Honestly, not much.
Actually, maybe what we really learned are life lessons, and Lara’s role was to help us to recognise them:
- Always get changed with the blinds closed in your Bondi penthouse apartment.
- Involving your brother in your reality show is never going to end well.
- Always – ALWAYS – open your bills, especially the ones from the RTA.
- Make friends with call centre workers. You never know when you’ll travel to India to meet them.
- That girl you sit next to on your next flight? She could totally be your manager if you let her. DON’T!
- Your Nan is awesome. Period.
- Have something prepared for when your ex who is the Captain of the Australian Cricket team gets secretly married.
- It’s important to have something to fall back on when your tilt at reality stardom doesn’t work out. Like more modelling.
- Once you’ve found love, it’s really important to force all those around you into relationships too.
- There’s always something more interesting to watch on TV… if only you could find the remote.
Come to think of it, maybe we did actually learn some stuff.
The most frustrating thing with Being Lara Bingle was that it broke the cardinal rule of celebrity reality television: As much as you manufacture things, it has to look as natural and ‘normal life’ as possible. Too much of the series looked and felt like “oh, here’s something else that’s been manufactured to make Lara do something interesting”. When you film someone’s life that closely, it has to be somewhat aspirational (even if it isn’t a life you’d aspire to). There’s a sense of privilege that is core to a celebrity reality show and BLB lacked far too much of it – and when it did have it, you questioned why Lara was even involved.
Ultimately what we learned is that Being Lara Bingle isn’t that hard… and we didn’t need a 30 minute x 10 part TV series to work that out.