Dietland is an American dark comedy/drama television series, adapted from Sarai Walker's novel of the same name airing on AMC. It follows Alicia "Plum" Walker, a ghost writer for her employers advice column in a women's fashion magazine. Weighing at 300 pounds, she struggles to lose pounds and tries to earn money for gastric bypass surgery by completing the New Baptist Plan, a series of assignments formulated by the daughter of Verena Baptiste (Robin Weigert), a Jenny Craig-like weight loss entrepreneur who runs a women's shelter/art collective. All this to the backdrop of a series of murders and kidnappings committed by a militant feminist group by the name of Jennifer.
Unfortunately, AMC announced its cancellation on September 20th, 2018 due to budgetary issues. AMC did however make note that they were impressed by the glowing reviews Dietland earned.
Tropes
- Abhorrent Admirer: Plum is not a big fan of chubby chasers, one blind date in particular turns out to be really creepy.
- Adaptational Expansion: On the book. The roles of Kitty and Dominic are, in particular, expanded.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: The show offers a more mature and likable version of Plum than the book.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Janice, the woman who walks out on the Waist Watchers meeting in the first episode, complains that she gets more "hot dick" than she can handle.
- Corrupting Pornography: Feminist group Jennifer believes that all forms of pornography — especially Internet pornography but also "lighter" soft porn found in tabloids — to be corrupting. Jennifer proves their point by killing a porn star (their first female victim) and showing that the viewers' way of saying "goodbye" to her was to watch the most violent and degrading pornography she'd starred in.
- Disposable Sex Worker: Jennifer's first female victim is a porn star.
- Distaff Counterpart: Frequently described as Fight Club meets Margaret Atwood or The Devil Wears Prada. Two of the main characters are seen wearing Fight Club t-shirts and Sarai Walker has acknowledged Fight Club as an influence.
- Fast-Food Nation: The show's title can be interpreted as a variation of this trope. Plum wants to lose weight and become thin, but she is surrounded by fast food joints and restaurants everywhere.
- Gender Reveal: Subverted twice. One of the residents of Calliope house is transgender, this is mentioned in an offhand way in her first scene and is not made any big deal of. Later on the show Julia is seen in her room at the house talking to Plum as she drops her affected falsetto she removes her makeup, wig, and finally breasts to reveal...an ordinary looking and sounding woman who happens to be a cancer survivor.
- Good Capitalism, Evil Capitalism: Verena Baptiste inherited her money from the New Baptist Plan, her parents' predatory weight loss empire that preyed on misery and insecurity (evil capitalism). She then tries to become a force of good capitalism by creating Calliope House, which allows her to undo some of the damage done by the Plan by trying to empower other women.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: Though some are clearly better or worse people than others almost none of the characters or groups in the story come off spotless and there are plenty a Hazy-Feel Turn along the way.
- Hapless Self-Help: Plum and her mother (like millions of other girls and women) were believers in the Baptist Plan, a Weightwatchers/Jenny Craig hybrid diet plan that taught them weight loss and being thin were the solutions to all their problems. As a result, Plum is very depressed and has very low self-esteem in present day, as she's never managed to lose weight. When she runs into the Baptist Plan's heiress daughter Verena, Verena tells her the truth: her mother lost weight once through the Baptist Plan but soon gained weight again. Her father was initially opposed to her losing weight, as he loved her Just the Way You Are. However, with their newfound millions from the Baptist Plan on the line, he forced her to get a gastric band. The surgery went wrong and left her incontinent for the rest of her life.
- Mushroom Samba: Inverted. When Plum gives up Y cold turkey she goes into withdrawals and hallucinates that a tiger from a nature documentary on her TV has teleported into her apartment, speaks fluent English, and looks and sounds suspiciously like Dominic.
- Power Dynamics Kink: Implied with Kitty. She threatens to fire Dominic, then offers that he can stay if he kisses her foot. He's about to do it when she tells him she just wanted to see if he would.
- Roger Rabbit Effect: We sometimes see Plum's thoughts or self image represented a cartoon characters
- Satellite Love Interest: Ben seems to take a liking to Plum, to which she is largely oblivious or indifferent. Beyond that we know little about him.
- Sexual Extortion: Kitty almost makes Dominic kiss her feet to keep his job as her private investigator, but then really just wants to see if he'd do it
- Slap-Slap-Kiss: Kitty and the owner of her magazine once had this kind of relationship but its since fizzled both as a romance and a rivalry
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse: More than one character suggests that conventional beauty is a mixed blessing at best.
- Straight Gay: Both Dominic and Plum remark that Steven doesn't read as gay.
- Straw Feminist: Jennifer's manifesto contains demands such as women salaries being raised to 133% of that of men and only female presidential candidates for the next fifty years.
- Town Girls: The three main organizations on the show form a sort of town girl triad. Daisy Chain magazine is femme, Jennifer is butch, and Calliope House is neither.
- Weight Woe: Plum is the ultimate example, falling into deep depression and refusing to leave.
- Writing Around Trademarks: Plum take a prescription drug called Y,goes to waist watchers meetings and eats Eulayla Baptist's Baptist Plan meals.
