The point of the satire seems to be that these competitive reality shows are obviously highly engineered. The problem is, that point is so obvious that it's hard to be terribly interested in such an easy target, presented in such an easy fashion.
Chart Top is bloated with a variety of other subplots and contestants, who all fall into Calvin's categories of "Mingers, Clingers, and Blingers," and good lord do the characters ever repeat that phrase as if it were hilarious, every single time.
The contestants represent all the range of ego, delusion, anorexia, pathos, and questionable talent that you'd expect from the average reality show. The Prince of Wales is one of them, a pawn in a bet between Calvin and his soon-to-be-ex-wife to see if he can truly manipulate the audience into choosing his preferred winner.
The Prince is presumably a caricature of the current holder of that title, but while I'm no Brit, and no royal watcher, the portrait didn't resonate at all. Chart Throb's royal is a goofy, eager-to-please idealist devoid of any wit and intelligence who calls himself "muggins." If that's how Charles appears in the UK press, I'd join those wanting to vote to overthrow the monarchy.
Bloated and ultimately meaningless, Chart Throb is on par with the kind of entertainment it's attempting to skewer, and I mean that as something of a recommendation. Even at over 400 pages, it's a light read, irritating but not completely unenjoyable, completely obvious in its intentions and execution, with just enough and humour to keep me reading to the end. It wouldn't make it into my top 10 summer reads of the season, but it was worth an audition.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net , which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States, and to Boston.com. Nice work!