So I guess HBO isn’t totally in the dark about the financial situation of every 20 something in the US. Here’s the first ep they’re streaming for free. I hope it’s as good as the hype!
UPDATE: I loved it!!! Pretty realistic, no matter what Jezebel says. I mean seriously, they can be sooooo annoyingly picky about details:
Girls opens with 24-year-old Hannah (played by Dunham) out for dinner at a fancy restaurant with her parents where she’s hunkering down on a plate of spaghetti like there’s no tomorrow. Later, she eats a cupcake in the bathtub. Maybe, you think, that Hannah was raised in the wild, like Nell, but no. Her parents are professors that just couldn’t be bothered to teach her how to eat at a table.
Who gives a fuck! Has anyone ever met the child of a reverend or minister? They were the biggest party monsters of the high school crowd. Come on, what a weak argument. Maybe they’re trying to be cool in knocking a show down over picky details as “20 somethings are lazy, she’s ungrateful and needs a job” or “her parents are professors and she doesn’t know how to salsa dance? Totally unrealistic.” BLAH. Maybe if the show was unrealistically feminist and bitchy, someone at Jezebel might like it.
What did you think of Girls? I’m totally fangirling on Lena Dunham.
From Dick Montgomery on the Jezebel article: People love to hate millennials. We’re shifting the paradigm and it’s pissing old people off.
“Some of it was versions of things that happened to me and things that happened to my friends. I did once drink a tea made of opium pods,” Dunham said, referencing a plot line in the first episode. “It was the most pathetic attempt at a drug experience that anyone in their early 20s has undertaken.” Lena Dunham rocks and this show is gonna be amazing.
This is just SUCH A GOOD song. And Darren Criss is the least doofy looking person on Glee, so it’s good that he’s the one to cover Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know.” Amazing. My interest is piqued with this one. Way to go, Criss. You’re dramatic, an amazing voice and a cool performance of a killer song.
As I already blogged, I am super excited for HBO’s new series “Girls” starring creative triple threat Lena Dunham. The new Sex and the City except I’m guessing way less fabulous and way more anxiety-ridden “where is my life going” and “why aren’t they paying me for work,” with the same amount of “why didn’t he call me back?”
Image via hbowatch.com
Except, what the fuck 20 something has HBO?! Unless HBO hasn’t caught on yet from the subject of their new show or straight hard facts, 20 somethings don’t have money. They barely have jobs and their own apartments. They especially don’t have money for cable and ESPECIALLY don’t have money for premium channels.
So when it comes to ratings and keeping this hopefully awesome new show afloat, I’m not sure if their 20 something demographic is going to be reached at all. Sure, people are super excited about the show, but they’ll be excitedly streaming it from some Eastern European website since HBO doesn’t stream their episodes either.
I almost feel like it’s going to be a one season wonder, or maybe two, like our fave Party Down. Sometimes it’s better to have a short series because then it doesn’t get drawn out like the shit hole that is The Office, Two and a Half Men, Family Guy, you name it. But still, this series looks awesome. Let’s hope there’s more than one season and that people with money and HBO watch the show!
UPDATE: Maybe all the kids/20 somethings forced to live at home with their HBO-subscribed parents are who HBO is banking on watching. Let’s hope so, because there’s a lot of ’em! Thanks, economy!
Yearnings! O where art thou season 3? I feeleth less regal and less entertained without thine presence.
Here are some pictures of the Downton Abbey cast being normal, modern folk. Damn, they are one good-looing bunch. Guy who plays Matthew needs to take me on a date like, yesterday.
HAWT. Image via alicecloset-sewing.blogspot.com
Awwwww, the DA girls lookin’ all fashionista. I feel like they are MY sisters. And I NEED them back on PBS. September folks, September. We’ll just have to tide ourselves over with Downton Abbey paper dolls and internet pictures of one cousin Matthew Crawley. YUM.
This shit is gonna by SO FLY. Mid-20s, poor and fabulous. Ring a bell?! Lena Dunham is the chick who wrote, directed and starred in Tiny Furniture, which is basically the same premise of Girls, as it covers the same topics (20 something strife and living in New York City) and a couple of the same characters.
