear what i’m seeing is all supposed to be “normal”

the true saving grace of Five Bedrooms is probably that none of the characters are naturally malicious, and there is a sense of “found family”, so there is some compensation for living in such a suffocating group.

i’d like to think the first 2 seasons were not all bad but to be honest i’m really paying more attention to scrabble, jigsaws and social media while sitting here

#watching #fivebedrooms

Last updated 2 years ago

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