Dietland
By Joyce Slaton,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Dark, very surreal series skewers America's beauty complex.
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Dietland
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What's the Story?
Plum Kettle (Joy Nash) isn't satisfied with her life. She has a boring job, answering advice letters for Kitty Montgomery (Julianna Margulies), the narcissistic editor of teen fashion magazine Daisy Chain. And she's on a miserable diet, trying to lose enough weight to qualify for a gastric bypass. Then one day a weird goth-y stranger (Erin Darke) uses a lip pencil to scrawl one word across her arm: DIETLAND. Plum's search for what that means exactly leads her into some very strange places, and gains her reluctant entry into a secret feminist cabal working to take down America's beauty industry from the inside.
Is It Any Good?
Deeply funny in a way that can only come from lived-in truth, this wild ride of a series delivers a defiant middle finger to the beauty standards that paralyze female power. Dietland viewers will recognize their own knuckling-under in Plum's endless endurance to the many indignities that are heaped upon her plus-sized body. In the show's pilot, the leader of a gastric bypass group cheerfully asks her "Are you planning skin removal? Save your pennies, because you're going to have a lot of loose skin. One girl said she looked like a flying squirrel." A doctor advises her to eat no more than 700 calories a day. The paper gown at the doctor's office isn't big enough to cover her body. Men whisper criticism of her body while they stand behind her in an elevator.
But the gastric bypass Plum's planning on is only the latest way she's tried to change herself. "Green tea, fat blockers, Herbalife, hypnotism," she ticks off the diets she's tried. So when Verena Baptist (Robin Wiegert), the regretful daughter of a successful weight loss clinic's founder seeks to atone by helping make Plum into a "happy fatty," she's ambivalent to say the least. And on the news, there's a strange series of mysterious deaths of people connected with the beauty industry, just when Plum finds her way to cryptic fairy godmother Julia (Tamara Tunie), and a subversive group of self-improvement saboteurs. Plum's life is getting weird, fast. But it's better than starving.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about weight and body image. When we meet Plum, she's preparing for gastric bypass surgery. How does Dietland seem to regard this surgery? How is this viewpoint communicated?
Both male and female characters mistreat women in this show. What examples of sexism can you name? How does the show want us to feel about its female characters and how they are treated?
How do the characters on Dietland demonstrate courage and teamwork in opposing the beauty industry? Why are these important character strengths?
TV Details
- Premiere date: June 4, 2018
- Cast: Julianna Margulies , Joy Nash , Robin Weigert , Tramell Tillman
- Network: AMC
- Genre: Comedy
- Character Strengths: Courage , Teamwork
- TV rating: TV-14
- Last updated: October 13, 2022
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