Well that didn’t take long!
If you’ve spent any time at all on the internet recently you’ve probably noticed chatter about Girls — the new HBO show created by and starring 24 year-old Lena Dunham, previously best known for her pretty damn good film Tiny Furniture. It’s a show about…girls…in Brooklyn…living their lives as girls living in Brooklyn and having horrible sex with twatty dudes.
And, as you can perhaps tell by the re-imagined poster for the show above, some people already don’t like the show and find it insufferable. The internet backlash has officially kicked off.
Of all the pissy reviews/recaps I’ve read about Girls so far, John Cook’s has brought the most joy to my life. Here’s an excerpt…
The Drummer from Bad Company’s daughter is staying with David Mamet’s daughter, a comically overbroad character imported (knowingly? ironically?) from another sitcom. She loves Sex and the City (GET IT?) and wears pink Juicy Couture-style outfits. Is her father proud of her?
Everyone’s sentences begin with “OK” or “Yeah, so” or “Yo, hey. Yeah, no.”
Laurie Simmons’ daughter goes to her boss at the publishing house or literary agency and explains that she needs money. He fires her. She goes to meet a guy she sleeps with, a hunky shirtless abusive woodworking actor who hates his parents. He tries to insert his penis into her rectum. She objects. He inserts his penis into her vagina. She talks about how it’s getting dark later. He asks her to stop talking.
Facebook texting Twitter Gchat Gchat Gchat smart phones.
The Drummer from Bad Company’s daughter thinks Laurie Simmons’ daughter should just go back to her parents and explain to them that she is an artist. She fights with Brian Williams’ daughter: “You can’t just mother her like this.” Brian Williams’ daughter and the Drummer from Bad Company’s daughter have a heart to heart while the Drummer from Bad Company’s daughter is on the toilet (shitting?).
Yo hey. Yeah no.
YES OF COURSE THERE’S A FUCKING FEIST SONG.
You can actually watch the pilot ON YOUTUBE. (Pretty forward-thinking there, HBO!) Judge it for yourself.
(Poster via smktty, HT: Whitney Jefferson)
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Why does everyone think this show is so important?
The first episode just wasn’t that good. Shows that rely on NYC as a crutch to be interesting are lame. Makes “How to Make It in America” look like a Peabody Award-winning NYC show.
I guess I don’t read enough. I thought this was just Tiny Furniture: The TV Series and was entertained enough with what I saw.
Also if anyone says anything bad about Allison Williams I will fight them… unless she thinks violence is uncool in which case I will be the bigger man and walk away.
Haven’t seen the episode yet, though it’s DVR’d. But I’ll tell you why there’s a backlash…
Because this is THE AGE OF HYPERBOLE. The internet has ushered in an era where everything is the “best”, “worst”, “greatest”, “stupidest”, “genius”, “most moronic”, etc.
If we aren’t totally in love with something then we must hate it, right?
Few have any self moderation, and too many have absolutely NO sense of perspective. “You said it was awesome and I watched it and it wasn’t awesome, therefore it’s terrible!”
Valid points all I think. (Takes a moment, looks in the mirror, denies he’s part of the problem)
I can only judge the worth of something if it’s placed in a “Top n” list.
Good call.
No, wait… AMAZING call.
Sure. Be rational and thoughtful! I want my pound of flesh.
I believe you will be my write-in next November.
Mrs. HoC and I sat down to watch it…and made it about 15 minutes. That will be the only 15 min of this show I will watch.
I didn’t think it was amazing like a lot of people were saying it was going to be but it was fairly enjoyable. Pilot’s are rarely the best episode of a season so I will give it a couple more episodes.
Also Allison Williams is super hot.
We watched the first episode after this week’s Game of Thrones and I hated it. This show is awful.
Spent the last ten minutes trying to think of things I wouldn’t let Allison Williams do to me and I’m still drawing a blank.
It wasn’t terrible and some of the dialogue was decent. And I usually hate shows that show women complaining that their lives aren’t fabulous. This seems more down to earth. I’ll give it a few episodes.
what no shout out to Bosom Buddy Peter Scolari….actually thought he was dead in a ditch somewhere since Tom Hanks left him behind.
Part of the reason people instinctively root against a show like this is because it is over hyped from the beginning and its success is tied to the future of women in comedy. That’s why I had no interest in “Bridesmaids” and when I finally saw it, after months of reading arguments about whether or no women are funny, all I could conclude was that women are but the film wasn’t. Let the show stand on its merits and there might be less criticism initially (oh but wait, four NYC women interested in sex…probably gonna take some heat with that).
I’m pretty sure that this sites regular commentors are not the target audience of sex in the city, the next generation.
Regardless, I think the “daughter” bit is weak. First, everyone is someone’s daughter, and second, how the fuck is being the daughter of the drummer from bad company, who I guarantee no one could ever name without the use of google, a big advantage to getting an acting gig?
“Oh, and the new character the introduce in episode 2 is the daughter of the former mailman of Aaron Sorkin… I mean c’mon, this is such bullshit!” – the review sounds like its more hormonal than the characters on the show.
Ps. I am positive my girl will discover, love, and have this show on, and I will be forced to face it and hate it vehemently.
