From the endless mockery of Christianity and Christian beliefs, to the promotion of all kinds of sexual and gender identity exploration among minors and adults alike, to liberal issues like abortion, Netflix’s newest teen dramedy Insatiable is definitely not anything I would have let my kids watch when they were impressionable, teens. The series is rated TV-MA, but it’s clear they’re aiming for a much younger audience.
Since its release August 10, Insatiable has been met with intense scrutiny and criticism by the liberal media, especially for so called “fat-shaming.” But there are so many other disturbing aspects that go completely unnoticed by the liberal critics, which I suppose should come as no surprise. Only Salon.com, noted, “Among its infractions is its dedication to portraying Southerners as shallow, ostentatious Jesus freaks.” Though I’m pretty sure Salon probably feels the crime is in anyone being portrayed as any type of Christian.
In the premiere, Insatiable’s main character Patty Bladell (Debby Ryan) goes from being bullied at school for being overweight (taunted with nicknames like “Fatty Patty”) to becoming a vengeful beauty queen once she loses weight after having her jaw wired shut from an injury she received after punching a homeless man who called her fat.
Enter Bob Armstrong (Dallas Roberts), Patty’s effeminate defense attorney who has a passion for moonlighting as a pageant coach. Though he appears quite gay in his voice and mannerisms, he’s happily married to Coralee (Alyssa Milano) and has two children, Brick (Michael Provost) one of Patty’s love interests and a daughter we never meet who is serving in Iraq.
Bob ends up becoming Patty’s pageant coach as he seeks to redeem himself after being falsely accused of touching another contestant inappropriately and she seeks revenge against those who tormented her for being fat. Their ultimate goal is for Patty to win the Miss Magic Jesus pageant (yes, seriously, and the winner’s crown is called the, “Crown of Thorns.”).
By episode 6, “Dunk ‘N’ Donut,” the anti-Christian agenda kicks into full-gear, as Patty discovers that she was never baptized and thus can’t compete in the Miss Magic Jesus Pageant until she does so. When her mom offers up excuses as to why she was never baptized, she remarks to Patty, “Besides, you don’t really believe in all that stuff, do you?”
This is when we meet Pastor Mike (Michael Ian Black), who is in charge of the Miss Magic Jesus Pageant. Bob, who isn’t much of a believer himself, hopes that Pastor Mike will make a baptismal exception for Patty but that’s a no go.
Patty suggests to Bob that they get baptized together, which Bob refers to as taking “a dip in the kiddie pool,” but he agrees to do it thinking that Patty saved him once before (when he was contemplating suicide, Patty interrupted with a phone call which stopped him), so “maybe she could do it again.” So, Patty is the one saving him in baptism? Not God? Right.
The show makes a complete mockery out of the sacred act of baptism, as pageant rival Magnolia (Erinn Westbrook) spikes Patty’s drink before the ceremony with liquid molly, leaving Patty to mistake her state of being high as feeling “the power of the Spirit.” Given that the writers keep writing dialogue for Patty and Bob about baptism being about solving all of their problems, and calling the pageant “Miss Magic Jesus,” it’s obvious they don’t have a clue as to what baptism or the Christian faith is really all about, sadly.
There’s an odd dream-like sequence in the midst of the baptism about a donut, aka a selfish, “God-sized hole,” that wants Patty to fill it by taking what she wants. And when Patty comes out of the baptismal pool in slow motion, her wet, white gown is see-through, revealing her red bikini underneath as everyone in the pews stare at her in awe.
Pastor Mike: We are therefore buried into baptism with Him through death. Just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too, may live a new life.
Patty: For the first time in days, I finally felt peace. I could already feel the power of the Spirit. I felt warm, ecstatic. Like I was pure love. It was a truly religious experience. I almost felt like I was high. I just knew, once I was dunked, all my selfishness would be gone and everything was going to be fine.
Donut: Hey. Hey! Down here. Yeah, it’s me. The donut. I’m talking to you.
Patty: Are you God?
Donut: No. I’m your hole. Your God-sized hole. The reason you’re obsessed with food and boys and Bob.
Patty: What do you want?
Donut: I want you to fill me up. Oh, you’ll never be satisfied unless you take what you want.
Patty: I thought I was supposed to be self “less.”
Donut: Screw selflessness. You only live once. Don’t let that hot, bad boy get away.
Dixie: Patty’s high! Look!
Pastor Mike: Yes. She was moved by the Spirit.
Dixie: Oh, that’s just bullshit. God damn it, I’m so sorry, y’all.
