Southern charmless

January 15, 2021. How can such an innocuous bit of comfort tv go broke with woke?

For the past five years, I have usually enjoyed the antics of a group of spoiled southern charmers living in Charleston, South Carolina, featured in the Bravo program, Southern Charm. Not any more.

The show was like a spinoff of Two and Half Men (and much better than the Ashton Kutcher extension of that franchise), or even Seinfeld or Friends, showing beautiful, spoiled, seemingly rich and idle thirty-somethings from that charming city of the South (see accompanying photo, the old crew). I'm not suggesting the show was award-winning in any sense, not would I use it as a model for recent college graduates or twenty-somethings looking for a lifestyle choice. Then again, that would apply all of the aforementioned shows. Then again, isn't that what those shows were all about? Weren't they intended to provide escapism? Weren't the plots implausible, even the reality show? I think most people watched these shows to envy the freedom and lifestyle of those on the shows, if only for a release from our own hum drum, practical reality lives. Southern Charm was always more of a soap opera than a reality show. But not any more.

The cast this year (not pictured) for the show appear to have been imported from another part of the world or dragged out of the shadows of the previous cast. Memorable characters are gone. New characters, labeled as long-time friends, arrived. The tone and template of the show has disappeared. Laughter has been replaced by argument. Social life has been replaced with social justice. Entertainment has been replaced by virtue signaling.