The Netflix show Insatiable has been ordered for a second season despite the overwhelming backlash. According to Vanity Fair , the television show about a girl who becomes thin after her jaw is wired shut and takes revenge on those who wronged her holds an 11 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Insatiable stars Debby Ryan as Patty, a teenager who spent most of her life bullied due to her weight. Patty is punched in the jaw by a classmate and has to have her jaw wired shut. After drinking nothing but liquids over the summer, Patty arrives back at school. She is thin, desired by many, and out for revenge. When she meets lawyer Robert Armstrong and his wife, Coralee, the pair decides to thrust Patty onto the pageant circuit, feeling this would help Patty and restore Armstrong’s reputation after he is falsely accused of sexual assault.
The show, it seems, was doomed from the start. Netflix received a petition to cancel the show before it even aired. As Vanity Fair writes, “the chief complaint was that the show, based on its trailer alone, seemed to encourage fat-shaming and promote the old-fashioned belief that women have to be slender to be appealing to the opposite sex.”
But showrunner Lauren Gussis argued that the trailer didn’t represent the show holistically, but it was simply a starting point.
“The trailer is not representative of the show as a whole, but it is a representation of where the story starts. The story is not ‘somebody gets thin, becomes happy, and gets everything she wants.’ It’s actually quite the opposite, but the story has to start somewhere.”
Ryan also stepped in to defend the show amidst complaints.
“The size of the reaction is the size of the wound. We knew that this conversation needed to be had. We knew that this societal brokenness needed to be addressed, but we didn’t know how badly it needed to be addressed.”
One review, written by Vanity Fair’s Sonia Saraiya, said that Insatiable presented itself as “a 12-hour teen soap opera inspired by Ryan Murphy’s irreverent and acerbic Glee and the dark comedy of Drop Dead Gorgeous, executed with the imprecise and oversexed flair of Netflix’s reported mega-hit The Kissing Booth.”
Another review said the television show is stranger and even worse than its advertisements. Netflix’s choice to renew comes amid a strong viewership and a lot of name recognition because of the controversy. Still, there are many who are unhappy with Netflix’s choice.
So #Insatiable was just renewed for a second season. Glad we see @netflix is listening to its viewers ??
— Sam Klein (@Sammander_K) September 12, 2018
