Reviewed by Hunter M. Daniels

The ProgramMy Super Sweet 16 is a TV series dedicated to principals and morals that would make Karl Marx spontaneously vomit his internal organs like he was a frightened toad. Each episode documents, (in a manner very altered by the presence of a camera) the life of a 15 year old girl and she plans for her opulent 16th birthday party. I’m no stranger to this world. My parents forced me to have a Bar Mitzvah and there was a pretty swanky party after that. I went to a few other Bar and Bat Mitzvah’s that probably cost in the mid 5 figure range, (without an open bar). I grew up with girls who got BMWs as their first cars. I spent a lot of time in high school cruising around in one of my best friend’s brand new, fully loaded, black Cadillac. I went to movie premieres and hung out back stage in VIP lounges at concerts, (but that usually wasn’t on my dime), but even the most outrageous party that I’ve ever attended pales in comparison to those thrown on this show. For my sixteenth birthday I planned to go see a double feature of Seed of Chucky and Kinsey then have sex with my date after a school dance, and I thought that was pretty cool planning, boy was I low balling it. So why am I not jealous? Watching this show doesn’t throw a poor little proletariat boy like myself into a dizzying spiral of self pity at his own (relative) poverty. Instead, it leaves me feeling a bit sick inside. The girl at the center of each episode became almost a tragic hero for 22 minutes plus commercials. Her

Paris Hilton-lite act of faked or real vapidness as an asset mixed with pure, unadulterated, unfretted consumerism as a form of self actualization is deeply saddening. These girls actually seem like they have been taught to view the expense of their gift as a barometer for how much their parents value them. And the baby-prostitute ascetics are just plain creepy.

This type of crap is why the terrorists hate us, seriously. This conspicuous consumption at the expense the rest of society, if not the rest of the world, is the basis for all these claims of America as “the great Satan.” Well, that and our insistence on keeping armed troops right outside of Mecca. Really, if you’re thinking about buying this DVD, just don’t. the only bright spot is the episode where one girl’s parents throw hundreds of thousands of dollars into training her to be the next Britney Spears, only to have her big song and dance number cut from the episode. And the rest of the 266 minute run time can’t even match that small miracle of schadenfreude. THE DVDThe images and sound are TV quality. Nothing special.The extras are thankfully abbreviated. There are 2 extra episodes that match the rest of the series in quality, and a preview of the scripted TV movie adaptation of the series. THE SHOW: 0.5/10.00THE DVD: 5/10.00