Who better to represent the TV shows about fat people than Mika, that cellulite-loving pop star from Lebanon? In case this title is unfamiliar to you, listen to Mika’s “Big Girl, You are Beautiful” and prepare to feel loved.
Last night marked the fifth episode of Lifetime’s new, non-reality, non-Project Runway show, “Drop Dead Diva.” Though the title sacrifices clarity for alliteration, the show is actually good.
Lifetime is often maligned for its female-friendly programming, and I myself am never above cracking a Lifetime Movie simile/joke (my favorite is “The Babysitter’s Seduction,” starring Keri Russell as the babysitter in question and the dad from 7th Heaven as the seducer. Priceless). Drop Dead Diva does not neglect Lifetime’s supposedly loyal female audience but rather refurbishes several cliches of the lady heroine in an upbeat dramedy show.
In the pilot, we meet Deb, a 24-year-old aspiring “The Price Is Right” model who’s a skinnier version of Amy Poehler. Deb has it all, as they say: a handsome lawyer live-in boyfriend named Grayson, a less confident and successful best friend named Stacy, and the ability to eat half a grapefruit for breakfast and not be hungry. Before Deb’s big audition, we flash to a law office where Jane, a 31-year-old lawyer fat with donuts and kindness, is shot by her boss’ mistress’ husband. On the way to Deb’s big audition, she herself dies when she crashes her car into a grapefruit truck (oh the irony. And the coincidence of an old fashioned open air grapefruit truck!)
Deb gets to the pearly escalators and meets the angel Fred, who informs her that, because she has performed no good or bad deeds in her life thanks to her shallowness, he doesn’t know whether to send her to Heaven or Hell. Deb grows impetuous and hits the Return button (yes, they use Apple desktops in purgatory).
The “Return” button doesn’t give her a new paragraph with a nice tab but a new life as Jane Bingum, the aforementioned lawyer (what is that hick vernacular spelling?). The “new Jane” retains Jane’s size of intellect and waist line but loses her own memories in favor of Deb’s; basically, it’s Deb trapped in the body and brains of a fat woman. Oh the double curse of being a smart and fat woman!
The only people who know what lies under layers of Jane’s cellulite are Stacy and Fred, who has been demoted from gatekeeper to guardian angel working as a messenger at the law firm. The show revolves around Jane’s work as a lawyer at the same firm (with a surprisingly subdued Margaret Cho for an assistant, a “skinny” redhead and mean co-worker named Kim, and a womanizer boss named Parker who makes Britney Spears the social commentator for our age) and Deb’s confrontations with the reality of her new life and the meaning of the life she lost. However, before her death Jane hired Grayson as an associate, so Jane Deb is tortured by his presence daily.
The show is basically Legally Blonde for another historically ridiculed and oppressed female group, the fat (Legally Round?). Just as Elle exhibits intellect and personal flair in her judicial proceedings, Jane Deb combines Jane’s lawyerly training with Deb’s newly minted heart and sense of empathy to win cases through soaring, heart-wrenching oratory.
The law aspect of the show, as is the case with most filmic and television versions, is mostly ridiculous, emphasizing at every turn the passion and empathy and justice behind Jane’s work. While her breakthrough moments are usually instances of highly unethical undercover detective work (such as going to a bar where a fat waitress was fired to test how she is treated, setting up her roommate as a grapefruit mogul who needs a shipping company to break labor laws, taking DNA samples of dogs to prove that clones of a prize-winning pup were sold illegally), the epiphanies are nevertheless clever. The cases of course reflect Jane Deb’s personal struggles, like the case of fat discrimination and the case of nature vs nurture for the champion dog and the case of a man wrongfully convicted, but the cases aren’t what I like about the show.
The show functions best when Deb has to wrangle with Deb issues in Jane’s body: for example, how does she respond when her parents come into the firm for a divorce? what the eff is going to happen between Jane Deb and Grayson? will I have to listen to her butcher “Lucky” again (the show’s soundtrack is like three years out of sync with current trends, featuring seminal classics like “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and “Everybody’s Got that Something”)?
From the pilot, the show had me invested in the Jane Deb character. The actress who plays Jane, Brooke Elliott, is a TV newbie (not n00b…she was in What Women Want!), but she has managed to sell the character flawlessly. I spend the 45 minutes of the show rooting for Jane Deb and Grayson to get back together and wondering how that will happen: will Jane Deb lose 100 pounds? will Grayson get with Kim first? will Jane Deb make partner and finally put the moves on? So many opportunities for the drama.
Even though Jane claims to be a size 16, her weight is a topic of the show’s discussion, not a punch line or fully obvious burden. Jane would never have been cast on More to Love, to say the least. Jane’s weight represents the insecurity and realism that most women grapple with, since we get to see a bubbly and straightforward Deb in interactions with Stacy or Fred but a meeker and less certain Jane in court or with Grayson. Deb seems to have finally accepted Jane’s weight, and now she needs to learn how to overcome it or cut it to her own advantage, like a piece of cake!
And food on the show is not a joke or disgusting display of American obesity: food is a weakness, a moment of doubt. Jane eats pizza and donuts and cupcakes because she likes them and because she feels she has deserved them, and Stacy yearns for them but denies herself them because she hasn’t. Jane lives in a real, hectic world, though it doesn’t feel that way to the viewer. The show passes by quickly, and you easily forget that you know Jane will win the case in the end.
It’s not too much to watch both Drop Dead Diva and More to Love: one defines humanity as the mind, the other as a morbidly obese body.
