Written By: Adam Giaudrone
Draft Date: February 8, 2009
Pages: 60
Network: CW
Category: Jury's Out
Again, see Pilot Script Review - The Vampire Diaries for disclaimer re placing this and the other CW scripts (besides Light Years) in the Jury's Out category.
The Beautiful Life is probably my least favorite of this group. Vampire Diaries is small town. Body Politic is, well, against the backdrop of politics. Beautiful Life is hot people, backstabbing, models, drugs, and alcohol. It edges a little too close to Gossip Girl in that sense, though Beautiful Life does promise to have significant camp value.
As with Vampire Diaries, there is a feeling of retread material here. There's an up-and-coming female model given her big break (Raina, 15... which becomes a plot point, what with statutory rape laws). There's an out-and-going female model clinging fast and hard to her career even though (gasp!) at the age of 22 and because she's put on a little weight and is now a size 2 (Sonja / Mischa Barton?). Heaven forbid!!! There's a naive, attractive midwesterner who gets "discovered" while on vacation with his family in NYC and stays behind to give modeling a try (Chris). Raina is assigned to help Chris with his look and they shopping together (cue the shopping montage!) and Raina helps him get into the swing of things on a test photo shoot. They discover they have chemistry. The guy who discovered Chris, Simon, wants to use him as arm candy which Chris eventually finds out and does not approve of (good on you, Chris). There's the ex-model turned agent (Claudia / Elle MacPherson), who could take the place of the oh-so-tired antics of Wilhelmina Slater for TV's bitchiest, campiest fashion boss. Then there are a bunch of other models, male and female, as well as designers of various standing (fake and real). There's a drug overdose in there somewhere.
It's sure to be flashy, with hot people and cool costumes... but ultimately it's so shallow that, while it wears its lack of depth on its sleeve and tries to have fun with it, it's still really, really shallow. I'm not sure a campy tone is enough to save it from that truth.
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