The controversy surrounding the new Netflix series Insatiable (premiering August 10) has centered around the idea of fat-shaming, that by telling the story of a formerly overweight teenage girl who turns into a hottie by losing 70 pounds (because she has her jaw wired shut for three months after getting punched in the face), the show is sending the wrong message about body image. And sure, Insatiable doesn’t send a particularly respectful message on that front, but that’s just one of the many, many problems with this painfully misguided show, a train wreck of terrible jokes, unpleasant characters, gross stereotypes and idiotic storylines.

The show kicks off with Patty (former Disney Channel star Debby Ryan) getting bullied for her weight, only to crack when a homeless man insults her and then tries to steal her candy bar (yes, really). She punches him, he punches her back -- then cut to three months later, and Ryan is looking like her regular gorgeous, glamorous self, having shed the unconvincing fat suit she wears as Patty in the early scenes of the first episode. Getting skinny has apparently had the side-effect of turning Patty into a petty, quick-tempered sociopath, although the show seems to have little idea as to whether this is solely a result of her transformation or something that was part of her personality all along.

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Either way, Patty quickly sets her sights on becoming a popular girl at school, dating the hot guy who always ignored her and, most importantly, rising in the ranks of the beauty-pageant circuit, thanks to her lawyer/coach, Bob Armstrong (Dallas Roberts). Although it’s billed as a show about revenge, Insatiable is really a show about beauty pageants, and after Patty gets some especially nasty payback out of her system in the early episodes, the show mostly shifts into a soap-operatic chronicle of self-involved high-schoolers and their self-involved parents in the Deep South (the show is set in Georgia).

Creator Lauren Gussis was a longtime writer and producer on Dexter, and Insatiable might have worked if it went full-on serial killer with its protagonist, embracing the idea of Patty as a sexy monster and getting rid of the irritating Bob and the pageant angle altogether. Instead, the show (which was first developed for The CW before being picked up by Netflix) attempts to have it both ways, with the shock value of the bad behavior from Patty (and nearly every other character on the show), plus sappy Important Lesson moments about tolerance and acceptance.

But Insatiable’s perspective on other marginalized groups is just as clueless as its perspective on the overweight; this is a show that has a character do community service at the local LGBTQ center, where literally everyone in the place is a drag queen.

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Once fate places Patty and Bob together (he’s the lawyer who gets her out of the assault charges for punching that homeless guy), they see each other as their respective opportunities for redemption. Bob’s pageant-coaching career was derailed by false accusations of molesting an underage contestant (yet another tone-deaf plot development), and he wants to coach Patty as his chance to get back into the pageant world. Patty sees pageants as a way to prove to all of her former tormentors that she’s better than them, but she’s just traded one shallow obsession (with her weight) for another. She’s also in love with Bob and jealous of his high-strung wife Coralee (Alyssa Milano) -- at least for a few episodes, until the creators forget about that storyline.

Patty is such a terrible person, it’s baffling when the show attempts to evoke sympathy for her, reminding viewers of the mockery she endured when she was fat, and how unfair that was. There’s nothing subversive about the show’s use of fat jokes, even if it places them in the mouths of characters who are even more reprehensible than Patty is. And making broad, stereotypical jokes at the expense of other types of people (jocks, Southerners, vain beauty queens) doesn’t compensate for the laziness of the fat jokes and the failure to bring any kind of nuance to the alleged social satire.

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The performances are as crass and shallow as the humor, full of awful exaggerated Southern accents and over-enunciated lines. Ryan looks like she’s in a daze half the time, and she doesn’t bring the level of darkness to her portrayal that would make Patty into a truly fascinating antihero. The shrillest performances (with the worst accents) come from Christopher Gorham as Bob’s prosecutor rival, Irene Choi as one of Patty’s pageant competitors and Arden Myrin as Bob’s pageant-mom nemesis. But no one comes off well here; even typically talented guest stars including Michael Ian Black, Beverly D’Angelo and Robin Tunney are defeated by the clumsy writing and cartoonish direction.

Every episode is also packed with nearly wall-to-wall voiceover, with Patty, Bob and even some secondary characters over-explaining their motivations in practically every scene, hitting the audience over the head with each episode’s themes, just in case they aren’t blatantly obvious. The plotting is haphazard even for a soap opera, with characters changing motivations constantly, best friends in one scene and bitter enemies in the next. Gussis can’t seem to decide whether she wants to make a semi-earnest, slightly snarky teen drama like Gossip Girl or The O.C., or an over-the-top satire like Ryan Murphy’s Popular or cult classic Heathers. She ends up failing at both, leaving Insatiable sour and distasteful, so desperate to push boundaries that it offends everyone and no one at the same time. It’s too inept to generate any real controversy.

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Insatiable debuts August 10 on Netflix.