The Los Angeles suburb of Calabasas — tucked into the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains on the San Fernando Valley’s far western edge — is, in many ways, ground zero for reality TV as we know it. This is the home of the Kardashians, the genre’s first family, whose rise to fame familiarized the world with the small city’s cavernous McMansions and upscale strip malls. The producers of the new Netflix series “Calabasas Confidential” are betting there’s still some ore left in this gold mine, and have assembled a small army of 20somethings in the hopes at least one of them will turn out to be the next Kylie or Kim. Based on the first season’s eight episodes, such a vertiginous ascent seems unlikely. Then again, so did that of the stars’ obvious role models.
The ostensible premise of “Calabasas Confidential” is that a group of young adults have returned to their hometown after dispersing for college, reigniting old flames and resentments. But the fatal flaw of this setup is its plausibility: unlike a nuclear family or a workplace, the stars in the constellation of “Calabasas Confidential” don’t feel organically bound together. Perhaps the cast will, given enough time to bond on and off camera, start feeling like people who voluntarily interact and form genuine relationships. Until then, there’s a forced atmosphere to every group hang and date, with an ensemble so large that famous relatives and sprawling floor plans have to substitute for a center of gravity.
