Undressed

You ever watch something that you thought was so bad, that for some reason, you couldn't stop watching? It's why we like B-Movies, and just about everything that Aaron Spelling can throw at us. It's also why Undressed is so good to watch. It has 3 simultaneous storylines of different people in relationships, and it's not always completely heterosexual. While most of the time its completely unrealistic (if I myself was getting as much action as the people on this, I wouldn't be watching!), and it has everything that makes it such a bad drama/soap opera (and typical MTV drivel) of bad acting, bad storyline, and cheap 2nd rate actors. It's fun to watch the predictability of the whole episode. This is also what keeps it interesting, as each situation lasts a few episodes, and you just pant out loud wanting to see what's going to happen next. Just when it ends for one story, another starts up in its place. This is something the 16-28 year old audience can watch and relate, maybe for a present relationship, or something that's happened in the past to them.

Network: MTV; Genre: guilty pleasure; Average Content Rating: TV-14 (for strong sexual content and suggested sex involving teens); Classification: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);

Season Reviewed: Complete Series (6 seasons)

There are few TV experiences I've had that match the surrealism of MTV's 'Undressed'. It's really a strange and unique case of a mountain of wrongs somehow making a right. Like most TV it is about sex but unlike most TV it is also about nothing more than sex. If you want mindless, escapist trash - this is the place to come. Although, if you hear someone say that 'Undressed' is a great drama with great stories that are "true to life" - run. Far away. There is nothing real about this show, but that is what makes it so shamefully delicious.

'Undressed' is an anthology series that peaks in on the sex lives of high school, college and young adults in a format that brings the show around once a day - like a soap opera - but has no permanent cast, oscillating us between a group of kids for 4 or 5 episodes and then dispenses with those characters, never to be seen again, for another story. Playing like a toned down version of "Compromising Situations", the stories are about all manner of sexual inclinations, deviations and corny, soft core fantasy scenarios.

Labeling it a "drama" makes it seem as if creator Roland Joffe ('The Killing Fields') and his crew actually think they are doing something of substance. But 'Undressed' has absolutely no recognizable personality of it's own making it impossible to know what exactly their goal with this show is. Most of the time it is silly, playful and hollow. Sometimes it even seems to be a mocking parody of soap operas and sex-obsessed teen angst dramas. Either way if anybody is taking it seriously the joke is on them. The show rides this fence mysteriously all the way until the 6th and final season when it falls of and just becomes an insufferable, self-important drama. However, for much of this run, if you're willing to not take it and yourself seriously, (and possibly admit that a "guilty pleasure" is a sub-genera all to its own) "Undressed" may become a nasty, embarrassing addiction. An addiction you'll hide from everyone out of fear of being exposed as not the intellectual connoisseur of entertainment that you'd like everyone to think you are.

"Undressed" works, most likely in spite of itself, because it serves a purpose that teen angst dramas, soap operas and other so-called network wish-fulfillment shows are to full of themselves to. It dispenses with tangled plots and manufactured drama and the standard who-will-be-with-who scenarios and just cuts to the chase. Thanks to that simultaneous 3-story style, it can cut to that chase over and over. At any given moment, if someone isn't having sex they are either about to have it, or are talking about it. Literally, people. The show drops the pretension to be anything more than the trash that it is. No wasting time with character development or stories or messages or banal conflicts as if knowing these are a waste of time when the audience just wants a little cathartic entertainment. It is absolutely jaw-dropping and as unbelievable as this all may be, I can honestly say I have never seen anything like it.

'Undressed' is out-in-the-open exploitation, where the actors soul purpose is to look good in their underwear. When they do, it works. When they don't, in much of the 6th season, it doesn't. The show really benefits, probably unknowingly, from network boundaries that keep it restrained. What it lacks in nudity and actual sex, it makes up for with the simple cinematic fact that insinuating something and letting our imagination do the work can be infinitely sexier than the monotony of premium cable porn. As a result it serves as a cathartic medium somewhere between the guilty pleasure failings of "Friends" and a late nigh Cinemax series.

That is why this show is so easily criticized. It proclaims itself in big bold letters to be things that the average network sitcom does, in fact relies on, but doesn't have the guts to admit, instead going using "safer", acceptable methods. Instead of subversively insinuating to teenagers that they need to find someone or have sex in order to be happy wrapped in a real-world scenario and false hyperbole about love (a la 'Friends'), 'Undressed' busts the typical TV pretension with love and depicts sex and any manner of getting it with such a cartoonish lunacy there is no possible way to take any of it seriously. It is an unbelievable, trashy and audacious - it is exactly what a guilty pleasure should be.

The show aims very low and mines every possible avenue of it's "subject" bone dry. The stories aren't the slightest bit creative (and more often flat-out stupid), the writing is amateurish and the acting is worse. By all the numbers the show is a total technical and creative disaster. But it does everything that it does with such enthusiasm and gung-ho shamelessness. And you know something else: its cheapness actually contributes to the half-assed late-night fantasy charm of it all. The whole production is high camp as good as it comes. Any show aspiring to be a guilty pleasure in the future should use this as the blueprint to springboard from.

'Undressed' is so bad it actually manages to cycle all the way back to good and is so stupid that it shouldn't do any harm to those with half a brain. And those that do have a brain, might find themselves turning it off for 30 minutes to escape into this addictive fantasy land. Before returning to a real show, of course.

* * * ½ / 4

For a show with no nudity, it manages to bust all of the television taboos except one. That's right, nobody who is even an ounce overweight need apply. You can have sex with a different race, different religion, same sex, different morals, but you can't have sex with a chubby, much less a fatty. That would be too taboo even for them.

As for the quality of the show: Acting is Bad, The Writing is bad, and the plots revolve around stupidity and misinformation. Nobody with any taste would watch it. I tune in frequently.

Okay, as far as I can see, most of these comments are on the morality or lack thereof of this show and the utter lack of acting talent. While I fully support anyone who questions the credibility of this show or questions the ability of the actors and actresses to act, I do not agree that this show is something horribly immoral and wrong. Morals are relative, not clearly defined by one person. Sex isn't illegal, and many people question their sexuality and experiment at some point in their lives. MTV has in fact abandoned playing music most of the time, but as most people know this, they should refrain from watching it unless they want to see something that's not music. Also, if teenage sex and homosexuality/sexual experimentation is something that bothers you or offends your morals, don't watch MTV (most of the time) or this show. However, those of us who don't care much about the educational value of a TV show (it rots all of our brains anyway) or the blatant sex (non-nudity) can watch this show all we want. Not all shows have to serve a purpose. Sometimes they just are. And this one is pretty darn fun to watch.

I don't know where or when I started watching this show, but I did. Granted, some of the situations are a tad unbelievable, and the characters aren't upstanding moral pillars. But still, one can find fun in predicting the next turns of events in the plot. As others have said, it's addicting.. .when they have Undressed marathons, I can sit and watch it for hours. Maybe that's a sign I lead a sad life. Some have questioned the format. As far as I can tell, they do run three unrelated plots with people in High School, College, and beyond college. As soon as one plot line "resolves" (meaning that a couple has settled into a secure relationship, or broken up permanently), it ceases, and a new storyline for that age group begins. These stories can vary in length. And also, as far as I can tell, the show is written by the actors, lending hints of low budget production as well originality. I wouldn't say it's entirely accurate (i.e., there's no unisex bathrooms or hot girls throwing themselves at guys (not me, anyway) at my dorm), but it's at least worth watching for the hot chicks (and presumably, hot guys).