My Guilty Pleasure – #TheCircle 

Netflix is not known for its original reality shows but they have a couple on there. Ever the reality fiend, I was curious to check out its latest offering, #TheCircle. A reality show remake that was imported from the UK (of course, because does Hollywood still have any original content?) I’ll try to explain the premise of the show and make it make sense.

So house guests come into the house and live in the same apartment complex but in their own apartments without ever seeing each other. They communicate with each other but through some device/system (created just for the show). The device is like a TV with Alexa capabilities. Players have to say out loud each instruction like “message”, “send” etc.

Anyways, they go through the whole week interacting, playing games, choosing which photos they want to show and they have to be strategic about it because this is how the others get to know them and form an opinion of them. This is important because every week, there is a ranking. Everyone ranks the house guests from 1-how many there are at the time and the top 2 get to be the influencers for the week. Influencers decide who gets “blocked” aka voted out. After they are voted out, the blocked person gets to decide who they want to see for a few minutes before leaving.

Now in all honesty, this show is a weird one because there is really nothing great about it and having to hear every piece of communication (including emoji description) being read out loud can be annoying BUT somehow, someway you get sucked in and you just want to know what happens and before you know it you are addicted. The voice over by narrator, Michelle Buteau helps but none of the cracks have ever made me LOL.

They have a good batch of people for their first season. I found Joey so annoying in the beginning but somehow he is warming up to me. Seaburn is a guy who is using his girlfriend’s profile and pretending to be a girl for the show, Sean is plus size and using a skinny model as her profile, Karyn is a butch lesbian who is using a pretty girl’s pic as her profile and there are others in the cast who are really who they are but the cast is hell bent on finding out who is catfishing.

Every single cast member has come into the house and decided to pose as single even when they aren’t. And almost immediately they begin to flirt with others. From delving deeper, I hear this is unique to the US cast as the UK cast were more into forming genuine connections and friendships vs. flirting/romantic relationships.

The thing about the show is everyone comes in with an idea of what they think people are more receptive to aka skinny and pretty. The thing is it would appear that the people who are being more genuine and true to who they are, are the ones faring well and giving off good vibes to the rest of the house.

For now, my favorite is Shubham an Indian-American nerd so to speak who declared when he came into the house that “social media is our bubonic plague” haha. A fun fact about the show is that it was filmed in the same apartment building as the one used for the UK show.

Let me know if you watch or if you plan to watch. Netflix drops 4 new episodes every Wednesday and the final 4 will be dropping tomorrow so if you haven’t watched you’ll be able to binge it in its entirety.