Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The CEO Club’ On Prime Video, a reality series featuring Serena Williams and other female entrepreneurs
The CEO Club is an eight-episode reality series, with Serena Williams as one of the executive producers, that follows around Williams and six other female entrepreneurs and CEOs: Ridinger, who is CEO of Market America/Shop.com; Thalia, the “Queen of Latin Pop”; Dee Ocleppo Hilfiger, who has her own fashion brand; Winnie Harlow, founder of Cay Skin; Hannah Bronfman, founder of Conteur Capital; and Isabela Rangel Grutman founder and designer of ISA Grutman jewelry and Rangel. Williams herself has been an entrepreneur for decades, even during her legendary tennis career.
THE CEO CLUB: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: As we see Loren Ridinger getting out of a car and on a private jet, we hear her say, “It’s not easy to be a CEO. It’s not easy to be a CEO who’s a woman. But we’re all powerhouses in our own right.”
The Gist: The first episode of The CEO Club concentrates mostly on Williams, Ridinger, Harlow and Grutman. Grutman and Harlow are planning on what to wear to a CFDA event in New York, with Grutman designing a necklace that she’ll wear to the gala.
Harlow, who has the skin condition vitiligo, discusses the difficulty she had in the modeling world early in her career, and the incident that prompted her to create her Cay Skin line, which protects all skin types from sun damage.
Ridinger, thrust into the CEO role when her husband, J.R. Ridinger died suddenly in 2022, is still dealing with the massive loss while trying to prepare for the upcoming Market America convention, a big part of which will be a tribute to J.R.
Williams discusses how her desire to keep pursuing her fashion and beauty businesses after having kids was the main reason why she decided to end her tennis career. She also visits with Ridinger, checking in on how she’s been two years after J.R.’s death.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The CEO Club feels like it belongs in the super-promotional reality category where shows like Being Gordon Ramsay and Beckham sit.
Our Take: We want to like The CEO Club because of its inspirational and aspirational focus. The seven women in the show’s cast are extraordinarily successful and the fact that they’re allowing cameras into their lives, showing how they are effective leaders and entrepreneurs. In many of their cases, they do this while also balancing their parenting and family responsibilities. They’re not trying to demonstrate “having it all,” but they’re showing how they strike a balance they can work with.
If you’re expecting reality series rivalries and back-stabbing, this is not the show for you; these woman build up and encourage each other, and while some of the get-togethers may feel a little bit contrived or set up for the cameras, the discussions are all what you’d see real friends talking about.
Of course, a reality series without conflict needs to find other ways to build drama and interest, and that’s where The CEO Club struggles, at least in the early going. If there isn’t going to be conflict, then the people who are being followed need to open up and give viewers a look into their inner lives.
We see a bit of that from Williams, who shows how pragmatic she is during both her interview segments and the segments with her team as she records a social media video where she applies items from her makeup line. We also see that from Ridinger, openly mourning her husband and admitting that she never envisioned having to run the company by herself.
We’re not sure what we’re going to get from the other five women, three of which we don’t see much of in the first episode. It certainly feels like the show would have been better served with a smaller cast, so we can spend more time with each of them. But for each of them, the stakes of their actions are personally high but really low for viewers, and we’re not sure if the inspirational aspects of how they conduct themselves will be interesting enough over eight episodes.
Performance Worth Watching: Loren Ridinger is the highlight of the first episode, mainly because, two years after her husband’s death, she’s still reeling but knows what she needs to do to keep their vision of Market America going.
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Loren wonders if she can pull off a Market America conference like her husband could.
Sleeper Star: We want to hear more from Winnie Harlow, who is so comfortable in her skin, and the struggle for her to get that way, since she’s had vitiligo since she was a kid.
Most Pilot-y Line: There’s a “shop the show” segment, connecting to Amazon’s shopping site, that definitely makes the show feel more like an infomercial than a reality show.
Our Call: SKIP IT. The CEO Club is definitely inspirational, but it’s also so boring that we don’t think many people are going to stick around long enough to fully absorb its inspirational message.
How To Watch The CEO Club
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
