My Stupid Sweet Sixteen, Part V

My Stupid Sweet Sixteen, Part 5: I Think I’m Just Getting Used to These People.

Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I just didn’t feel the hate I usually do when watching the show this week. I’ve been crying out for these people to do a little introspection, a little self-checking. The subject this week, Natalie, does that, though only for a few seconds (of course, she could be fricking Socrates and we would never know, because of the MTV editing scheme that requires her for purposes of the show to be at the very least self-absorbed). Also, her dad, while clueless, is not (obviously) nuts like many of the parents we’ve seen. I don’t know. Well, let’s unwrap this episode and see what we can find, then render the verdict on Natalie and her ilk.

The show starts with a sentiment that has become all too typical of Sweet Sixteen Party subjects, as Natalie says, “You’re not invited, get over it.” Later on, we find out that she’s saying this in response to some freshmen who are making fake invitations to her party. She turns out to be quite proactive on the keeping-freshmen-out front, moreso than most of the others we’ve seen. She calls out some “hits” on them later…but we’re getting ahead of ourselves, because of the way MTV frames their episodes. Sorry.

Natalie is a blonde girl who everyone seems to think is hot. I have a theory about Natalie w/r/t her hotness: A lot of it has to do with the fact that she is also the “New Girl”, having just moved to California (where her rich dad makes this episode possible) from Roswell, NM. She’s novel, and hot, so people think she’s super hot. I remember my senior year of High School we got a transfer named Heather that everyone thought was hot, but after a month, we realized she was just above-average. I’m totally serious, this happens. As for Natalie herself, I can see why 16-year-old boys find her attractive, because she’s blonde and has gigantic bosoms. I’ll just leave that there and move on.

As I mentioned, Natalie’s the New Girl, and is also known as the “Car Girl” because of her rich dad’s car collection, which includes a gold $715,000 car, which is a totally ridiculous thing to own. That car is worth about 5 times the house I could afford right now. I guarantee you I work harder than Nat’s dad, too, so I must be doing something very wrong. Anyway, Natalie shocks the MTV world by showing just an inkling of introspection, even if most of that introspection revolves around the fact that she’s hot and rich and she knows it. She comments, “Sometimes I feel guilty for that (meaning being rich and getting everything she wants)…but I deserve it, because I’ve always been the nice girl, not the rich girl.” Now, I’m not saying you should feel guilty for being rich (and it’s interesting that you frame it that way), but rich and nice are not mutually exclusive, except possibly on this show. And I also wonder what she did to become the “nice girl”. Befriend some people that aren’t quite as hot? Serve food in a homeless shelter? Start a “Just Say No” campaign?

I just got a thought: Nat’s from Roswell – she could be an alien, like those teens from Roswell. Man, that show must have been a beating for the real Roswell High during away games, eh? I wonder what kind of creative cheers their opponents came up with…

Sorry I keep getting sidetracked. I guess that means that Natalie didn’t keep my attention quite as well as the Ava Trainwreck or the Hart’s Dad Debacle. Anyway, Natalie’s glad she’s “High Class Now”, which means that instead of being a hot nice nobody, she’s going to become just another mean rich skank with no real friends. To this end, she proceeds to attempt to buy the friendship of the cool kids with this lavish party. This whole Sweet Sixteen Party thing is just a means to an end for her – she wants to get noticed, and she wants to be adored. Maybe I don’t like Natalie after all. That’s more like it.

Predictably, Nat’s dad has an attached woman that’s way younger than her mom must be (who we never get to see but seems to live in Roswell – maybe they can’t show her because she’s an alien, which would make Natalie half-alien, which if you’ve seen “V” you know that somewhere Natalie has a brother who looks like a lizard. It would also explain her boobs), a fiancé named Melissa who – and this is the most positive thing I’ve said about a person on this show, so get ready – seems nice. Dad owns 5 nightclubs out there in Cali, and Natalie must have seen him and his location as an opportunity to get herself famous. Dad also seems nice, except for his fascination with cars. I think he probably doesn’t really discipline Nat enough, but she doesn’t really do anything too bad in the 23 minutes we see her, so we’ll never know.

Natalie has a tendency to overstate things, like, “Nobody has had or ever will have a Sweet Sixteen Party like this.” As Kip Dynamite would say, “like anyone can even know that”. She also says, “Nobody is going to Vegas to go shopping (for a dress)”, which is funny considering Ava went to Paris, which is in France, for a dress, and even Hart went to New York to buy some hoes. Clearly, Natalie doesn’t realize how high the bar is for the Sweet Sixteen Overparty. If they played the Natalie episode before those two, her comments wouldn’t seem so overstated. Oh, well.

