Wednesday, July 15, 2009

More great reviews for "Miami Social"

Ariel Stein

This review by Ginia Bellafante appeared in the New York Times.
"No drug kingpin, money launderer, bail bondsman, crooked cop, strung-out Mob lawyer or washed up C.I.A henchman has anything on a guy named Ariel, one of the seven friends at the center of “Miami Social” who exist to populate rooftop bars with pools after 6 p.m. Ariel thinks of himself as a person of considerable importance: he produces fashion shows in Miami-Dade County. But as long as Miami isn’t New York or Paris or Milan, saying you are the biggest fashion producer there is like saying you are the biggest auto maker in Tuscaloosa. Ariel claims to be attracted to both men and women, but mostly he is attracted to himself. “Oh my God, I look so good in this reflection,” he remarks, “and hot.”
[...]
Delusion is the lingua franca of the men and women on Bravo’s reality series, and like Ariel, his compatriots, although well into their 30s, seem to have little conception of a world beyond the Miami branch of the Gansevoort Hotel. In the great tradition of reality television, the jobs they have are vaguely in real estate (or just vague), which seems appropriate, given that the genre produces a fantasy of affluence rivaled by the once booming Florida housing market. George does something at a mortgage corporation but makes only a passing reference to the current difficulties, never suggesting that arranging mortgages in South Florida in 2009 is like selling muskets in a nuclear war.

Nothing like a really bad reality show to inspire great writing.

Kyle Munzenrieder of Miami New Times also takes a shot at Ariel:
[M]uch like a regrettable amount of spooge on your stomach, but instead of wiping it up, it was allowed to crust over and form into the being we now call Ariel Stein.
The Huffington Post's Michael Cohen - who says he's a friend of Ariel - also unloads on him:
"Ariel is an insipid, tedious douchebag.

That's on a bad day. On a good day he's just a twat, and that I can live with. Even though he comes across like a shallow fool who hates fat people and pities girls that were born ugly, I know that beneath it all, it's really empathy, because he grew up a fat Jewish boy in Miami Beach. I know this because we are friends.

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