My Super Sweet 16 is a show on MTV that Corina likes to watch from time to time. Now this is a show that just boggles my mind at times. The premise of the show follows spoiled teens as they plan and celebrate their over the top sixteenth birthdays. It would be pretty much classified as trainwreck television. With most television you sit down and are entertained by humour, drama, suspense, mystery etc. I find this show doesn’t really use any of these mechanics to drive the plot forward.

What I find odd about My Super Sweet 16 is that it doesn’t really illicit the same emotions you might experience when watching other programs. I find myself feeling more angry then anything else when watching it. You can’t help but feel jealous of the life these kids lead. They were all pretty much born into a life of privilege and wealth, and now they have a half hour TV show to showcase their spoiled existence and overinflated egos. The episode Corina watched tonight featured a girl who threw a fit when her parents bought her a new Lexus and gave it to her on her birthday instead of waiting to give it to her on the day of her party, where all the party goers could see her get her massively expensive gift and rub their noses in it. She threw a fit, yelling that she hated her parents and that she was going to cancel her party because it had been ruined by getting the car early.

I find the show is wholly unfulfilling on an entertainment level. While I know most people like watching shows like this just for the faux disasters that happen along the way. The part that really makes the whole experience empty is the fact you know that the teenager featured in the episode won’t have learned anything. If this were a sitcom or movie the spoiled brat would get some satisfying comeuppance by the time the show finished. That just doesn’t happen on this show. Spoiled teen cries and wails until they get their own way. They abuse their parents and many others until they finally get the grandiose party they have envisioned for themselves. At the end of the episode nobody will come up and slap them upside the head like they so richly deserve. No life lessons will have been learned. They will still be the spoiled brat they started the episode as and will now have a Lexus to show for all the abuse they put the rest of the world through. Sure, this may smack of sour grapes on my part, but it really just goes to prove that life isn’t fair sometimes.