Patty: I knew exactly what I wanted. And exactly what I had to do. (We need to break up.) Sorry. Pastor Mike was wrong. It wasn’t time to be selfless. (You, come with me.) It was time for me to finally get what I want.
Based on that, Patty decides to break up with Brick so she can have bad boy Christian (James Lastovic), the pastor’s wayward son. That’s what her baptism inspired her to do? So much for being “moved by the Spirit.”
Cut to a scene of Patty receiving oral sex from Christian on a Noah’s Ark structure in the church playground, in broad daylight, as the song “Walk it Out” by Slyngshott plays, “Don’t you dare tell me I can’t have whatever I want.” Unbeknownst to them, someone secretly records their sexual activity to later use against Patty.
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Then, in what was the most offensive scene of the entire show, the Miss Magic Jesus Pageant begins with the contestants singing a very lurid and sexually charged “worship” song that doesn’t even make sense.
Asking the Holy Spirit to “please ride me…deep, deep, deep in my Hooool…ly Father” while making sexual motions and gyrations…What is that even supposed to mean, other than the obvious sexual innuendo? It’s not even a double entendre, it’s just lazy writing done for the sake of shock value. And having young, teenage girls pleading with Jesus and the Holy Spirit to have sex with them is definitely shocking and completely disgusting.
Chorus: We’ll journey together, your hand on my heart. Whatever the weather, a love so strong. So long. So hard. O, Jesus, You fill me in every single way. Sweet, sweet Jesus inside me, I got You deep in my soul. Deep, deep, deep in my soul. Yeah! Oh, Spirit, please ride me. Please, please, please, please ride me. Deep, deep, deep in my soul.
Dee: Time to break it down, y’all. Stone cold chillin’, JC, JC, just You and me. Chill, chill, chillin’, You see, by the Sea of Galilee. I got a notion that this motion by the ocean is the potion I need. I think You get the gist. You the top of my list. State of bliss. Eucharist. Swear to God I need a fix. State of bliss. Crucifix. Thank You, Jesus, that’s my mix.
Dixie: And now for the second coming!
Chorus: Sweet, sweet Jesus inside me, I got You deep in my soul. Deep, deep, deep in my soul. Yeah! Oh, Spirit, please ride me. Please, please, please, please ride me. Deep, deep, deep in my Hoooool…ly Father. I think I love You.
To top it off, the contestants are asked, “How is Jesus inside of you?” making further mockery of a relationship with Christ.
Magnolia ends up winning the pageant and Patty is first runner up, but after Magnolia gets disqualified for cheating on the Bible trivia quiz, Patty is awarded the crown.
Aside from maligning wealthy, white Southerners and mocking Christians, it almost seems like there are more gay characters than straight and that the writers wanted to hit us over the head with a gay agenda that was complete overkill.
Episode 5, “Bikinis and Bitches,” was particularly excessive and seemed to be awkwardly and gratuitously inserted for the sake of promoting homosexuality while also sexualizing underage girls. Patty sets up a bikini dog wash to benefit an eating disorder charity as part of her pageant platform, and Dixie Sinclair (Irene Choi) sabotages it to better her own odds at winning.
Dixie shows up at the dog wash pretending to offer an olive branch to Patty and suggests she help rub suntan oil on the girls’ backs. “You know what gets more attention than girls in bikinis,” she asks. “Girls in bikinis rubbing oil on each other.”
“Are you sure we should, like, sexualize ourselves?” Patty asks. “Yeah, it’s for a good cause, girl,” Magnolia answers. Remember, these characters are supposed to be minors. Underage, teenage girls.
As it turns out, the “suntan oil” Dixie brought was spiked with bacon grease, and the dogs actually start attacking the girls. After most of the girls run off, Brick comes up with a plan to help replace them. He calls in people from the LGBTQ center who show up with drag queens in bikinis, heels, and overly-done hair and makeup and enter in slow-motion as Patty and her friends stare in awe with their jaws hanging open.
Patty meets a trans woman in the bathroom and they both share a moment about how self-conscious they feel in a bikini and in their own bodies. Because somehow losing weight is just like surgically removing your genitals…
Trans Woman: I do that too. I get stuck in the mirror, looking at my body, wishing it were different.
Patty: You have an amazing body.
Trans Woman: So do you.
Patty: I…I used to be fat.
Trans Woman: I used to be a guy.
Patty: Shit, really?
