VH1’s Hit the Floor surrounds ingénue dancer, Ahsha Hayes (Taylour Paige). After graduating from college, she blows off a sensible job interview to audition for the Devil Girls basketball dance team. However, it isn’t all sunshine and lollipops. The head cheerleader, Jelena (Logan Browning), has it out for her. Plus, her mother, Sloane (Kimberly Elise) a former Devil Girl, fears the NBA lifestyle could detrimentally affect her daughter. The show seems better-suited for MTV than VH1, but I’m up in the air about it. While it features Dean Cain and the amazing Kimberly Elise (John Q, The Manchurian Candidate), a woman whose early career seemed Oscar-bound; the writing veers towards the hackneyed and stereotypical. The show itself has surprisingly low production value considering it could appeal to the MTV generation, The Game viewers and Bring It On lovers.

The Bad

When at its worst, Hit the Floor channels Smash – soap opera-y, over-dramatic and wasting the talent of older cast members. Like Smash, we have a head mean girl desperate to protect her top spot from an encroaching newcomer. Like Smash, the new girl has an established boyfriend but feels drawn to a character with higher ranking. Like Smash, there’s too much insecure verbal signposting from the writers. EVERY SINGLE character compliments Ahsha’s dance style so that we know she’s good. Personally, I was disappointed. The dance style was more athletic with hints of classical dance. Her dance-off solo consisted of a series of fouettes and cartwheels. Is it impressive? Sure. But, it didn’t fit in with the aggressive hip-hop, attitude-laced dance style of her teammates.

Like Smash, we have a newcomer enamoured with the genre, without having done ANY research on it. Ahsha’s mother CONSISTENTLY analogizes the Devil Girls with several layers in hell. So, of course, Ahsha is SHOCKED when the team captain targets her. Why does TV consistently believe we need a naïve female protagonist who lacks common sense? Ahsha is like Gidget on steroids. The stumbling/giggling is adorable at first, but, after awhile you hope she toughens up. We’re supposed to believe she’s smart, but she blows off a job interview IN THIS ECONOMY? Has anyone heard of rescheduling? I would’ve preferred Ahsha joining the team to unmake her mother’s bad memories or joining because the Devil Girls represent the strongest dancers/most challenging choreography out of existing NBA professional dance teams. Instead, she just wanted to join … just because. Considering the other characters have clear goals – the single mother needs the job, the former stripper hates dollar tips and the head cheerleader wants a legacy, I would’ve loved a similar goal from our lead character.

Dean Cain doesn’t just phone it in, he telegraphs it in using two cans tied together with string. It’s like he’s done so many made-for-TV rom coms, he no longer cares. Then again, his dialogue is run of the mill nice guy blandness to the point of unreality. It’s awesome having an anti-sexual objectification basketball coach, but I doubt any former NBA player would complain about cheerleader commodification. He supports the single mother dancer and is a single guy undergoing divorce yet fears moving forward. Of course he is.

Dance-wise, I’m glad they cast speaking cast members with dance backgrounds. But, Jelena’s intimidation dance solo primarily consisted of hair flipping and floor humping. While she does the hot girl in motion well, I wanted to see more of a technical dance skills competition between herself and her newfound rival.

The Good

Concerning dance, the professional dance cast is amazing. The group dance and first round audition routines rocked the party. The only solo that stood out came from a non-speaking dance cast member. If you’re a red-blooded male/female looking for a show with eye candy, this is an incredibly hot cast. ALL of the women are incredible-looking. And, not just the speaking characters or the younger characters, EVERYONE in the cast looks like a Megan Fox or Meaghan Good doppelganger. Plus, the 40-something “adult” cast including Charlotte Ross, Dean Cain and Kimberly Elise look like they’re in their early-to-mid-30s. If your friends have low self-esteem, don’t watch it with them. Trust me.

Lest I’m all doom and gloom, the show has potential. Taylour does the bubbly girl next door well. Kimberly Elise is amazing. If Dean Cain stops phoning it in from his barcalounger, he and Kimberly Elise could have amazing chemistry. Jonathan McDaniel as Ahsha’s boyfriend brings a great, adorable, guy next door charm. You want these two crazy kids to work. But, Derek Roman is hot as Ahsha’s temptation. Katherine Bailess worked as the bitchy former stripper. We’re supposed to believe her character’s a weak dancer. While her dance-off solo was bad, there are a couple crowd shots where she works it.

