If you’re looking for something light to binge because you’ve already watched all of Cheer and cried your eyes out or finished Sex Education and are livid at the creators for the ending, then look no further than The Circle. The TV landscape is honestly incredible right now. There are so many great things airing at the moment like personal faves Grownish and The Bold Type, but especially in the reality TV world. The reality space is a popular, if not crowded one, where we can all feel like we’re in on the drama together. Of course, Vanderpump Rules has returned, with a slate of new people, most of whom I’m not super into except for Dayna. All of our usual personalities are back on their bullshit and I’m so happy to be spending time with them again – most typical of all is Kristen using a toxic relationship for attention and Scheana being a stage 5 clinger after one kiss and an Apple watch. Plus, the reality TV mecca show has returned – Peter Weber is our Bachelor, and I must admit he’s one of my favorite Bachelors in a long time. I’m partial to The Bachelorette over The Bachelor, but Peter’s charm has completely won me over and the girls on his season are great so far. Excellent villains and clear front runners. But we’re so familiar with these shows now, for good reason. They’ve been following the same (successful) formula for a long time and most of the good drama in the show revolves around people being horrible to each other. For example, the best drama on the Bachelor right now has been Kelsey calling Hannah Ann a snake and a bitch for accidentally stealing her champagne and having a complete meltdown over it which is now referred to as #ChampagneGate. The Circle is completely different.
The Circle is centered around a rotation of eight people who are only interacting with each other online via a voice-controlled siri-like computer called “The Circle.” Each player is allowed to set up their profiles using two photos, their relationship status, and a quick summary about who they are – the catch is that not everyone is being honest about their true identities. The goal is to be the most popular person in the Circle by the end of the experience with the winner going home with $100,000. Several people come on the show with clear opinions about social media and its place in society so they came to the show with something to prove about how people are portrayed online. Shubham, a 25-year-old from LA with extremely limited interactions with social media, came on the show to prove that all you need to do is be yourself. He explicitly stated how much he hated influencers and how they impact our society by being fake and putting out a distorted image of reality in order to convince other people to like them. His entire MO throughout the show was to create connections with people and be “his authentic self” while expecting the same out of the other players he was making a connection with. Two women on the show, Karyn and Sean, and one man, Alex, came on with the intention of proving how unfairly the world views people who look like them. Karyn is a larger black lesbian woman who catfishes the group as Mercedez, an extremely attractive skinny model. Sean is a plus-sized model who uses her size 0 model friend’s pictures, and Alex is a small nerdy guy who uses a model’s pictures as well. All of them say they’re single even if they’re not to try and use their catfish profile’s attractiveness to flirt with everyone to reel them in and create alliances. This proved unsuccessful for all three of them, and were each voted out, having not been able to create strong enough connections due to their surface level interactions.
The existential question of the show; how we are and how we should be portrayed online, was not my main interest relating to the show. The reason I was pulled into the show was the people who were genuinely themselves throughout the whole show – although I guess that’s my answer to that existential question. My favorites were Sammie, Joey and Shubham. And those were everyone else’s favorites as well. The three quickly formed alliances with each other and while each had other players they connected with, the three of them ran the table pretty much the entire time. Shubham, hater of influencers, was an influencer on the show 4 times – more than any other player. Sammie was an influencer multiple times, as was Joey. The three of them were pretty much never in jeopardy and it was a pleasure to watch their personalities shine. The whole reason I loved this show was watching Joey scream at The Circle every time he sent a message “SEND!!!!!!” or Sammie gag every time someone else tried to flirt with her, or Shubham say something corny and cute whenever he made a deeper connection with someone – primarily Rebecca (or should I say Seaburn).
Rebecca ended up being the only catfish left at the end and she owed that primarily to her alliance with Shubham who continuously protected her even as other people started to realize she wasn’t who she said she was. Rebecca was actually Seaburn and Rebecca was Seaburn’s girlfriend in real life, but Seaburn assumed her identity because he figured people relate with women more online than they do men. A smart tactic, however I think he struggled with being in the mindset of a woman having many slip-ups that I honestly can’t believe no one caught on sooner. In the first episode, he asked the girl group chat if they thought Chris was cute – Chris was very obviously gay and Sammie called him out on that immediately.
After Alana was blocked from the Circle first, she went to visit Sammie and said she thought Rebecca was a catfish. Rebecca also didn’t know the emoji response for “Sex and the City”… an immediate redflag. She had no idea how to contribute to the conversation surrounding the women’s periods saying that her whole left side hurts when she gets her period to which everyone responded that they’ve never heard of that before… By the end, Sammie, Chris, Ed and Adam were suspicious of Rebecca but Rebecca prevailed over Ed and Adam, surviving over them to the show’s finale – again primarily due to her alliance with Shubham and by proxy to Shubham, Joey. This is where I get annoyed at how “genuine” and “nice” everyone on this show was. When Rebecca is finally revealed as the catfish to everyone, no one is mad. They all hug Seaburn and hear him out to why he catfished, accepting that although it wasn’t his picture, it was still his personality. But the thing was – it wasn’t his personality!!! He took on the role of someone else, acting completely unlike himself and playing an extremely over-emotional woman, and not even particularly well. I cannot believe that Shubham, who heralded being genuine and authentic for the entire game wasn’t mad at him. He literally was obsessed with Rebecca saying he knew her heart and how real she was and she wasn’t at all. This is when I started to think wow, social media really is bullshit because all these people are just so used to being fake nice that they can’t actually confront what they were preaching the whole time. I feel as pessimistic as contestant Bill after he got blocked about this. Talking about this show is so meta.
Ultimately, it didn’t matter and Rebecca wasn’t the winner. Taking home the $100,000 was Joey. The lovable Italian mama’s boy played the game extremely well – he had the courage to call people out when necessary, but also made very strong relationships with his fellow Circle members by being his goofy, honest self. Sammie didn’t come away empty-handed, winning a $10,000 prize for being the Fan Favorite. All of The Circle players now have hundreds of thousands of followers on instagram – even Shubham now is on insta with over 150k followers. Way to sell out Shooby! Sammie has the most with over 350k followers.
I think this whole show was really enjoyable. From the goofy games to the cringe flirting (I didn’t even mention Miranda and Joey’s kiss after he blocked her! Joey’s got game.) to the premise being “catfish but genuine” it was a super creative TV show. In a land with zero human contact and where being kind makes you more successful than creating drama, The Circle was a completely fresh concept and show in 2020. I’ll be looking forward to season 2 – hopefully they are just as good at casting.
