What I’m Watching: Secret Diary of a Call Girl

Secret Diary of a Call Girl: Season 4, Episode 5 (C)

I don’t mean to beat a dead horse here, but this show continues to play into exactly the kind of problematic and disappointing things I’ve been writing about all season. It’s perhaps most disheartening because, unlike “Heroes” or “Prison Break,” this is a show that I would never have imagined could reach a nadir of quality where I had little to no interest in tuning in each week, only bothering to watch to see what will become of my formerly favorable characters. I was most outraged and saddened by just how awkward and uncomfortable it was watching Belle feel awkward and uncomfortable watching the director and his muse act our their version of a scene from her book. This show was never a caricature of itself, even and especially when it came to people with strange desires. Turning this into a horrible parody of itself is going to echo another Showtime series in its final season, “The L Word,” another show which went downhill only to never look back to its former quality. It’s hard to believe, however, that this director and actress could really be so dumb and completely unaware of how their behavior appears (that’s better saved for yet another Showtime series, this one still in its prime, “Episodes”). Belle is nonetheless so horribly judgmental, and it’s painful to see. Ben kissing Poppy is probably one of the stupidest things he’s ever done, and let’s hope that Belle doesn’t find out, because she is going to be furious. At least Charlotte did something productive in this episode and helped open up Poppy a bit.