Trans Woman: Well, no. I’ve always been a girl, I just had the body of a guy. I’m trans. If anyone understands feeling uncomfortable in their own skin, it’s me. I thought once I had my surgery, I’d feel better about myself. I’m still not comfortable wearing a bathing suit. I keep thinking there’s gonna be a day where I feel female enough.
Patty: Yeah. I think I’ll feel thin enough when I lose another ten pounds. I just…keep wishing I looked perfect.
Trans Woman: Sometimes, I wonder if I’m gonna spend the rest of my life waiting for it to start.
Patty: Me too. Maybe we don’t have to.
One of my biggest pet peeves with Hollywood’s liberal agenda is how they twist female friendships and sexualize them at every turn. Insatiable made this a central theme, as Patty’s best friend Nonnie (Kimmy Shields) has a secret crush on her and wonders if she may be gay. She meets a woman from the LGBTQ center wearing a shirt that says “Vagitarian” and asks her when she knew she was gay.
Nonnie: Hey! Are you with the LGBTQ center?
Vagitarian: What gave it away?
Nonnie: When…when did you know you were someone who goes to the LGBTQ center?
Vagitarian: Uh…I think I always knew, but I kept trying to convince myself that it was just, like, regular, 15-year-old girl stuff, you know? Like before I realized Heavenly Creatures is a gay movie.
Nonnie: It is?
Vagitarian: Yeah, dude. Melanie Lynskey is in love with Kate Winslet. And I was obsessed with my best friend. Totally jealous when she got her first boyfriend, but I didn’t think that made me gay. And then I saw her making out with a guy and I wanted to die. That’s when I knew.
Of course, then Nonnie sees Patty making out with a guy and suddenly realizes she’s gay, despite a previous episode where Nonnie started kissing a guy friend and found she enjoyed it. Nonnie confesses her feelings for Patty and kisses her, much to Patty’s surprise. Nonnie later gets hit on in the bathroom by a lesbian contestant vying for the Miss Magic Jesus title and the two end up dating.
Confusion about sexuality in the teen years, while hormones are raging and brain development is still not complete, is a common issue, but I learned through a professional counselor who deals with this issue frequently that teens, especially young girls, today are more confused than ever because of the messages Hollywood is indoctrinating them with and they often mistake their feelings of closeness for their best friend, such as wanting to hold hands or cuddle while watching a movie or even feeling jealous if their best friend starts dating, as signs that they must be gay. Insatiable will only serve to add to that confusion for young girls with Nonnie’s storyline, unfortunately. It even goes so far as to tell them that if they feel like it’s just normal teenage confusion, they’re just in denial.
The explorations of homosexuality extends to the adults in the series, as well. Towards the end of the season we get a subplot where Bob’s nemesis, the manly D.A. Bob Barnard (Christopher Gorham), confesses that he’s secretly gay and has been in love with him for years. The two share a passionate kiss, but afterwards, in episode 9, Bob wants to save his marriage to Coralee and tries to deny his feelings for Barnard, refusing to admit he’s gay or bi. “You know what they say about people who are homophobic, Bob?” Barnard asks as Bob tries to escape his advances. “They say they’re in denial.”
Within a few episodes, Bob has left Coralee and is living with Barnard but then, when Coralee sees the two Bobs kiss, she’s turned on and her hidden sexual attraction to Barnard kicks in. They eventually end up in a threesome and at one point consider becoming a “throuple,” but ultimately realize three’s a crowd. Imagine that!
After dealing with all sorts of sexuality, including creepy sexual innuendos and sexual tension between minors and adults (yes, plural), and even statutory rape involving a pageant mom and Brick, next on tap is abortion. In episode 8, “Wieners and Losers,” Patty finds out she’s pregnant after running away with Christian and losing her virginity to him. When she asks Bob for advice, he tells her, “I’m a man, which means I have no right to tell you what to do with your body.” She doesn’t want her mom involved so he also points out that the state of Georgia requires parental consent for an abortion. “Why?” Patty asks, as if this were a NARAL ad. “It’s my body.” (Which your parents are responsible for taking care of, physically and financially, because you are a child, including if there are any complications that arise from the abortion as well as any emotional turmoil it will cause you, that’s why.)
When Nonnie finds out she asks incredulously, “You’re not thinking of keeping it, are you?” Even though Patty points out the basic truth that her mom kept her when she was a pregnant teen, “and if she hadn’t I wouldn’t exist,” Patty decides to have an abortion after Nonnie argues that she has no job, is only 17, and isn’t the best role model.
