Alix Earle's Reality Show Is More Boring Than a Painted Wall

What We're Watching

At the start of her eponymous reality show “Earle Meets World,” the influencer Alix Earle promises that while “there's a whole other side” of the creator economy “people don't get to see,” her viewers are “gonna see everything in this show.” I hope for Earle's sake she isn't telling the truth, because if “Earle Meets World” really does contain the full scope of the TikTok star's jet-setting lifestyle, it's one of strikingly limited range.

Painting by Numbers

“Earle Meets World” is packaged as a family affair in the vein of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” with Earle's “dadager” TJ as the Kris Jenner figure. (Individual Earles will hereby be referred to by their first names to avoid confusion.) But where the Kardashians, for all their shallowness and shameless consumerism, have a certain quotable star quality (“Kim, there's people that are dying!”), the Earles lack a similar spark.

"Alix blew up while still a college student at the University of Miami, and her signature — besides a blonde, blue-eyed beauty — is a bland neutrality that lends itself to endorsing all manner of products. She's not particularly funny, opinionated or inventive; she's just a wealthier and more conventionally attractive version of the average consumer."

That bland neutrality makes Earle a dependable brand ambassador, but also an incredibly boring subject for a reality show. Her everyday life is almost painfully dull to watch — with the few juicy nuggets either overhyped, downplayed or both.

The Family That Keeps on Creating

Content creation is a collective enterprise for the Earles. Alix's younger sister Ashtin has followed her into the influencing game, while their stepmother Ashley came by fame the old-fashioned way: a tabloid scandal, as the call girl once linked to New York governor Eliot Spitzer. But Ashley, too, has taken to social media, and she's hoping her own kids (Alix and Ashtin's half siblings) will do the same.

Some of the queasiest scenes in “Earle Meets World” involve a tweenager filming her own “outfit of the day” videos, her child's voice aping the inflections of her older sisters. There's no time to be a kid or cultivate your own interests when there's clout to be chased.

Interchangeable Backdrops and Interminable Issues

Against an interchangeable backdrop of major cities that each fade into a blur — Paris for Fashion Week; Nashville for a product launch; Coachella for partying — the Earles navigate the intersection of work and home. Ashtin feels TJ doesn't take her career as seriously as her sister's. Alix has to fire the childhood best friend she hired to handle her Snapchat account. Alix is furious at Ashtin for “spoiling” the launch of her skincare line Reale Actives by using an unlabeled bottle in a post about her makeup routine.

These conflicts are too far from the broader human experience to engender much sympathy, yet too petty to take on a sheen of aspirational glamor. Nor are they negotiated with any Housewife-ian flair for drama. The Earles often sound like wooden actors reading from a prefabricated script, possibly because they are; a polite conversation between TJ and his ex-wife's boyfriend about an inappropriate remark proves conflict resolution and compelling TV can be mutually exclusive.

The Most Boring Breakup Story in History

The 25-year-old Alix spends the eight-episode season coping with her first serious breakup after splitting from NFL player Braxton Berrios, whom she dated for nearly three years. In the premiere, she (implausibly) rents a U-Haul to pick up the last of her things from his apartment; in the finale, a cliffhanger that strongly suggests a predetermined Season 2 hinges on a phone call between the former partners.

I wish Earle all the best in navigating this romantic crossroads, but as a master narrative, her endless waffling over whether to text Berrios and unconvincing attempts to play coy over a rumored fling with Tom Brady are stultifying stuff. Even well-intentioned storylines like Alix and Ashtin getting tested for a BRCA mutation after their mother Alisa's brush with breast cancer are more admirable than entertaining.

The Controversy That Never Was

But the most telling flaw in “Earle Meets World” is the show's handling of Alix's only real frisson of controversy: her public rift with “Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper, who signed Alix to her Unwell Network before the business relationship ended last year.

Alix agonizes over whether to publicly share her side of the story, and strongly implies she plans to use “Earle Meets World” as a platform to do so. Yet she never does, saying only that she feels “betrayed” by Cooper as a potential mentor and drafting an allegation-free text branding her onetime partner “toxic.” (Her decision to take the high road and not hit “send” is somewhat negated by reading the message aloud on camera.) Anyone hoping for a real explanation of the feud, rather than vague aspersions and childish mud-slinging, will come away sorely disappointed.

Family Drama Done Wrong

The Earles repeatedly and casually conflate the failed podcast partnership with Alix's 2023 appearance on “Call Her Daddy,” in which she detailed TJ's infidelity, how Ashley's infamy affected her as a child and other bits of dirty laundry. These disclosures apparently reopened some wounds and aggravated tensions in Alix and Ashley's relationship, a development they're far more specific about — and certainly seem more resentful of — than the details of a podcasting contract.

Much of “Earle Meets World” is dedicated to performing a repaired stepmother-stepdaughter relationship, emphasizing how much the pair have moved past the days when Alix was putting toothpaste in Ashley's shoes. “Earle Meets World” wants to fast-forward to the happy ending, even if the path to get there is the real story.

The Anticlimactic Resolution

As depicted in the show, the triumphant resolution to the Earle-Cooper drama is Alix posting a TikTok where she jokingly claims she took a break from social media because she was busy learning to pole dance. The move is anticlimactic, flat and about as fun to watch Alix talk through as it is to hear someone recount a dream; canned music does most of the work to make a glorified GIF seem like savvy crisis PR.

But it's in line with everything else about “Earle Meets World.” If that doesn't sound riveting to you, feel free not to engage. Because if Alix Earle's life is as exciting as her show, I'd rather be watching my own reflection than her reality.