My Stupid Sweet Sixteen, Part II

This week the MTV suckudrama "My Super Sweet Sixteen" featured a family of insane people. Literally. They didn't say that, but you could totally tell by how they were acting.

First of all, this girl who was getting the party thrown for her was named Jacqueline, which was the name of one of the girls the first week of the show, specifically the one who was a 16-year-old executive. But this Jacqueline (we'll call her "Jackie" to save me having to type "Jacqueline" like I did last week...what a nightmare that was) was not a rich girl with loving parents who threw an all-expenses paid blowout at the Hard Rock. This was the Jackie with the insane parents that probably, all things considered, don't even know what love is. They should get Foreigner to give her the number of that girl that showed Lou Gramm.* You may call that harsh and judgemental, but listen up:

I started watching this about halfway through, so admittedly I did not get the whole picture. But unless all the loving and normal family moments were in the first 10 minutes of heavily edited footage, I'm going to just judge them and feel good about it. Jackie is the girl whose picture is in the dictionary under "children of insane, spiteful, divorced (and rich) parents". She is insecure, tossed around by her emotions from minute-to-minute (she keeps flipping between the party being the "best party ever" and "totally ruined". Some persepctive is too much to ask for, I guess), constantly wanting approval, and myopic in dangerous ways that will cause her to drive boyfriends away in truckloads over the next few years. Also, she drives a combine to school. I'm sorry, that has nothing to do with anything. Carry on as if nothing had happened.

First of all, I see her handing out invitations to people from her school, which judging from week one and two is apparently some sort of sweet-sixteen party ritual I had no knowledge of. Jackie is inviting/snubbing people totally out of spite. She isn't even putting any thought into this, it's all about pure emotion. That's going to become the theme of the episode. She invites this guy she thinks is "totally cute" named Chad, and if Chad is "totally cute", I'm going back to high school, because bald current me, even when I look like I'm on crack, is way cuter than Chad. Way cuter. I'm Joey fricking McEntyre compared to him. He's got this huge nose and a flip hairstyle, for pete's sake. Let me repeat that so you get it: This is a dude with a flip hairstyle. A flip haristyle he got from wearing baseball caps. It's like a bowl cut where the barber died in between putting the bowl on and the cut itself. Now don't get me wrong, I like the guy. MTV follows him around Target as he buys a present for Jackie, whom he barely knows. He picks up all this crap that means nothing, which is cool because that's totally what I would have done if I were he. Also, Chad has been told that Jackie has a crush on him, but he totally just wants attention from MTV and not Jackie, so he totally plans to get out of that party before insane Jackie can form any sort of long standing attachment to him. Chad settles on a CD that he would like, and buys it for her. Attaboy.

Jackie tries on a dress and comes up with a ball gown. It looks good on her, but it would look good on most girls. And some guys. I suppose I find it hard to compliment Jackie outright because I don't like her. This is what MTV does -- makes you hate real people you otherwise wouldn't know. Wonderful.

Well, the party happens, and Jackie's dad is 45 minutes late ("totally ruining" the party) in bringing her date/pseudo-boyfriend/spikey-haired doormat, and she cries and cries and says that her dad "always ruins" "everything". His face is blurred out, which means he didn't want it shown, which means he either feels guilty or is an a-hole. No mention is made of why she has to enter the party with her non-boyfriend, and it seems pretty silly to not have a contingency plan when your fate is in the hands of an insane daddy. Of course, Jackie could be exaggerating again. But anyway, I would have just dumped the formality at this point and joined my party, but then again, I'm not a loopy 16-year-old girl. And I thank God every day for that.

After she comes in with Spikey, the party really gets going. Her mom has a few drinks and starts doing totally inappropriate things like dancing with her friends and organizing belching contests. When Chad arrives, she seeks him out, yells "SO THIS IS THE FAMOUS CHAD"(notice: not in bold, in all caps because it really happened), and proceeds to whisk him off to the dance floor, probably pinching his bum on the way. It's possible that mom thinks she's either a) cool; or, b) charming. What she is is c) drunk and needy. It was the saddest thing I saw, until the fact that Jackie didn't seem to care. It seemed like this sort of thing happened all the time to her. Yikes.

I don't want to mention the three "streakers" that painted pro-jackie stuff on their bodies and crashed the party because they weren't invited. They thought they were too punk rock for the party, but after they leave ball-gown Jackie chases them down outside, gives them big hugs, and invites them in. This is all so confusing. MTV was setting this up to be the thing that "totally ruins" things. Stupid editing. They're cold out there, so they accept.

All in all, this episode was about half as good as the first one, which I suppose is to be expected from MTV.

* Sorry so obscure, but my roommate listened to "I Wanna Know What Love is" about a million times our freshman year at CUW, so it's burned into my brain as if with a hot iron of some kind. I reference it when I can to hopefully get it out of there someday. (Actually, it's my favorite Foreigner song. "Gonna take a little time...")