A new Oxygen network show (“Brooklyn 11223“) is focusing on people of Italian descent living in Bay Ridge, the waterfront district of southwest Brooklyn. Too bad the neighborhood is increasingly made up of a mix of immigrant communities, including Chinese and Egyptians. Watch the trailer below:
I’ve already written about “Russian Dolls,” Lifetime network’s short-lived show about Russians in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach. I’m not surprised that just as Brighton locals protested the Lifetime show, Bay Ridge locals (joined by local councilmembers and politicians) are protesting this new Oxygen release for degrading women and portraying their community in a negative light (the show’s tagline is all about “betrayal”).
Producers are calling Bay Ridge a “small, close-knit community” in the same way that “Russian Dolls” producers called Brighton Beach a “mysterious” and “highly protective community.” I called their bluff in my review of the show.
It seems that TV producers keep trying to recycle the same cliched tropes in the hopes of reaching Jersey Shore or Real Housewives levels of success and fame. How far can you go on shoddy production, weak story lines, forced drama, and a fetishizing of a neighborhood that is nothing like the show’s depiction? Let’s see how long this one lasts…