Hit the Floor isn’t my cup of tea, but I’ll probably continue watching it because I love dance. If you liked The Game, Bring it On or Smash you might like this. But, if the show wants to improve, it should continue to up the self-awareness. The cheerleading coach admits Ahsha’s bubbly dance style is less sexual, but feels it’ll attract different followers. Also, producers/writers/directors please make your lead more realistic and less naive, up Dean Cain’s charisma, and stop making the same mistakes as Smash’s writers. Despite Glee’s success, the American public really doesn’t want bad acting set to music. Just ask Smash.

Hit the Floor officially premieres May 27. You can check out the full video on-line https://www.vh1.com/shows/hit_the_floor/series.jhtml.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fnwlyyymIM

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2D7sLc7moQ

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I have been known to watch a few of VH1’s trashy celebrity reality shows in the past (when they were dubbed CelebReality by the network), but I had never really tuned in to the show Mob Wives for a very simple reason: I had no idea who these people were or why they had their own show. It wasn’t like The Surreal Life, with a cast of D-list celebrities cooped up in a house carrying on for several weeks, and it wasn’t a competition show for D-list celebrities who either needed to lose weight or deal with their addictions. So why should I tune in to see loud, brash, “Noo Yawkers” (Staten Island to be exact) yelling at and fighting with each other?

Oddly enough, it was Joel McHale and The Soup that made me want to watch with their hilarious clips of someone named Big Ang featured on a weekly basis. After about three weeks, I finally scheduled the show on my DVR and got caught up with the first four episodes of season two. And I was hooked … even though Big Ang wasn’t even a core member of the Mob Wives cast (although she eventually got her own spin-off show between seasons two and three).

I suddenly found myself drawn into this shady underworld lifestyle of the “wives” — a term used very loosely since most are divorced or separated by prison walls, or are actually born into “the lifestyle.” The Queen Bee of the show is Renee Graziano, daughter of Anthony Graziano (of the Bonanno crime family) and ex-wife of Junior Pagan, who is probably the loudest of the bunch and likes to yell “do you know who I am?” when people don’t know who she is. The rest of the core cast of friends, enemies and frenemies are Karen Gravano (Sammy “The Bull” Gravano’s daughter), Drita D’Avanzo (wife of Lee D’Avanzo, who also happens to be Karen’s ex-boyfriend … awkward), and Carla Facciolo, wife (soon to be ex) of Joe Ferragamo. Joining the cast in season two were Ramona Rizzo (Karen’s “cousin” and granddaughter of Benjamin Ruggiero, whom Al Pacino played in Donnie Brasco), and Angela “Big Ang” Raiola, niece of Salvatore “Sally Dogs” Lombardi and owner of the Drunken Monkey bar. Season three also added Love Majewski, who has never been married but has a habit of stabbing, poisoning or shooting her underworld boyfriends.

The show basically follows the daily lives of these women and their inevitable fighting matches (you need a chart to keep track of who hates whom from season to season) which are not your basic Real Housewives table-flipping, screaming matches. These women throw down hard, fists flying, hair pulling, knock down, drag out fights. In between the physical drama, the interpersonal relationships are fascinating because these are people who have known each other for years, some from childhood; no pre-fab, television relationships. They all have history together, and that’s what makes Mob Wives one of the more realistic reality shows.

I’m sure some of the situations are planned in advance to make sure permits and permissions are secured before shooting begins, but a funny thing happened at the end of season two that could not have possibly been “scripted” in advance — Renee’s ex had been wanting to get back into her life to spend time with their son A.J. (and this had been going on since season one, which I found even more fascinating to watch after the fact) and Renee was going back and forth about letting him into their lives again. She finally relented, for A.J.’s sake, and even found herself falling back in love with him. After slipping out of the house one morning without a goodbye, Renee found a cryptic note from him … and then came the phone call. Renee’s father and other “family members” had been arrested because Junior had become “a rat” for the Feds to save his own hide. This turn of events made for some truly gripping television as Renee slowly fell apart before our eyes while her friends tried to rally around her and A.J. seemed to get further away. TV viewers were really getting a look into someone’s life collapsing around them while the cameras rolled.

