SPOILER ALERT
If you haven’t seen the finale yet, you should do that now, before you get into our review because ‘SPOILERS’.
You been warned.
‘You accept the quality you think you deserve’
People, it’s 2016. I shouldn’t have to suffer through a shoddily written and acted script, especially when the technical work is flaw-free. The finale of Skinny Girl In Transit is so utterly underwhelming that I’m not going to bother with a blow-by-blow review. You people deserve better than that. Instead, I’m going to ask a few questions of Ndani TV’s cast and crew (like we did with Rumour Has It).
But first, a spoiler reel.
After Mide asks Tiwa out and she turns him down, she talks it over with Shalewa. Shalewa for the second time in the entire show gives some really good advice about Tiwa finding herself before she starts looking at men. This is advice that Shalewa obviously doesn’t apply to her own life because we find that she is still seeing Maxwell behind everyone’s back in the most cliche Nollywood way; Maxwell’s livid, pregnant (nice try writers) wife shows up in their house with a babalawo).
Hadiza and Tiwa have one last pointless queen bee showdown that ends in a draw. Tiwa gets home and has to bathe with some ‘holy’ water blessed by the cele pastor from episode 9.
After exercising with her mother the next morning, Tiwa does her evening show and basically reads a grocery list on all the things Mide has done for her and even adds in a Freudian slip. She finishes her show early, goes to look for Mide and finds him locking lips with his posh-ex who has problems pronouncing words properly. She heads home, they waste a few minutes and round out the season with a king sunny Ade song.
This is why Season two of Skinny Girl in Transit (and it’s shit Finale) is so messy.
Hadiza
Ini Dima-Okojie is so bad an actress, she’d botch a role that required her to sit in a chair and do nothing. But the character Hadiza is top ten one of the worst works of fiction I have ever seen. It’s so bad I get constipated seeing her on screen.
All The Abandoned Sub Plots
Kola
So the first three episodes of Season 2 put Kola firmly front and centre in the scheme of things. After coming to fight Femi at Tiwa’s house and foreshadowing her for the first three episodes of season 2, they literally drop him from the roster with no further mention. Is it that he suddenly isn’t in love with her anymore or what?
Femi
The way they did Femi wrong in this season of Skinny Girl in transit is even worse than how Kola was treated. Femi catches Tiwa creeping behind his back with Kola and she lies about it to his face, which is honestly grounds to question your relationship. After she shows up in his house and jumps to conclusions because another woman is there. And that’s the last we hear of Femi.
First off, we have no idea who the other woman was, other than a prop to help instigate the break up). And for someone who was in love with Femi, Tiwa got over him awfully fast. Surprisingly fast. Even Mama Shalewa never asks of him after the break up and that atrocious Tiwa 3.0 episode. What gives?
The Curious Case of Didi’s Private Life
After 8 episodes of having Didiquisha, Tiwa’s wing woman and army of one spout one-liners and act the human bulldog for Tiwa in her spats with walking Queen bee stereotype Hadiza. In Episode 8 and 9, they slam us with twofer; Didi suddenly has a promotion and a new relationship with a ‘Stanley’.
And then they write the final episode with even bothering to do us the courtesy of either expanding her story line properly with a back story, or tying up her story arc in a neat little bow.
Why don’t these Ndani writers even have the smallest smidge of respect for their viewers. We might seem stupid because we keep watching this atrociously written show, but this is getting ridiculous.
The Casting Of Mrs Peterside
Now if Dami Elebe was a stellar actress, like a Meryl Streep, or even a Mercy Johnson, or had a long standing career as an actress; I’d understand her being cast to play Mrs. Peterside, a supporting role and much needed role that was written specifically for a plus-size actress. But this is literally Elebe’s first role.
What is worse, is that it is a role written for a plus-size actress, and when you factor in how few meaty roles there are for young, plus-size actresses, and that the show is supposed to revolve around a plus-size woman making her way in a world that tries very hard to demean her, you’d think a role of this magnitude would be offered to actual actresses looking for their break.
But NOPE! They just had to cast the writer in their own, not very good show.
Ageism, Fat Shaming And All The Other Causes That Were Forgotten Till The Season Finale
In the closing monologue of the finale Tiwa tells us she’s lost weight, and is happy even though she is about to turn 30. Tiwa only exercised twice this entire season and hasn’t mentioned her weight till that moment.
The title of this show ‘Skinny Girl in Transit’. It’s a play on the skinny girl in a fat girl’s body idiom, a quip on how body size can skew and influence how a person is perceived. And Tiwa being in the public eye provides a million opportunities to stir up discussion on how women are harassed for their physical appearances and their age, or just even highlight in an informed way, their personal struggles, or at least one woman’s.
What we get is a rotisserie of hot, vapid men, a Tiwa that spends her time alternating between pining for men, or putting down other women. What is the point of being an enlightened show if there’s no proof in your pudding?
The skinny dumb girl vs smart fat girl trope
All through the season, #SGIT went to great lengths to show us there are two kinds of women, extremely beautiful women with faulty motor skills and enough brain cells to boil water and chase after unavailable men. Then there are squat pudgy women with genius level I.Q’s and intellect that makes men look past their weight and general unattractiveness. And these two kinds of women are locked in eternal conflict.
This is incredibly stupid, and the fact that a show written by women perpetuates this stupid misconception kills me. I just cant…
It’s a man’s world.
James Brown might have said it tongue-in-cheek, but the writers at Skinny Girl In Transit take this quote quite seriously. How else do you explain the fact that literally every scene and conversation that happened the entire season (nearly 5 hours of acting/writing) ended up being about a man.
How do you write ten episodes of a show with three female main characters of different ages, and end up making it all about three transient male characters? It boggles the mind.
I should say this: In some ways, Skinny Girl in Transit is ground breaking. Its one of the first digital platform comedies to which real money has been invested and the cinematography and sound work gives me orgasms (most of the time).
But it is also a horribly written show and with all the creative talent that exists out there in 2016, I shouldn’t have to suffer through mediocre writing that borrows from the Nollywood of juju men and cele priests to save its finale, after shunning it all season. We all deserve better than that.
Semira Bello is lacking in conscience and lives her life on Youtube. When she isn’t watching Iroko TV, she is writing ‘serious’ articles about fashion and pretending to apply make up
Comments
Mrs Peterside called her husband Daniel, and they later called him Maxwell. I was so confused.