I suppose it’s a lot easier to become an actress when you have a big pile of daddy money to fall back on if you fail. People resent that.
The fact that the characters they are playing are being portrayed by HBO marketing as “struggling twenty-somethings” is also an issue since the girls in the show are STILL living a pretty charmed life.
Cast 4 privileged girls to play 4 entitled girls who and you can expat serious backlash.
Agree with AB. Whether the actors who play these characters come from money or from poverty is irrelevant when it comes to talking about the show. John Cook’s commentary comes of as pointless and jealous, dealing with issues outside of the show instead of the content itself. Do the characters ring true? Are these decent actors? How true do you find the portrayal of these characters? If you are someone who REALLY can’t get past the dissonance of a rich person playing a character in a struggling economic situation then I have no idea how you can experience any kind of fiction and enjoy it.
It is better than “Sex and the City”, if for no other reason than it’s not gay men pretending to have vaginas and dedicated to being “outrageous”. I’m not terribly interested in it, partially because Lena Dunham just doesn’t do it for me as a filmmaker, but I can respect why people like/dislike this show.
That said, if Lena Dunham had made “Tiny Furniture” and she’d been a dude, nobody would care. She’s undeniably talented, but she’s not a great director yet.
Laugh of the day!
So a bunch of entitled twenty-somethings from Connecticut are playing lesser entitled twenty-somethings from Brooklyn? Cool poster bro.
I felt the show was 50/50. I thought the beginning was pretty weak, but it ended strong. I thought the scene with the boyfriend was pretty f’ing stupid. The party scene and following hotel scene felt particularly spot on and I’ll give it one more viewing before lighting a torch and sharpening my pitch fork.
Oh, and Brian Williams’ daughter is really attractive.
The show was nothing like that cancerous and manipulative Seth Rogen garbage.
I enjoyed the first viewing well enough, but the idea of watching the encore filled me with a certain… malaise. The characters are all pretty unlikable so far, but they’re kinda funny too, albeit mostly in a smirk-inducing kind of way. However, I seem to recall the jerkass shirtless boyfriend actually made me laugh once or twice.
I think it’s got potential. And I expect it’ll be a big hit; with whom, I’m not so sure.
And that is a bitchy review to end all bitchy reviews, right there.
I think teh problem is (the same problem I had when watching the trailer) is that I don’t give a shit if some spoiled girl gets cut off from her rich parents and fucks an asshole because he is attractive. This whole show can go fuck itself.
“I don’t care about this show at all but I am going to voice my volatile opinion on the show I have nothing but apathy for regardless!”
I love the internetz.
Liked the pilot a lot more than I expected. Watch it with an open mind. Even if you don’t fully identify with the characters, the creators are setting up some nice, believable conflicts. Dunham is fearless and she’s in with people who are only going to make her better. Gotta give her props for that at the very least.
“Fearless?” She remade “Kicking and Screaming”. Talk to me when she actually does something we haven’t seen before.
I’d say Dunham is pretty fearless too. To take on directing, writing, creating, and acting and put the success of a film or show entirely on your shoulders, takes guts, especially in your early 20s. Then to see Dunham, who is not the standard Hollywood body type, put it all on display for the hyper critical mainstream, also shocked and impressed me.
So like, are there lots of boobs, or what?
I’m glad someone asked the only question that matters.
We like shows like Always Sunny and Archer and AD because they’re about horrible people, right? Now, I’m not (NOT) stacking this up against those, but I think we’re definitely not supposed to like these chicks. That being said, I live in Bushwick and deal with people like this every time I step outside (I don’t go outside much), and I get some kind of morbid satisfaction that more than several of my neighbors are going to see these entitled broads as something to aspire to and make me hate them even more. I am a masochist, apparently.
So I’m guessing that Brian William’s daughter is like the “Samantha” of this group, you know, except in real life you’d actually want to sleep with her.
i thought tiny furniture was really bad, and i still watched this. why do i keep doing this to myself? if only carnival cruise would have some sort of masochist-themed vacation
I am disturbed that this is a thing that exists and that is considered entertainment.
I really liked the first episode. Made me laugh and seemed interesting. I can’t think of anything that bothered me about it. But I don’t keep up with who “FEIST” is, and I was born in 1987, so maybe I am the Anti John Cook and we would both evaporate if we were in the same room.
I’m not saying the show is great, or horrible. But I think it’s unfair to make nepotism claims. Lena Dunham probably got the green light because of Tiny Furniture and also she’s not using her famous mother’s last name. Zosia Mamet has been acting for a while doing great work in Mad Men, Kids Are Alright and Greenberg… She might have gotten her start cause of who her dad is, but she’s currently getting work because of her abilities. And if you have to say “Bad Company’s drummer’s daughter” well… It doesn’t really matter because you can’t even type his name
Ahhhh cynics, you shit on everything while contributing nothing. This is a great show.
This is really sad because men have used their connections and family ties to gain notoriety since the beginning of society. Its really sad that this poster throws eggs at people who put out a genuine show. This sort of thinking is also directly correlated with criticisms about the show not being diverse racially, shows about men have failed to feature all the colors of the rainbow forever. I will never understand why when women start to get footing in anything creative they are chopped down by this sad tall flower complex that riddles our lives with mediocrity from creative women afraid of breaching the status quo.