She goes to Paris with friends and Melissa (I think) to shop for dresses. A word on Natalie’s taste in dresses: Cleavage. In all the dresses she tries on, her cleavage is practically blinding us. She knows where her bread is buttered, so-to-speak. The dresses are so tight she has to use a special shoehorn-type tool to cram her boobs in there called the “boobhorn”. Nobody seems to mind or protest the cleavage-fest, but somehow Natalie decides to go with the white “jungle-style” dress (that’s what I call a dress with one shoulder strap) that’s tight enough to show off her “hotness” but doesn’t blind people with headlights when she’s facing them. That’s right, I wrote headlights.

The overeager teenage salesman clearly smells money when Natalie’s entourage starts shopping, and is working it hard. Natalie says she heard that Paris Hilton shops there, and what’s a salesman to do except agree, even if it’s not true. Natalie’s a bad shopper -- too eager to overspend. The salesman must be thinking, “What are you, from podunk Roswell or something?” Natalie decides on a $900 dress, which to Ava would mean “something to wear once to the grocery store and then throw out”, but Natalie seems very happy, and to her credit does not say, “Nobody has ever paid $900 for a dress”. Good for her.

Natalie and her friend are sitting outside, doing the now-familiar ritual of deciding who and who not to invite to the party. They don’t say who they’re going to invite, but they are definitely not going to invite “Freshmen”, “Non-Social Losers”, “Wastes of Time”, “The Infirm”, “Black People”, and “People She Doesn’t Know and Hasn’t Heard Were Cool.” They decide to invite exactly one freshman, a girl who they think is totally groovy, and they give her the invitation when she’s sitting with her friends, whom they make an explicit point of not inviting. You just know Natalie is being mocked behind her back for this type of behavior. This is her plan – making people want to be at her party, because it’s going to be so cool. She has delusions of importance. MTV interviews some people who didn’t get invited, and they seem nonplussed: “I don’t even know who that is.” I guess if you don’t know somebody, you don’t care that they don’t invite you to their Sweet Sixteen Party. The real problem is Natalie’s treating herself like the arbiter of who’s cool and who’s not at this school, which will garner her much more hate than admiration, no matter how cool the party is. A telling moment in this scene is when Natalie says that people “look up to her” for having a rich daddy who gives her everything she wants and spoils her. Memo to teenage girls: Jealousy and Respect are two different things. Natalie’s jonesing for some serious jealousy here and it’s somehow translating in her blonde brain as respect.

Natalie, despite what you might think, made friends in Roswell that have agreed to come to the Party. MTV cuts to them in Roswell, and the cute-as-a-button Sara is attempting to choose between two different black dresses – a hand-me-down and a dress from Target. Her gay friend (not explicitly said, but come on) who I didn’t catch the name of but we’ll call him “Coby” is helping her. MTV is trying to establish these two as Natalie’s “roots”, so far away from the “High Class” life Natalie is living now. Will there be conflict when Sara and Coby see what a wench Nat has become? Stay tuned, but here’s a hint: no.

Hot opinion of the day: Sara’s better looking than Natalie, and her hand-me-down dress is better than Natalie’s $900 special. Had to be said.

Meanwhile, Natalie’s getting decadent with diamond-studded toenail polish (that’s a good investment) and preparing for her friends to come. Earlier she stated that, “Nobody in Roswell thinks she’s actually going to have this party”, which makes her so angry. How dare they think something! She’s also upset about the freshmen sneaking-in thing I mentioned before. “Who does that?” asks Natalie’s henchwoman. One could also ask that question about New Girls who try to buy everyone’s friendship with a Sweet Sixteen Party, but nobody does. Natalie says, “Grow up. You’re not invited. Deal with it.” Natalie hands these things out like they’re a ticket to coolness and she wonders why people might want to get back at her by crashing the Party. Natalie’s an idiot who should take her own advice.

Natalie can’t wait to see her Roswell friends, and it appears to be kind of genuine, as in not just so they can go back to New Mexico and shove the party in those doubters' faces (although she does say, “I can’t wait till they go back and tell Roswell about me”). Sara and Coby arrive and Dad picks them up in one of his patented Cool Cars, this time with a dashboard that flips over and does tricks. Coby guarantees himself face time by naming an MTV show (I’m not going to tell you which one, but it rhymes with, “Chimp my Hide”), and then delivers the funniest line of the episode when he sees something Natalie’s wearing and gush-asks, “Chanel?” 16-year-old boys should not ever say, “Chanel”, no matter how gay they are.

It’s Hair Time, and Natalie’s nervous about it for some reason. Her hair looks great, but it apparently doesn’t meet her self-hotness standards, so she’s pissed. Dad comes out in an Elvis costume for no apparent reason (To cheer her up? To get MTV attention? To just be goofy? Because he lacks a clue?) and Natalie looks like she wants to throw him out the window. She says, “I hate him”, which no doubt caused hurt feelings upon their watching it later. This is why I don't want a daughter.