What we learned at the start of season three was that Renee had plunged into a nightmare of self-medication that really turned her into a monster, so much so that by the start of the season she and best friend Carla were no longer on speaking terms. But, again, reality got in the way as Renee finally realized what she had become and decided to check into rehab in Miami (now A.J. has to realize that addiction isn’t something you can simply stop). On the most recent episode, things got even more real as Superstorm Sandy hit Staten Island during production and the cameras were there to capture all of the devastation. The episode dealing with the aftermath was heart-wrenching and emotional (and somehow, none of the main cast members’ homes were severely damaged) as the women stepped out of their “characters” and became real people, going door to door to see if anyone needed help, delivering cleaning supplies to their friends and offering them places to stay, and packing up trash bags full of clothing to donate to shelters. Big Ang prepared meals and delivered them to a shelter, organized delivery of clothing and baby supplies, and began planning a benefit to help those on the island who lost pretty much everything. It was a gripping first person account of the destruction, and I had tears in my eyes through the entire episode.

Between Junior’s betrayal of his family, which was bad but probably made the network giddy because of the drama that caused, and the storm, the producers of Mob Wives have been able to produce what I consider to be the most real of the reality shows currently on television. I’m sure it won’t take long to get back to the fist fights and hair pulling, but these incidents have shown that not all reality TV has to be frivolous and showing us the worst of people so that we can feel better about ourselves. I hope that Mob Wives can uphold the standards that they have set and continue to deliver some gripping television. As far as the spin-off, Mob Wives: Chicago? Fuggedaboutit. Stick with the Staten Island crew.

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Anyone that has been keeping up with Clacking in Color knows that I am in love with television. In fact, I think I may be a tad bit obsessed with it. Perchance I’ll enlist in counseling. Just like the racially diverse actors and actresses that I commonly write about, I don’t discriminate against the sitcoms and serials that I watch. I like all kinds of programming — except for, well, reality television. That stuff is crap.

Now, I’m not knocking anyone who finds these kinds of programs fascinating. Hell, I’m a 25-year-old man and I still think Power Rangers is appointment television. Nevertheless, I feel as though a little bit of me dies whenever I’m forced to look at some of the latest reality shows — especially the urban ones on VH1 — and for the life of me, I can’t seem to understand why some of them are so darn popular. One in particular seems to really grind my gears — Love and Hip Hop: Atlanta. Some believe it’s entertaining. I feel it’s ignorance … on acid.

Since its debut on June 18, the “reality” show has followed the lives of the sassy (and good-looking) girlfriends of rappers and hip-hop music artists. The premise is fascinating. It’s the fights, back-stabbing, gossiping, cheating and gold-digging that makes it nonsensical. With the recent news of Steve Harvey becoming an advice-dishing talk show host, maybe these brassy ladies can book a gig with him to sort out their issues. I mean, seriously. Can’t we all get along? I’m all for seeing more chocolate-colored individuals on TV. Quite frankly, I think most networks could use a little more infusion of minority magic. However, shows like Love and Hip Hop: Atlanta, The Real Housewives of Atlanta and Basketball Wives reinforce negative stereotypes and tend to knock us back several years. If I wanted to go back in time, I’d call Doc Brown and board a DeLoreon. Alas, I like 2012.

And people like Love and Hip Hop: Atlanta apparently.

It’s frequently the highest rated Monday night show on basic cable, and its season finale drew 3.7 million viewers. Oy, gevalt. The world must be coming to an end. Having said that, why do so many people watch this stuff?

Perhaps it could be for the very reason that I loathe such programming — it’s mindless. A friend of mine, a savvy law student, admits to watching the program for that very reason. She said that after learning so much in a day and spending hours upon hours in textbooks, it’s rather relaxing to watch nonsense. Those were her words. Not mine. Pardon me for saying so, but I just feel that shows like that aren’t exactly the best depictions of minorities. Heck, they really aren’t the best depictions for anyone of any color, sexual orientation, preference or background. I’m looking at you, Big Ang!

Maybe some of the individuals in these so-called reality shows have hopes of making it big. Perhaps they figure that the more loud, rude, and “real” they are, the more they’ll get noticed. Isn’t that what garnered NeNe Leakes, of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, fame and media attention? That sister just landed on one of NBC’s brand-new anticipated sitcoms, The New Normal. Still, why act bad-mannered and ill-bred to garner attention? Isn’t that backwards?

I’d think that given everything we’ve been through these last four years, one would be trying to move forward. Why spend your life looking in the rear view mirror? Didn’t Rihanna say shut up and drive? Okay, so that was a joke, but you get my point, right? With minorities on TV being so few and far between, we could use a few positive role models. Instead of seeing a basketball wife, I’d love to see the president’s wife, Michelle Obama, with a reality mini-series. I bet it’d be inspirational. Unfortunately, inspiration doesn’t sell. Ignorance does.

And that’s reality.

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