Review: Model.Live
"Model.Live," a new unscripted series from Vogue.TV and IMG, isn't content to be just any show about modeling. No sir. This one is different, you see. "Reality TV just got real" reads the tagline on the show's Bebo page. A similar clarification is issued via voiceover in one episode, declaring, "This isn't a reality show. You're really going to experience the world of modeling."
If only "Model.Live" could live up to its own billing. Hate to disappoint those holding out hope it would singlehandedly elevate the model-themed reality genre, but "Model.Live" is a totally average entry. (It's not even "live," so what's with that title anyway?) While the production values are fantastic by web-video standards (12-episode series began Aug. 19), you aren't going to see anything here you haven't already seen on CW's atrociously addictive "America's Next Top Model," MTV's bland "8th & Ocean" and VH1's sublimely catty "The Agency."
That's really as much a compliment as it is a dismissal, though. "Model.Live" is like a cheap knockoff of a designer-brand handbag; it's good enough that even discerning viewers of this inexhaustible genre would likely give it a try.
Like all these shows, "Model.Live" treats the practitioners of its stock in trade with the reverent tones devoted to astronauts. We follow three up-and-coming models -- Cato Van Ee, Madeline Kragh, Austria Alcantara -- as they leave their homes for the scary bright lights of the big city to participate in New York's Fashion Week. While their job isn't more than strolling catwalks and looking into the lens of various cameras, the girls' handlers sit around and talk about their challenge as if these girls are attempting to land on Pluto.
Take the beautiful Cato, for instance, a small-town girl from Holland who incessantly reminds viewers, as do the members of her family interviewed, that she's actually very smart and could be going off to college, but really should give this modeling thing a whirl now while the time is ripe. "I can party when I'm 30," she observes. Because, as you know, the worlds of partying and modeling are mutually exclusive.
For Vogue, "Model.Live" is a brand-reinforcing no-brainer complete with sponsorship from Express and e-commerce opportunities for fashionable frocks. On Bebo, it feels a bit less on target than more youth-skewing fare like "The Secret World of Sam King" and "Sofia's Diary," but if you are interested in delving further into the depths of these shallow lives, this social network offers more than just the videos that reside on Vogue.TV.
Still, contrary to its breathless promotion, there's nothing in "Model.Live" you haven't seen before. There's about as much meat left on the bones of this genre as there is on the models it depicts.
(Andrew Wallenstein)
