WB's reality shows an affront to female viewers

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The CW is taking its largely female audience into two women-centric worlds with the reality shows "Fly Girls" and "High Society."

And yet in many ways, the same message emerges: Women are catty, two-faced and insane, and all we can do is film them for our amusement.

"High Society," which premieres on Wednesday followed by "Fly Girls" two weeks later, looks at the privileged, cloistered inhabitants of Manhattan's Upper East Side, a usually cloistered world. But breakaway society gal Tinsley Mortimer, a creator, co-executive producer and star, has opened the doors, revealing that every stereotype one ever had about these people is true.

There's boring party-boy Paul, who blows money Mama gave him for an apartment on a shindig; there's Tinsley's mother, scandalized by her daughter's divorce but more floored when Tinsley chooses to live in Midtown. Then there's Jules, who at first is just another cliched reality-show bitch, but then she opens her irony-free mouth, "My friends tend not to be homosexuals, fat or Jewish," she says. "I only like white guys. ... My dream is to work for the United Nations."

Clearly, the only function of the show is to make Tinsley (who runs a handbag company) look like a valuable, upright member of society. So that's where the bar is set these days?

After the turn-and-cough experience of "Society," "Fly Girls" comes like a fragrant hot towel. Sure, it's entirely Virgin America-branded, but this particular set of women -- five hardworking, real-life stewardesses (sorry, "in-flight team members") does their own laundry and knows when to call B.S. They live in the same beachside house when jetting around the U.S., and the window into their world is superficially intriguing.

But even this setup has a prefab feeling to it -- the clearly defined personalities (good, innocent Mandy and immature biyatch Nikole), conversations and situations all have a deeply scripted feel. Still, it's nice to experience a show whose leads don't force bile up from one's stomach; here, the ignorant idiots largely are outsiders.