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Imagine a Blond Sugar-Free World With No Black People In It
Welcome to Plathville, population 11.
If I were a white person suffering from Black Lives Matter fatigue, there probably would be no better streaming comfort food right now than Welcome to Plathville. I just finished watching the entire series over two nights, and it might be the whitest thing I’ve seen on TV in my life — or at least since I caught a few bits and pieces of Tiger King on Netflix earlier this year. #WhiteAF would be an equally fitting title.
The seven-episode TLC series celebrates the specific brand of whiteness I’ve come to associate with phony, holier-than-thou conservatives — but viewed through the prism of recent national events, I wonder if it’s actually meant to be making fun of it. The Plaths are blindingly white and blond without an ounce of soul. As I made my way through the first season (belatedly, since it premiered in 2019), I gasped, I laughed, and I cringed. And guess what: I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
I’m not sure whether it was the trainwreck factor or all of that impossible blondeness — the Plath sons, in particular, sport a white hair hue I never dreamed was achievable without the help of a bottle — but I found the show strangely fascinating. In fact, I even related to some of it. As someone who grew up in an ultra-religious family…
