The Kardashians are back, but it’s hard to resonate with people who don’t leave the spotlight long enough to be overlooked.
Last year, the reality TV titans dramatically announced that the 20th season of their money-making show Keeping Up With the Kardashians would be their last. It marked the end of a special era for the clan as they carved their own place in the American imagination and amassed ever greater fortunes through marketing fantasies.
The Kardashians
The End Result Tinted and polished to create an eerie and mostly uneventful effect.
air date: Thursday, April 14 (Hulu)
Pour: Kris Jenner, Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, Khloé Kardashian, Kendall Jenner, Kylie Jenner
Executive Producers: Ben Winston, Emma Conway, Elizabeth Jones, Danielle King
Unfortunately, what it didn’t signal was a separation between family and public life. The end of Keeping Up and the Kardashian-Jenners’ relationship with E! freed them to enter into a bloated, multi-year content deal with Disney. The Kardashians, the first product from the expensive contract, airs on Hulu this Thursday, April 14.
With more money, more kids, and several lucrative businesses, the Kardashians aren’t the family they used to be. Compare moments from Keeping Up’s early days, packed with theatrics, sibling feuds and lo-fi production values, to the first two installments of this shiny new venture that’s been given critics scrutiny, and it’s hard to believe we’re the same people watch .
This more polished and stylized show is still a marketing experiment, selling viewers an unattainable aesthetic and lifestyle, showing dizzying amounts of wealth and evoking conflicting emotions. As I’ve written before, it doesn’t matter if you loathe, admire, or envy the Kardashians. Reactions to their antics are part of the massive PR intrigue central to their relevance and economic status. But while Keeping Up has managed to maintain a certain level of camp, The Kardashians strip away all fun, leaving only the rigid ethos of a family that’s mastered being famous.
The new show is plagued by an aggressive boredom. Not even the elegant opening credits — drone footage offering glimpses into each family member’s busy life, backed by Silk Sonic’s funky hit “777” — can’t shake the listlessness. Kris, Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, Kendall and Kylie have been filmed for so long that this reviewer wonders if even they are sometimes surprised that the cameras are still rolling.
Their lives mirror those of other ultra-rich entrepreneurs and heirs, but it wouldn’t be much fun seeing the six stars (Caitlyn Jenner and Rob Kardashian have not yet starred in the new series) shuffling from meet-up to meet-up. And so they take up old themes in a new way, create tension and turn wafer-thin moments into drama. It’s a fascinating thing to witness, if not necessarily an interesting show to watch.
In the first episode, the family gathers at Kim’s minimalist mansion for an intimate barbecue. There, the most famous Kardashian announces that Lorne Michaels asked her to host Saturday Night Live. She worries about her ability to do it: What if she’s not funny enough? Should she ask Kanye to be her musical guest? (At the time of filming, the couple appeared to be getting along better.) What if she embarrasses the family? The last question is perhaps the most humorously confusing.
The family sits around a long, ornately decorated table, munching on fried chicken, mac and cheese, and burgers while trying to calm Kim’s nerves. They insist she’s funny (despite telling her otherwise for years) and find that the mean Kardashian succeeds in whatever she sets her mind to.
Family has always been important to the Kardashian brand, but in The Kardashians, it’s given even greater prominence. Motherhood has transformed the sisters, who spend most of their witness time repeating the role their children play in their lives. There’s a lot of discussion about the importance of making time for their children, rather than what it means to raise black children in America, but maybe those conversations will come up later.
During these one-on-one interviews, the focus of the new Kardashian era becomes clearer. If previous chapters have been about climbing the Forbes lists and confessions making headlines, this one will be about restraint and balancing domestic life with the trumpet call of American capitalism.
The Kardashians are indeed promising to focus on the clan’s work life — most notably Kim, who recently said women don’t want to work these days. The SNL arc dominates the early episodes. We see the mother-of-four preparing for her gig by meeting with comedians like Amy Schumer, packing her outfits with her sisters and mom, and reflecting on how far she’s come with her stylists and makeup artists.
However, what haunts the background and scares Kim even more is her sextape, which reappears early in the first episode. The legacy of the video weighs heavily on her, and she spends much of her time threatening to use the power of her lawyers and her money to have what remains of the tape destroyed. Twenty years ago she didn’t know what to do; now, she says, she has the means to “burn them all down.”
The other sisters get some airtime in those first two episodes, though not nearly as much as Kim. Kourtney’s arc focuses on her already well-documented romance with Travis Barker. They’re trying to buy a house and have a baby, and Kourtney opens up about the stress of both endeavors. Meanwhile, Khloé tries to work on her relationship with Tristan Thompson, focus on building her new mansion, and manage her growing anxiety. Kylie and Kendall aren’t appearing that often just yet, but previews of future episodes are teasing their arcs.
For longtime fans of the Kardashians, or even the casual viewer, The Kardashians might come as a disappointment. The family, famed for being famous and shamelessly sharing, have refined, tinted and polished their brand to an uncanny degree. Nothing here shocks, surprises or tickles.
But that seems irrelevant. The day the embargo on coverage of the show (whose rollout was tightly controlled) was lifted, I saw dozens of headlines capitalizing on “revelations” from those episodes. The Kardashian brand is an entire ecosystem at this point; it doesn’t matter who they claim to be, whether they’re authentic or relatable. What they do is noted, disseminated and consumed. We’re all part of their machinery now, whether we like it or not.