Is It...Really That Different? The Kardashians Season 1 Episode 1 Recap
Not even a year after announcing the end of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, the family is back on Hulu. Let’s get right into the premiere of their return.
1. High Energy Intro
a) A high-speed drone journey across beach, mountain, and Kourtney’s backyard hurls us into the Kardashians’ much-hyped, self-titled redux. First, we catch Kravis stealing a kiss while their kids scamper around them; then, we careen into Khloe’s half-built home, where she’s on the phone telling platonic partner Tristan Thompson (I think) about the status of construction.
b) Keeping Up with the Kardashians, the original E! series that brought The Kardashians to fame, occasionally cosplayed as other reality show genres —for example, “home makeover,” “real estate,” even “sports competition” — and The Kardashians is unlikely to be an exception. In fact, “projects” are a prime deflection from personal life, and —following Tristan’s very public, presumably unethical non-monogamy throughout the pandemic — I’m going to guess that some Home Makeover: Khloe Edition energy in store for her plotlines.
c) Next comes Kendall’s mansion, which we tour as if in a rapid-fire episode of Architectural Digest’s Open Door, and seems —with its impressive interior design — to serve as a stand-in for her actual presence. Once in the backyard, we finally come upon Kenny giving herself a sound bath, but it’s not long before we’re zooming again, this time through the pink-and-concrete “Kylie” offices and right on up to a Big Boss desk with Kris Jenner throned behind it.
Kylie herself is just down the hall, overseeing a photo shoot featuring one of her makeup kits. I can’t help but catch the line in the Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak song that’s playing: “I’m about to buy Las Vegas after this roll.” I’ve said time and again that if The Kardashians were a city, they would be Las Vegas.
d) This mad dash through everyone’s worlds has felt a little like a video game, and it culminates with Kim in a nearby warehouse space, directing something SKIMS-related. Then, she traipses through the super-beige depot to hop into her grey-not-silver Maybach, which is kinda just…there, parked amid the action. She speeds off beneath a pastel LA sky.
e) In the shot that follows, CGI-glass shatters—a suggestion that this show stands to transcend the quasi-transparency that had previously confined the clan—and, together, the women strut towards the camera. All of this in under three minutes!
Self-Reflexivity, again
1. Pretty much since Season 13’s Paris Episode, KUWTK has been a reality show about a reality show. I suppose I should have predicted that The Kardashians would revel even more in its self-reflexivity. Thanks to a vivid combination of tabloid media and social media, we haven’t needed TV to keep up with them. They have no choice, really, but to make the “form” one of the most interesting things about the show.
2. Thus, producers leaned into all the post-modern narrative conventions I’ve been exploring on Kardashian Kolloquium since 2018, starting with the sociologist Manuel Castells’ notion of Timeless Time (life lived through digital domains has warped our sense of time; whether making it feel compressed, elongated, or lost). Regular flashbacks to nostalgic media moments occur; namely, ones that depict Kim as an underdog - like her cringey Dancing with the Stars appearance (it is undeniably amazing to see how far Kim has come). Khloe and Kris regularly reference the first season of KUWTK, suggesting that their story has somehow come “full circle” just in time for this new era.
3. For baser examples of what I mean by “post-modern?”