Exiled On Vain Street: MTV’s Latest Stroke Of Teen-Reality Awesomeness

Posted at 11:10 AM Aug 26, 2008

By Kenny Herzog

Last night, MTV premiered the long-awaited Exiled, which is basically the “wealth-porn” reality show version of watching your high school’s bitchy homecoming queen get forced to a week of Dungeons And Dragons and fart noises with you and your nerdy friends. Except here, My Super Sweet 16 ex-pats get sent to remote villages across the world and have to adapt to cultures more unfamiliar than alternatively social ones. And eat goat kidneys. Don’t you wish you slummed it just once in the A.V. room now, ladies?

Amanda was the focus of the first episode, getting shipped off to Kenya to hang out with her host Josephine and other Massai tribe members, on what amounted to a teen tour for spoiled brats in need of spiritual rehabilitation. Minor flaws aside (the half-hour running time makes Amanda’s matured transformation a bit hard to swallow without her forced narration, assuring us she’d been humbled during the preceding commercial break; a poor editing choice resulting in the tribe ostensibly dancing and jumping on Amanda’s command teemed with racial undertones; etc.), this is arguably the most conscientious entertainment MTV’s allowed to seep into its primetime hours since Hurricane Katrina fundraising. And its sandwiching alongside The Hills (more on that magical show to come) is not only a no-brainer ratings booster, but makes for an ingeniously balanced presentation of values in their programming.

Anyhow, Amanda wasn’t the only one who became a better person by living in filth and insulting another culture for 22 minutes. Here are the top 5 things I learned from Episode 1 of Exiled:

1. Half of this show’s success is going to come from the girls now being 18, meaning male viewers can finally perv out to their episodes.

2. Cow dung is pretty fucking gross, regardless of your personal level of entitlement.

3. I’d have to say ditto on goat innards eaten directly from inside the newly slaughtered carcass.

4. Kenyan women are apparently hot and bothered for some amorous action, fyi, in case your local watering holes have been coming up dry.

5. This is all just a warmup for what’s bound to be the greatest half-hour in teen-reality-deportation history: Sweet 16 male icon Bjorn’s episode. My DiVoR is already set to go.