Stabile has built a cottage industry on personal empowerment (he has 350,000 Facebook followers alone) but it's never about those
treacly, saccharine "just stay positive" admonitions other gurus offer.
This sun-kissed sentimental soap opera is directed in typically
treacly style by Lasse Hallstrom, who last made a soppy meal of Helen Mirren's The Hundred Foot Journey.
It is perhaps no surprise that her unabashedly
treacly confections baffled many 1980s viewers, even as Auste herself secured her place in New York's downtown nightlife scene.
The hook here is that one of its characters is disabled, but the show gleefully avoids being
treacly or sentimental.
Not only are they suffused with the
treacly bouquet of kids whose safety net allowed them to try on hardship as a fashion statement, but they make some staggeringly irresponsible choices.
One example is "Her Mercy," which relies on a cliched gospel choir arrangement that feels less inspiring than
treacly.
The salty,
treacly topping for this cake is in no way stationary.
What starts out as an explosion of
treacly fruit dries down into vanilla cake with mango frosting.
"What a
treacly, stomach-turning waste of everybody's time," she concludes at one point.
But it's even more thick,
treacly and malty - with quite a kick, unsurprisingly.
Accordingly,
treacly guitar clings to Dead In El Paso, a slice of funk informs Kiss My Scars and both Gunshot Lullaby and One Last Slow Dance recall Jimi's Little Angel.
The show's appeal was limited pretty exclusively to the 3-to-5-year-old set, leaving millions of parents to endure painful hours of the
treacly host and his spun-sugar world.