Dietland

The turn of events is both proportionate to the intensity of its cultural critique and appropriate to a narrative propelled by dream sequences, waking nightmares, and lavish hallucinations. Soaps suds and bloodlust mingle effervescently.

Dietland may not single-handedly dismantle the beauty magazines, cosmetics corporations, impractical diets, and male gazes that place so many barriers in front of women achieving self-confidence, but it’s taking aim at those subjects with enough verve and freaky flair to make it impossible to ignore.

There are subplots about Plum’s job in a Brooklyn coffee shop and a police detective investigating the militant group’s crimes that, two episodes in, don’t seem particularly promising. But Nash’s performance is awfully good, and Margulies manages to bring her own stamp to a role that seems inspired by Meryl Streep’s in The Devil Wears Prada.

Dietland is a wonderfully absurd exaggeration of the rage that’s driving sea change like the #MeToo movement. The Harvey Weinstein effect is satirized here, his depravity and the victim’s fury filtered through dark humor, and that dark humor woven into a quirky yet compelling drama.

Dietland is a riveting whirligig of a show: a tale of self-discovery, a manifesto about sizeism, a screed against consumer capitalism and a mystery about a radical feminist terrorist cell that uses vigilante violence to punish rapists, pedophiles and... magazine editors. The anger it evinces against misogyny in the first two episodes is raw, searing and justified, but also a tad unfocused.

Often funny, engaging, and not nearly as complicated as it sounds, Dietland does grow progressively darker. This is a revenge fantasy, and with Marti Noxon at the helm, both “dark” and “funny” come with the territory.

Dietland defies facile definition or a simple fit. At its most successful, it’s a lively walk through a woman’s struggle to redefine herself in a society telling her to disappear. But the hook, manifested in a mystery vigilante feminist hunting down rapists and child molesters, fails to solidify enough within the first three episodes to command our attention in a real way, beyond serving up the occasional static shock. At the outset of a show like this, any shortcomings in the secondary plot are excusable given the complexity of Plum’s interior world.

The show is still finding its footing, and its early episodes show promise if not precision.

Certain details suggest the show’s underlying analysis might be lacking--is the beauty industrial complex really more complicit in perpetuating rape culture and disempowering women than, say, misogyny and sexism? But watching the show toss a million balls in the air is riveting, even if I have no particular expectation it won’t ultimately drop most of them.

Dietland may be a mess, but it’s got the stuff.. ... The sheer volume of things it’s doing makes it a confusing, sometimes overwhelming experience. Yet there’s something about it that’s winning. Enthralling, even. Its rage is immensely appealing. Its desire to jump from style to style and get weird is admirable.

What if that view was expanded past a size 4? Like Plum says, it would indeed take a revolution for that to happen. Dietland tries hard to pull that revolution off, and may actually get there eventually. But viewers will have to wade through a number of conflicting conspiracies to get there.

It’s clear after the premiere that Nash’s performance and character are compelling; far more compelling than some weird terrorist plot, a delusion-driven sex tiger, and some secret agenda to bring down a powerful media mogul. While that last point could develop nicely alongside Plum’s arc, putting all of the plot lines together turns them into distractions more than effective talking points.

Getting hooked on Dietland will take patience that viewers may not have. As it stands now, the drama is like a diet itself--easy to start, and even easier to abandon.