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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Brat Camp

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09:32 / 22.03.04

Kind of surprised this hasn't cropped up here yet. Is anyone watching it? Comments on the delightful Fran welcome.

15:04 / 22.03.04

Well, it's usually me who starts these threads (small-but-perfectly-formed C4 Brit-fare with no Buffy/Angel connection whatsoever) but, after my No Angels one sank without trace, I let Brat Camp slide...

... but yes, isn't it the must-seeist thing on television right now? Having seen something similar fairly recently with long-term unemployed instead of teens, I'd wondered whether this was a new reality TV trend: shouty, irony-free Yanks try to forcibly 'motivate' sallow, shiftless Brits to transform their lives/floss/Buy More Shoes. With the unemployed version, I was firmly on the side of the shellsuited Brits, many of whom seemed to have had pretty hard upbringings.

In the case of Brat Camp, however, the unlovely subjects have been hand-picked to dispel even the faintest traces of sympathy: pampered, whiny, middle-class teens with degrees in Narcissism & Manipulations and effortlessly grating voices. Fran, in particular, is a monstrous delight; watching her being shorn of her lousy dreadlocks was laugh-out-loud schadenfreude television. This week, I'm hopeful they'll be staying in Utah for Christmas.

Oh yeah, and I started off being slightly irritated by the American mentor types - but the big beary one ('Stone Bear'?) is actually growing on me...

08:46 / 23.03.04

What really gets me is how insipid the parents are. They sit there in their kitchens sipping cups of tea and saying to the camera: "Yes, and she comes in at four in the morning with syringes hanging out of her arm and spunk dribbling out of her arse and all I have to do is ask her how she is and she gets one of the big comedy Morecambe and Wise frying pans we have hanging over the kitchen island and smacks me in the face with it, then gets all her Chav friends round to wear my knickers and she's only 13 but what can you do? I just hope she comes back a nicer person and doesn't hit me as much."

I mean, Jesus.

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09:33 / 23.03.04

That really made me laugh, thanks.

The kids so seriously need kicking out of home, it seems so obvious. But no, lets pay thousands to send them to Utah, that'll learn 'em.

Fran should get her own show.

11:44 / 23.03.04

*makes careful note of Sax's words for future parenting posterity*

11:56 / 23.03.04

It’s interesting to see that the whole methodology here is distinctly different from the approach seen in Boot/Fat/Dole Camp. Instead of being psychologically broken down and rebuilt, Marine-style, the staff at Brat Camp seem to be relying on peer pressure alone to do all the work. I gather that their job is to be just infinitely patient - something they seem to manage with astonishing ease. So while I don't predict we'll see them besuited and stamping out military drills at their graduation, it does look likely that they might be fast-tracked into the state they'd have naturally found themselves in a couple of years anyway. ie. chewing their knuckles with shame at evidence of their adolescent ghastliness.

And for me, the sitting-down girl is rapidly catching Fran as the apotheosis of slappable teenage petulance, while Jim Bob out of Carter USM fails to exercise my spleen one bit. I rather feel for him.

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12:07 / 23.03.04

What about Mr. I Don't Look for the Fight, The Fight Comes Looking for Me?

'Cos I've got a Reputation.

What's that, then? Second Toughest in Gerrard's Cross Preparatory School? Oooooh, Reggie Kray eat your heart out.

And James the posh pot head. Oooh, I could go on and on.

12:18 / 23.03.04

But he didn't get a letter from his mum. How can you hate him.

And I like the posh dopester - he sticks to his principles. For instance, there was absolutely no. fucking. way they were going to take away his tongue bar. No way at all...

12:19 / 23.03.04

Just before the series started one of the kids (the dark haired good looking guy, can't remember his name) was on Richard and Judy and he was scaaaarily reformed to the point of creepiness. I do suspect there might some kind of Harmony House activity going on behind the scenes. ("Suck at the rancid tit of Wooden Eagle!")

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13:30 / 23.03.04

Maybe they're saving the Clockwork Orange footage for the extended DVD.

08:26 / 24.03.04

Anyone watch last night? Thought it was a bit off for Charlie to be made to take the Long Walk into the Cursed Earth purely for helping some of the others light a few fires. The boy's only trying to become an integrated member of society!

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08:41 / 24.03.04

Actually, as this series develops, I find it becoming more and more about the parents and not about the identikit teenage rebels at all, at all.

Loved Rachels mum extending her clemency for Christmas, then withdrawing it after having a little think.

She should post on message boards.

09:32 / 24.03.04

Sax, the thought of posh twat James's appearance on Richard and Judy has just made me squirm in remembered horror (a common response to all things Madeley.)There was a particularly agonising moment where the smug little polo pony explained to a disapproving, stony faced Richard - who was doing his level best to look like Dirty Harry - the difference between a spliff and a bong...

