We Can Work it Out

We Can Work it Out by Roxanne McDonald

Starting with working Mimi right out of the picture.

The tail end of the single couple’s therapy session had Mimi turning tail and running, “abandoning” Jackie as she does every time Jackie talks. This does for Jackie, who ends it, kicks Mimi’s tail right out.

Her new business is the priority, she says, and whether she realizes it or not, returns interested viewers to the premise and promise of the show that calls itself “Work Out.”

Cross-promoting not lost on “Work Out,” one of the clients of the day is the verbal gossip blogger, Kathy Griffin, who with Jackie is a member today of the mutual admiration society (they adore each other) but who is also put through the rigors of a work-out despite who she is. And thank God she is who she is, for the otherwise who-cares session becomes fodder for Griffin’s funnies: she narrates the

grueling session, saying, “She’s like, ‘Push! Push!’ and it was like giving birth!” and after it is over, “She kicked my ass and took my name!”
Jackie chooses nine people to work one-on-one with her nine trainers, selecting the clients with major weight and/or body image issues, inducting them by BMI trials in tubs, and aligning each with a trainer of Jackie’s choosing.

The trainers have to endure the BMI/body fat sinking in the tub test, too, and some are resentful, others are fine, and still others (like Andre) focus on how the testosterone and estrogen are all abouncing about in the bathing-suited bunch.

BF is the big issue, though, as Jackie prefaces the results with the fact that 65% of the American population has over 30% body fat…meaning, they are overweight.

She then calls out the results:

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There’ll be no More Scrapping

There’ll be no More Scrapping [Sung to the Tune of Pee-Wee’s “There’ll be no More Napping”] by Roxanne McDonald

The first episode of the new season of Work Out has Jackie assuring us (and herself) that she has had enough drama. Hmmm.

“The drama in my life was really over the top,” Jackie tells us at the start of episode one of this new season. She explains how she and Mimi just couldn’t keep it together, how since her friends have stuck by her she has been able to take her dreams to the next level, and how Mimi is still in her life, just not so much.

Mimi may not be in Jackie’s life so much, but if the first episode is any indication, she will be in ours….

The focus returns to what we might in fact tune in to the show for in the first place: the work out studios. All Jackie’s success and the success of Skylab—er, SkySport—have gone to the heads of her trainers, she

tells us. Trainers Jesse, Rebecca, Doug, Andre, Gregg, Zen, and Erika are interviewed and featured doing their thing. Brian bugs the others with how his hands are “the hands of Michelangelo;” Jesse suggests Brian doesn’t really know who Michelangelo is; Rebecca is still using sexuality and a fine ass to put bodies in the seats or on the mats; and new pet Jesse is teased, lectured, and ratted out for gaining weight and eating too much or the wrong foods.
The new venture in Jackie’s mind—oh, it is Skylab, now—has her running her team through the rigors of her special version of boot camp; and she is really disappointed in them: they have nasty, recalcitrant attitudes, walk away from challenges she administers, and report how they think this regime is unnecessary, ridiculous, an insult.

Next are scenes where trainers take on especially needful clients. Doug works with a longtime ex who is in renal failure and must increase his strength for dialysis procedures. Erika has drawn a client, Beverly, who drives all the way from L.A. to get help as a recovering bulimic (coming to Erika because after ten years of throwing up, the few months she has worked with Erika, Beverly has not purged once).

Now this and real training scenarios are what we likely expect from a reality TV show called Work Out (and even if, especially if, Jackie is doing this show to increase business, wouldn’t she want to focus on the way the “labs” work versus the many romantic delusions and confusions and distractions that make her appear less invested in the professional end than in the dramatic ends?)

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Work Out2 is Wearing on Us Already

Work Out2 is Wearing on Us Already by Roxanne McDonald

Could it be because it is way done, overdone, overplayed, played out? Or could it be because, ugh, Mimi has still not been told to hit the highway of exes who deserved to be dumped?

Many of us were getting quite fed up with Jackie not being able to (or not wanting to) let go of that brat, Mimi. I mean, the woman bites, she hurls cocktail glasses across crowded bars (and into mirrored walls), she gets so jealous when Jackie has a shot at growth (personal and professional) that she is the opposite of supportive and proud, and she consistently pulls this passive-aggressive crap that is not even exciting/entertaining to watch. It’s not absurd, ironic, or funny. It is just draining.

I don’t know about you, but I likes me my reality TV. I love it. But Work Out is so not interesting enough with Mimi still sniffing and sniveling about.

Now, what would be really sweet TV would be for Jackie to keep going on dates—as she did in a previous episode of “Work Out”—if she continued to explore the possibilities with other hotties. Yes, Mimi is hot, but her personality is so not.

Granted, most of us have suffered the experience of a bad relationship, and those of us who have been co-dependents know how terribly hard it is to tear ourselves from it no matter how miserable it gets. But making it into good TV is not working out….

If the show is produced and aired ideally to showcase the success of Warner’s business, Sky Sport & Spa, an “exclusive” Beverly Hills health improvement and maintenance venue, then all the show does now—with haggard altercations with tired Mimi and her equally exhausting antics (even for viewers)—is give testament to Jackie’s inability to focus on truly healthy efforts.
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