Look, I get it. For generations now, the world has quite gleefully sunk its teeth into the subgenre of “rich people behaving dubiously at their absolute best.” From Dallas to Succession and everything in between and beyond, this has been the way.
It’s no surprise, then, that Owning Manhattan—one of the latest debutants to Netflix‘s empire of reality television—has snapped up a season two renewal following its grand opening on the platform back in late June.
The show follows real estate mogul Ryan Serhant (of Million Dollar Listing New York fame) as he bounces between the personalities occupying New York’s luxury real estate business, and all the backstabbing narcissism that tends to buoy it.
Fans, as you can imagine, are eating this announcement up, and can’t wait to plunge themselves back into the worlds of people that, realistically, do not deserve our attention.
But it’s right around here that we feel the need to address one of the two elephants in this room. Namely, the mounting evidence provided by Owning Manhattan‘s “fanbase” that reality television is actually a psy-op whose purpose is to drip-feed all of this bad behavior into our minds so that we A) Feel better about our own behaviors and B) Remain convinced that the human race is already doomed. I mean, look at what we’re devoting our time to.
Because yes, Umar, I’m sure you love “this movie” that is the eight, sub-60 minute episodes of Owning Manhattan, you’re a very real fan indeed.
And let’s not forget all the warm and fuzzy feelings that are obviously essential to the “rich people behaving badly” genre.
But let’s move on to the second elephant in the room, which is that, if there’s anything that Netflix users love more than reality television, it’s British teenagers of dubious sexuality bumbling around in a supernatural landscape as they try to do justice to a much-loved urban fantasy IP. I speak, of course, of Dead Boy Detectives, which has yet to receive a season two following its eight-episode April premiere.
But this is Netflix we’re talking about, meaning that we can probably expect Dead Boy Detectives to go the way of Lockwood & Co., or Shadow and Bone, or First Kill, or Warrior Nun before the fan campaign. Indeed, Netflix despises their teen fantasy shows, so much so that they constantly greenlight them just to slaughter them right before our eyes.
In any case, the battle rages on, and all I’m saying is you would never see a push for an Owning Manhattan renewal like you would for any of these other shows. That would require real people who actually like Owning Manhattan on a conscious level, and to paraphrase Buzz Lightyear, there seems to be no sign of conscious viewing habits anywhere.
Owning Manhattan and Dead Boy Detectives are both available to stream exclusively on Netflix.