In my mid-teens, when I was trying to define my coolness with the ’90s New Jack Swing swag, my dad made the most uncool move.
He set up a small mobile tuck-shop for us to run. Looking back, it was probably necessary to make ends meet, but at the time the last thing I wanted to be seen doing was selling eggs and bread.
In general, the tuck-shop deal was a routine affair, with the same suppliers and customers taking turns to visit our two-wheeled business.
There was nothing eventful about each day that came and went.
I am pretty sure the people working at Woolworths or Pick n Pay will tell you that there, too, in general, every day is just like the one before it, the only difference being the faces that come and go in the shop.
It is against this background that you have to wonder what shows like The Rachel Zoe Project and Jersey Couture, which are both on Vuzu, have to offer since they are reality shows about service-providing businesses.
In The Rachel Zoe Project, celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe takes us to her shop where she and her assistants share their experiences at work.
Granted, we see a celebrity or two come into the store, but is this something that should warrant an entire season for a show? For career guidance maybe, but that kind of content would only fill one episode.
That leads us in one direction: if you don’t have content, create it. That explains the drama we end up seeing.
Jersey Couture is no different. Here we are the fly – or flies – on the wall as we watch the Scali family run their dress boutique, Diane & Co. Honestly, what can be so exciting about selling dresses to warrant a show?
People come in, try on clothes, buy them and they leave. The only excitement we can expect is when the customers come back to complain about a missing button.
Otherwise, in all honesty, there isn’t anything to look forward to in this show or any of its kind.
Their drama, which they refer to as content, is created in the most unlikely places and that’s how they make their viewership numbers. For instance, last year Diane Scali made headlines when she refused to take back a prom dress she had sold to a high school girl who had not attended her prom due to the untimely death of her date.
Now that’s extreme and cold-hearted. Scali went on record saying it wasn’t her fault the boy had died so she shouldn’t have been asked to pay. Tell me that’s not a publicity stunt.
Looking back to my dad’s little tuck-shop idea I still struggle to see what content we would generate to make it into a TV show. Maybe because there is actually nothing to write home about when running a business.
• Jersey Couture II airs every Wednesday on Vuzu (Channel 123) at 8pm and The Rachel Zoe Project IV airs at 8.30pm.