I watched the first episode of Michelle Wolf’s new comedy series The Break that will air a new half-hour episode every Sunday on Netflix. It is clear that she is going to continue with her take-no-prisoners attitude that she showed in her speech at the White House Correspondents Association dinner recently. The show was biting and funny.
The one jarring note for me was the fat-shaming jokes she did of disgraced chef Mario Batali, who has been accused of multiple acts of sexual abuse. It is true that Batali seems like an awful person but my feeling is that she would have been better served by poking fun at his behavior than his looks. Fat shaming anyone seems wrong to me because however bad the target might be as a person, it inflicts collateral damage on other people who are quite innocent. Since she is very slim, it feels even worse.
Here is a promo for the show.
I agree with your criticism of the fat shaming, but other than that I largely enjoyed the show. The Amazon Echo 3 ad was delightfully surreal and her monologue definitely had bite that sponsored shows can’t get away with. I didn’t care for the Strong Female Character movie trailer though and thought it largely fell flat.
All in all, it’s good and I’ll definitely be back to watch it next week.
Thanks for the warning about the fat shaming. That’s a deal breaker for me, personally.