Cute little Sara’s also getting her hair done at a Salon, and the skank (named “Angel”, which is to laugh) in there is making fun of her Target jewelry and how little it cost. Amazing isn’t it, the upside-down world of the rich and stupid? Sara says, “I look great on a budget.” Which is kind of lame but what else can you say to that crap? Angel thinks she’s speaking a Foreign language and says, “What is this…bud…jet…you speak of?”

Cleaning up some loose ends: They promo a catfight at this point, with two girls pushing each other and grabbing hair, like on “Jose Luis” or “Jerry Springer”. Don’t get excited, however, because the catfight is only one little part of the “party is going crazy” montage, and lasts about one second. Boo, MTV. But it does last twice as long as the clip they promoed all last week of people (actually, one person) climbing the walls of the club to get in, however. What a gyp. I wanted to see more monkey kids.

Also, Roswell, NM, which MTV is setting up as total Nowheresville, is a town of est. 65,000 people. But it only has one mall, so I totally see what they mean.

The party finally happens, and a Latin American gentleman tries to get in with sandals. It’s unclear whether it’s the Latin American-ness or the sandals that are keeping him out. Earlier on, Natalie mentioned self-importantly that “all the kids are renting limos for this thing.” I wonder if Hart’s dad is watching, and if so, did a little part of him die. I guess that’s the difference between Cali and the ultra-hip state of...Pennsylvania.

During the party, 2 main themes develop as MTV talks to people in the crowd: Nobody really knows who this Natalie girl is; but, they’ve seen her and she’s like sooooooooo hot. MTV edited things so that people appear to have no other feelings on the subject of Natalie, the Party, the club, the food, the music, etc. It’s just a) she’s F------ hot, and b) we don’t f------ know her. I wonder how many would have shown up if she would have had the same party, only been butt-ugly. It would be an interesting California sociological experiment. One thing’s for sure: MTV wouldn’t be there to film it.

At the party there’s a lot of booty dancing going on, which needs to stop everywhere now and forever. Natalie’s dad also brought in his own hoes to dance on platforms, but they didn’t make a big freakin’ deal about it like Hart’s dad did. I wonder if Nat’s dad paid Hart’s dad royalties for using his concept of the “Crawl Room”.

It also must be mentioned that this is the coolest-looking of the 5 parties we’ve seen so far. It looks expensive, and huge. It looks like Nat may succeed in buying friendship after all.

MTV does a great bit next as Natalie finds out one of the accursed non-invited freshmen girls snuck in. Natalie’s going crazy looking for this girl, and she tells one of this crasher’s friends that “You can stay, but she’s out.” Nice. There is no English word to describe the speed at which I would leave this party after telling Natalie off, if I were this girl. MTV highlights the offending girl for clarity, and she is thrown out by Natalie’s Security Section.

This Security Section surrounds Natalie in an annoying bubble, and it’s not long before they begin to cramp her style. She asks, “Where are the hotties?” because she wants to dance with a boy on her birthday. There’s one problem: Dad has instructed Security Section that no boy is to touch her without losing whatever body part they touched her with, and with all this booty dancing going on, you know what that means. Sara and Coby also get their own Security Section, and they laughingly tell MTV that some dude ran into her too hard, and they told Security, and Security said to the kid, “You. Are. Out.” I guess you had to be there.

I cannot emphasize enough how cute Sara is. Maybe she’s the reason I think I didn’t hate these people enough.

Remember Jacqueline from week one? Well, she was at this party, and is creepily gracious when she says that this party, “Totally demolished hers.” That’s the word she used – “demolished”. I wonder what her parents think when they hear that – “yeah, but we got Pauly Shore.” And in defense of Jacqueline’s party, she wasn’t desperately trying to buy friends.

Natalie succeeds in her mind at the friend purchasing, and it only cost her dad $450,000 to do it. (Now Ava’s got to be really pissed, because this more than doubled her take. Bring on the Bat Mitzvah). Natalie says, “That’s all I really wanted – I am the popular girl.” No, you’re the hot girl, and the rich girl, and you’ve got big cans. Is that really what you want to be known for? This is what the other kids are saying: “Remember when that hot what’s-her-face threw that big party? Yeah, that was great until I got thrown out by Security for trying to dance with her. What’s the use of being hot if I can’t touch you? Anyway, what was her name again? Her friend Sara was hot.”

At least she’s not the “nice girl” anymore. That was like, sooooo boring and lame.

Next week: A helicopter! A nacho bar! A fashion show! A season finale!