Fonzworth (center) and the cast

My fair gangsta

MTV's "From G's to Gents" pits thugs against one another to see who can become the most refined. But what does it take to be a gentleman, anyway?

By James Hannaham

Read more: MTV, Arts & Entertainment, Reality TV, Arts & Entertainment TV Features, James Hannaham

Aug. 4, 2008 | Today's kids can have everything they want, but first they need to learn some manners, if we're to take the message of a new crop of reality shows to heart. Even as Donald Trump's company prepares a "Pygmalion"-style makeover show for the ladies, MTV is airing "From G's to Gents," a stirring reality TV competition that pits 14 street toughs in a furious, angry, man-to-man battle to become ... genteel?

The show may or may not have taken its inspiration from the British program "Ladette to Lady," but the two series play against each other in peculiar ways. "Ladette" tossed crass, tarty, mainly white working-class women with a penchant for belching, cursing and flashing their boobs into haughty finishing schools, complete with crabby English schoolmarm types who tried to "Simon Cowell" the female hooligans until they came over all polite. The first season culminated in a fashion show, during which the ladettes attempted to pass for aristocracy among actual landed gentry, including a few posh bachelors who might accidentally marry them -- or so the presumption went.

"From G's to Gents" is the inverse image of "Ladette to Lady" in many ways: First of all, the backdrop is Los Angeles (not known as a city of manners) rather than the English countryside. Instead of Caucasians, "Gents" focuses on a rowdy group of multiethnic men, theoretically from disadvantaged backgrounds, all known by hip-hop handles like "Creepa," "D-Boy," and "The Truth." Assuming that good behavior is its own reward, the makers of "Ladette" didn't offer material prizes at first; instead they waited to surprise their first winner, Hayley Brisland, with a sports car. "Gents" never lets us forget the golden carrot of 100 G's hanging over these young guys' heads. They'd find marriage more of a threat than an incentive, and somehow sex never comes up in a serious way, either.

Because we often pretend that we can easily transcend class on this side of the big drink, the show has a far more nebulous concept of what an urban American dude needs to know to transform himself into a "gentleman." "Ladette" had it easier, falling rapturously into all the "My Fair Lady" clichés, unselfconsciously forcing the girls into cooking and sewing classes, giving them rigorous training in elocution and making them learn to walk with books on their heads, as if feminism never happened.

"From G's to Gents" shies away from using similar American archetypes as models for manhood, though. Perhaps the dandy's too effete, the old boy of the Ivy League too elitist and the Southern gentleman too problematic for angry men of color. With no real standard to shoot for, the question hangs in the air the whole time: What the hell is a gentleman, anyway? And what self-respecting G would aspire to his elusive standards? Instead, the show attempts to instill a cartoon version of refinement in the guys, picking and choosing from a variety of sources -- betting that neither the contestants nor the MTV audience will know the difference.

Nor could reconstituted sophistication find a better icon than the show's host, Fonzworth Bentley, former stylist to Kanye and P. Diddy's one-time "valet and personal assistant." Bentley began life in Atlanta as Derek Watkins -- a name that apparently didn't sound posh enough. Switching as he does between Cosby-ish sweaters and pastel-and-cream haberdashery, you can hardly blame the etiquette-school grad, author of "Advance Your Swagger" and penguin enthusiast for overprojecting ghetto fabulousness, having gained so much from it.

The show, interestingly, mixes bling attitude with a preppy premise -- think Tommy Hilfiger circa 1996. Everyone in the house supposedly belongs to "The Gentlemen's Club," headed by Bentley, for which they have been given a dark blazer with an embroidered crest, to be worn at all meetings. The show eliminates G's every week with challenges designed to test "leadership ability" and "sportsmanship," and augments these tasks with regular meetings with Bentley that swerve across the line between getting a scolding from the headmaster and meeting Dr. Phil. Each G also gets a wooden box with his name printed below it, and at elimination time, the group lobbies to vote individual members out of the house by dropping a "black ball" into the corresponding box (a symbol so loaded that no one dares to go there). Bentley makes the final decision about whether to cut a guy from the show, pumping up the show's lopsided subjectivity.

Even though the G's themselves don't spend much time or energy obsessing over the prize money, the desire for substance, experience or real education isn't kindling their authentic desire for transformation either. For "Shotta," who lived in his car before the show began taping, 100K would be gravy compared with sleeping in the same bed for a few consecutive nights. What drives these unsocialized macho men is a heartbreaking, pathetic need to imitate and impress Bentley, whose authority they never question, despite his wimpiness.

The guys' eagerness to look on Bentley as a father figure raises the stakes in a way that produces some of the show's most genuinely affecting moments and makes it easier to stomach the requisite high percentage of sheer exploitation and ridicule. The tenderness at the core of the project helps humanize these thugs -- the ones who need it most are desperate, committed to changing and painfully earnest about the show's ability to get them there. Somewhere. Anywhere.

Next page: Can the G's be macho without being violent?