This review and TV show contain discussions of mental health and suicide. 

There’s one question in life that baffles me whenever it crosses my mind: how could one go from dancing in front of an iPhone screen to having their own reality TV show? Well, the only right person to ask is seventeen-year-old Charli D’Amelio.

If you don’t know who the D’Amelios are, you’re ultimately living under a rock.

This L.A. family of four gained their fame solely through Charli and her “Renegade” skills on the skyrocketing social media app TikTok. From living in a standard house in Connecticut to now living in a $914,000 house in the heart of California, the D’Amelio’s have come quite a long way.

To top it off, Hulu recently released eight episodes of The D’Amelio Show, marking the first season, and it is a total flop. 

I see this humiliating show as a cry out for extra empathy.

I kid you not, every episode depicts Charli and her older sister, Dixie D’Amelio, having mental breakdowns over the hardships of facing life under the lens of social media. Of course, mental instability is not something to look down upon; it is rather something to spread awareness about, but this show was way too fabricated to truly do so.

Prior to starting this show, I was hoping for behind the scenes photoshoots, celebrity meetings, and the inside scoop of what goes on in the D’Amelio household—not to watch the family wail in agony over their success. 

Mental health is a serious and real issue, and I don’t think posting these shots designed to garner sympathy is promoting that message. Of course, in reality TV shows, mental breakdowns are essential to grab viewers’ attention, but in The D’Amelio Show, it was overkill. 

In one of the episodes, father Marc D’Amelio says, “The main goal of ours is to tell the true story of us.” While this may be true, I felt that the entire series was meant to extort vulnerability for popularity, and that is unacceptable.

On another note, personally, I’ve never had a problem with this family; they seem like sincere and genuinely good people in the public eye. But the way that Hulu portrayed them was an epic fail. As we see how busy Charli and Dixie are with their clothing lines, dance classes, and song-producing ordeals, the show progressively worsens to the point where boredom is inevitable.

Each episode was extremely repetitive. The producers filmed meetings, family dinners, mental breakdowns, studio time, and that’s about it. Eight full episodes of watching this family like a hawk were unnecessary and frankly, uninteresting. 

As much as I disliked the storyline of The D’Amelio Show, I thought it was important to see what goes on behind the TikToks and Instagram posts. As I mentioned, being vulnerable to the public is necessary in order to show that having fame and fortune isn’t all rainbows and butterflies; however, it can come off as redundant to the fans.

What I did appreciate was that before the start and finish of every episode, there was a trigger warning and the suicide awareness hotline was shared in order to spread awareness; however, the D’Amelio’s name was featured next to the disclaimer. In that sense, this was really an attempt to boost popularity rather than a genuine resource meant to help others struggling.

The D’Amelio Show was designed to gain profit but moreover, to gather pity. This was no Keeping Up With The Kardashians or Too Hot To Handle, and Hulu should barricade it now before it’s too late.