AMC’s ‘Dietland’ #Time’s Up era terrorism

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Marti Noxon's latest drama (adapted from Sarai Walker's best-selling novel) comes to AMC, tackling fat acceptance and feminist vengeance.
AMC's Dietland would still be culturally notable if it were merely a timely and trenchant drama about fat acceptance. Adapted from Sarai Walker's best-selling novel by creator Marti Noxon, the series follows Plum Kettle (played by Joy Nash), an advice columnist ruled “morbidly obese” who plans on becoming the woman she always wanted to be via gastric bypass surgery. Then, like a fairy-tale protagonist, she's chosen by a magical godmother of sorts to fulfill her real destiny. Plum's fate isn't to look like a Disney princess, but to help all women feel like one — through whatever means necessary.

Dietland is a riveting whirligig of a show: a tale of self-discovery, a manifesto about sizeism, a screed against consumer capitalism and a mystery about a radical feminist terrorist cell that uses vigilante violence to punish rapists, pedophiles and…magazine editors. The anger it evinces against misogyny in the first two episodes is raw, searing and justified, but also a tad unfocused. It's still unclear whether the terrorists throwing bad men off planes and buildings seem kinda goofy because they were written to be that way, or because sympathetic villains are hard to write.

The two strands of Dietland — Plum's journey toward self-acceptance and the payback murders in the background — don't quite seem like they belong on the same show, and thus make for an intriguing package.