17:32 / 24.03.04

And for me, the sitting-down girl is rapidly catching Fran as the apotheosis of slappable teenage petulance

Yep. In last night's episode, her 'I've manipulated my mother into pulling me out, light your own fucking oatmeal' go-slow actually overtook Fran in terms of slappability (only for her mother to discover a forgotten chunk of backbone and reverse the decision - how we laughed!) Although Fran still had her moments, I was actually quite touched by her genuine pleasure at her mother's Christmas present (a naff rainbow scarf).

I'm kinda hesitant to be too scathing about the parents. Many of them seem to be either 'mature' or single, and hence a little more vulnerable to brat-bullying. Several seemed quite (appropriately) self-laceratingly guilt-ridden too...

23:59 / 05.04.04

Slightly disappointing ending, no? I guess it's in the nature of these things to start well and get blander as the kids' behaviour improves - but a vindictive part of me was holding out for a solemn pre-credits voiceover intoning 'to date, Fran remains a fixture of the Utah desert'.

15:11 / 06.04.04

My main problem with Brat Camp was that the emphasis was on the kids. Some of the parents looked like they could do with a stint in the wilderness too.
Posh pothead's James' mum and dad made me want to slap them every time they came on screen. Overly critical and emotionally distant, the poor lad was crying out for some LOVE.
Fran had monstrous anger problems, I've seen two-year olds with better control than her. But her mum was pathetic, lets face it.
I think Dan was my favourite. Poor depressed, acne ridden pothead Dan. It was lovely to see him get some self-esteem back. His parents seemed OK...
I'm very worried about Rachael, I don't think joining the police was a good move for her. She seemed too contrite, submissive. Not a good way to start out your new improved life. Her mum was a Daily Mail reader, but seemed OK despite it.
Charlie was such a sweetie, I think he got a lot out of his time in Utah. Shame about joining the army though. Did anyone else pick up on his dad being abusive?
Tom was funny. His fake madness was so CRAP. Didn't see much of his mum though.

Scrubb is on a downward spiral

15:56 / 06.04.04

What happened to them all in the end? I saw the barren desert Xmas, but missed the final part of the series.

17:10 / 06.04.04

It was satire, wasn't it?

Hehh I've been trying so hard to convince myself of that! Believing it to be some kind of genius, satirical travesty seems far easier than dealing with the trauma of accepting those little twats as being real.

On a more sympathetic note, you can't entirely blame the kids with such reactionary parents. And if any of them have the slightest degree of self-respect, surely a TV series in which they're patronised by sir dark-feather-wolf-wtf isn't the ideal setting for a 'recovery'?

19:22 / 22.02.05

Anyone watching the new series? I was feeling guilty about wanting to give all those snotty teenagers a big kick in the pants til I read this thread...

Am I a cold-hearted fiend or are they just truly irritating little twerps?

However, I worry about the god-bothering emphasis and the scary potential for Clockwork Orange-style cow poo spattered brainwashing. The yoof of today, eh...what's to be done?

17:30 / 23.02.05

I'm just not finding the teens as charismatically punchable this time around. There's no 'Fran'...

wembley can change in 28 days

07:06 / 24.02.05

I don't suppose anyone knows where to find videos of this? I don't have a TV, which is good, because I find reality TV fucking addictive as hell. Plus this'll probably air in Finland in five years or so. I searched for torrents but no dice...

Tryphena Absent

09:23 / 25.02.05

I think this programme is horrible. It's full of kids with rubbish parents who, instead of looking after their hormonal children and letting them get on with it, send them to be ordered around by strangers in the desert for months. I mean- one of them wants to take her boyfriend home, one of them plays loud music. Why did these people choose to breed in the first place if on hearing loud music they sent their son to America to be bullied by marines?

The Natural Way

14:38 / 25.02.05

Hmmm, I don't really agree, Nina. I'm not sure this new camp isn't actually doing some of these kids a bit of good. There's a real sense of the adult around some of them now and getting a good, hard dose of structure and discipline isn't necessarily that bad. I don't know, you'd be hard pushed to convince me anything truly unhealthy was happening to these kids.....unless they come back home all anti-drugs and Young Tory-like. I'm far from convinced that it's 100% necessary (they all seem like pretty average teens to me), but I think some of the kids are really getting something from it - finding strength, maturity and resources they didn't know they had.

Tryphena Absent

14:51 / 25.02.05

Yeah and sending them to the desert was the best way to do that. They're finding resources they didn't know they had because their parents have abandoned them. If mine had done this to me I would have resented them for years!