Pastor Mike finds out about the pregnancy and threatens to strip Patty of her Miss Magic Jesus crown. This gives Patty the opportunity to step on her soapbox and decry sexist double standards and to repeat the pro-abort mantra that it’s not a baby, it’s just cells.
Pastor Mike: It has recently been brought to my attention that you’re pregnant.
Bob: Who told you that?
Pastor Mike: It doesn’t matter. We cannot have an unwed, pregnant teenager representing Miss Magic Jesus.
Patty: Which is why I’m getting an abortion, so nobody will have to know.
Pastor Mike: That is not any better. I’m sorry. I need to strip you of your crown.
Bob: Wait, what? How is that fair?
Patty: I can’t be pregnant and I can’t get an abortion?
Pastor Mike: You should’ve thought of that before you had premarital sex.
Patty: Right. Because if a guy has sex, he’s a stud, but if a girl does it, she’s a slut?
Bob: Patty, don’t.
Patty: Don’t you want to know who the father is?
Christian: It’s me. I’m the father.
Pastor Mike: My God! Thank God you’re safe. Your mom and I were so worried.
Patty: Christian, what are you doing here?
Christian: When you wouldn’t answer my calls, I called your mom. She told me you were in trouble.
Pastor Mike: Wait, did you say you’re the father?
Patty: My mom told you?
Christian: No, not that you’re pregnant. I had no idea until just now. I came back because I was worried something was really wrong, but this is so cool. I mean, we can get married, raise the baby together.
Patty: What? No! No, I’m having an abortion.
Bob: Okay, everybody, let’s calm down.
Christian: Patty could be a shining example of family values. You could totally let her keep the crown. I mean, you’d have to let me skip military school, but…
Patty: Are you using me?
Christian: No. I love you.
Patty: No, you don’t.
Christian: I want us to be a family. You, me, and our baby.
Patty: It’s not a baby, okay? There is no baby. It’s just cells. This is why I didn’t want to tell you. Agh…
Christian: What’s wrong?
Patty: Agh. Ow. They say a child is a blessing. So, the idea of losing one shouldn’t have come as a surprise to someone like me.
Nurse: You’re not pregnant.
Patty: You mean I’m not having a miscarriage?
Nurse: No, I mean that you were never pregnant.
Ok, so it wasn’t actually a baby in this case. It turns out Patty has a teratoma inside of her which can cause a false positive on a pregnancy test. “It’s a parasitic twin that you absorbed in utero,” a nurse explains to her. Thus, Patty gets to keep her crown.
This is where they really make a mockery out of Pastor Mike, as he’s convinced that the teratoma is an evil presence inside of Patty because he “felt it” when he laid hands on her before the baptism. “I thought the baptism would take care of it,” he tells her, “but it’s so much worse than I thought. I don’t know if that thing is mad that it never got born, or if there’s some kind of demon…”
Patty protests, saying, “That’s crazy,” but Pastor Mike insists, which leads to a ridiculous satire of the serious rite of exorcism in episode 9, “Bad Kitty,” as Pastor Mike attempts to exorcise the supposed demon from Patty’s body.
Th entire show just went from bad to worse with each episode, with unforgivable and highly inappropriate storylines, dialogue and scenes becoming more and more offensive as the show progressed, culminating in a final, gory and disturbing violent murder. All while inserting the typical liberal agenda along the way to the point of excess, such as when Planned Parenthood is shown as the last search on Patty’s mom’s phone in a random scene. Or when Bob’s jerk father lists “big oil, big tobacco, the NRA and the KKK” as among his client list. Or when Dixie’s mom tells her, “Everyone’s a little bit gay.” If that’s the mindset of this show’s writers, that explains a lot!
All this as well as irresponsible scenes involving suicide. Bob becomes suicidal for a second time over the thought of having to choose between Coralee and Barnard, again putting a gun into his mouth while sitting in his car. My son lost his best friend last year in this exact way, and considering the rate of suicide among teens, inserting two emotionally-charged suicide attempts into this show seems especially dangerous to vulnerable teenagers. Not to mention insensitive to anyone who has lost a loved one to suicide.
This is what Hollywood deems as appropriate entertainment for your teenage children. There should be some sort of accountability for exposing minors to such filth, sacrilege and gore. Yet, all liberal reviewers can find to complain about is fat shaming? Seriously? Fat shaming is the very least of this show’s problems, and that is a major understatement.
LifeNews Note: Dawn Slusher writes for Newsbusters, where this originally appeared.
