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The D’Amelio Show is a reality series about Charli D’Amelio, who went from being an average 15-year-old in 2019 to having 125 million TikTok followers two years later. Since the popularity of her TikTok feed — with videos that have the trained competitive dancer strutting her stuff — has taken off, the D’Amelios’ lives have taken a 180. But how is Charli (and her older sister Dixie) handling all of this sudden fame?
THE D’AMELIO SHOW: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: It’s 10:18 AM. Someone gently knocks on a door and says, “Charli? Good morning. Can we come in?” We see a shot of a masked cameraman.
The Gist: In order for Charli to pursue the opportunities coming her way due to her social media fame, her parents, Marc and Heidi, agreed to move the whole family from Connecticut to Los Angeles, where they live in a sprawling modern home; Charli’s 19-year-old sister Dixie has over 57 million TikTok followers herself, and she’s trying to start a singing career.
By the time the cameras have started shooting the D’Amelios, the COVID pandemic has been going on for months, and the lockdowns have only burnished Charli’s status as one of TikTok’s biggest stars. Though she still has no idea why she’s so popular, she’s rolling with it, and the family has created an entire corporation around the sisters so they can manage all of the opportunities that are coming their way.
As we see Charli looking at her packed schedule and color-coded binders in front of her, Heidi wonders if there will be time for her to, you know, be a 16-year-old. The CEO of her corporation promises “hang out” time and time for her to get back to practicing her dancing will be worked into the schedule.
Dixie has other issues; she’s suffered from anxiety for most of her life, and she gets much more backlash and criticism than Charli does. We see comments pop up that she’s a talentless hack that’s only famous because of her little sister. Dixie admits that drafting off of Charli’s sudden fame is fine with her if it opens doors that it otherwise wouldn’t have — and when she meets with an A&R rep for an independent label to talk about her single and video, we see it has.
But when a video she shot for Vogue comes out and she gets comments that she “looks musty,” Dixie loses it in front of Heidi and Marc. “I’m trying everything I can to better myself, and it just gets worse,” she sobs to them.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The D’Amelio Show feels like an extended version of Netflix The Influencers, and has a similar vibe to Being Reuben, the reality series about YouTube star Reuben de Maid.
Our Take: Something feels vaguely unsettling about The D’Amelio Show. What made us squinchy wasn’t Charli D’Amelio herself; she seems to have her head screwed on straight, telling the camera that she didn’t plan on this sudden fame, and she knows this can go away quickly. While she seems to be a bit overwhelmed by the fact that she was an average teenager in Connecticut in 2019 and now she’s one of TikTok’s biggest stars, she also seems to have an eye towards how she can benefit from this whirlwind when it inevitably dies down.
We couldn’t help but be happy that she’s gotten back to dancing, with her family hiring a well-known choreographer to coach her. It was something she couldn’t really do during the pandemic and then the social media stuff took up a lot of time. Her determination to get back to where her true talent lies makes us feel like she’ll be OK. We also liked the fact that she thinks she’d be good at marketing when she grows up, because this experience has given her a lot of inside knowledge of how social media influencers are marketed. So she’s definitely thinking of what will happen when the gravy train stops.
We’re not sure about the rest of the D’Amelios. While Heidi did put up a bit of a protest to the CEO about Charli having time to dance and be a kid, it felt like she and Marc were working for the CEO, and not the other way around. Just the fact that they uprooted their family and moved cross-country because of Charli’s TikTok fame seems ill-advised. Sure, Charli and Dixie had to convince them, but the move makes us think that they see dollar signs. Charli thinks that they could end up back in Connecticut when this is all over, which is part of her refreshingly realistic view. Let’s hope that her parents feel the same way, and that they’re just renting that mansion in L.A.
Dixie is the one we’re really worried about. Like we said earlier, she’s fine with drafting off Charli’s fame, and we get why; if she wants to pursue a singing career, what better way to do it in 2021 than to gather 50-odd million followers on TikTok? But pursuing that path to fame is going to come with lots and lots of criticism from anonymous commenters, and Dixie’s anxieties make her far too fragile for her to handle that.
When she’s sobbing to Marc and Heidi, we half-expected one of them to say to her, “Well, then you need to find some other way to achieve your goals. This isn’t worth sacrificing your mental health.” But they just listen supportively. Again, this makes us feel like they are looking at the money instead of how this sudden fame is affecting their child. That’s where the unsettled feeling really came into play, and it makes us wonder if this is how we’re going to feel for the season’s entire 8-episode run.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: As Dixie sobs, Marc tells his daughter. “It’s going to get better. I promise it’s going to get better.” Swing and a miss there, sir.
Sleeper Star: None.
Most Pilot-y Line: CEO Greg says “Her happiness and growth as a human being is really all that matters here,” which doesn’t even sound like a line he believes, even as the words are coming out of his mouth.
Our Call: SKIP IT. Though The D’Amelio Show is relatively realistic and low-key as far as these kinds of reality series are concerned, it doesn’t really give much insight into teens and sudden social media fame, except for the fact that commenters really, really suuuuuuck.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