What I love about Lena is that she looks like a regular gal pal that you’d get drinks with, that would turn into being wasted on like, a Tuesday. But you’d have some really great conversations with even though you’re both kind of lost and confused about life. It feels a little bitchy to say she looks like a “regular gal,” but it shouldn’t. I just mean that she does not look starving nor perfectly formed from a surgeon’s table. So many tv shows and movies just feature gorgeous human beings who are so unbelievably not human in their roles. J.Lo, anyone?! It’s refreshing and infinitely more interesting to watch people, as opposed to “stars” tell us stories. Nobody relates to J.Lo. People can relate to Lena.
As a 20 something gal, I’m super excited about this show. After all, it’s always fun to watch something that is frighteningly relatable to your current life situation. Dating, unpaid internships, never having any money, growing out of friendships and making new ones, etc.
Watch Judd Apatow interview Lena here. She describes the show as that time when you’re not a girl, but not yet a woman. And yeah, she name drops Britney. LOVE IT.
Also, jealz!!! I, along with EVERY 20 something of our generation, wants to be on this show. I hope they come out with contests and shit. Or if the show goes on for a couple seasons, we’ll have to make a pilgrimage to NYC to be an extra on the show.
Saved by the Bell has recently become available on Netflix instant. From all the mornings before school watching this show, I thought I’d give it another chance as a learned adult. Here are a couple of thoughts concerning early 90s programming gold.
Cuz I’m saved by the be-e-elllllllll
I love that in the first episode of season 3, titled “The Prom,” that Kelly’s hard-hitting decision of the day is to choose who she wants to go to prom with. Problem is, Zach AND Slater both want to take Kelly to prom. God, to be in 1990 again.
Yeah, because it’s what all the cool kids do, DUH. Image via loldrugs.com
Also, many of the episodes are not even trying to hide the fact that they have a political/social agenda. For example, during the same episode, Kelly’s father gets laid off from a job at a defense company due to “growing world peace.” PUKE!!! The next episode in season 3 also mentions growing world peace during an ROTC visit to the school, that ends with a wary Zach deciding the Army is like, totally cool. Yikesssssss. Talk about some war propaganda during breakfast. I’d hate to live in a world where ‘growing world peace’ is seen as a bad thing. I guess the threat of nuclear war and a corporate 1% dystopia (yo what up Hunger Games!) is a sunnier world than people worried about the reality of world peace. YUCK.
DAYUM GURL! This is some straight up early 90s softcore porn. Image via popstar.com
The kids also tell us on numerous occasions to “not smoke dope.” I mean, it’s annoying, but do you remember high school? It was chock full of “abortion kills” bumper stickers, pledges to not drink alcohol until 21 and threats that weed would murder your soul and your family, instead of just make you hungry and giggly. Then you got to college and smoked the first thing someone handed to you, and realized that high school was a tiny bubble of fascists just trying to fit in. Awwwww.
The SBTB kids listen to tapes, fight over Paula Abdul vs. Janet Jackson, and can actually afford snacks at the movies. Jerks!
There’s also a lot of diversity that isn’t stereotypical. Lisa is a fashionista black girl and Slater is a iron-pumping latino who both don’t fall into the all too often played racial or cultural stereotypes. Granted, I haven’t seen every episode of this show. But it does suck to notice that 2 decades later dumbass stereotypes haven’t been erased. Somehow, I blame Dick Cheney.
The role of Mr. Belding is also interesting to watch. After a Bush decade of education budget cuts, a terrible generation of children and general educative tomfoolery, I could NEVER see a principal act the way he does with students as Mr. Belding did. Granted, it was a TV show. But any principal on TV nowadays would probably be some portrayed as a huge asshole who’s fucking some “slut” teenager for drug money. So bleak. I wish we were bored with world peace again. In the 90s, Zach offers to wash Belding’s car to get out of detention. In this day and age, students’ parents would sue Mr. Belding for ‘abuse.’ God I hate people.
On a lighter note and shying away from apparent societal (tv) decay, the fashion is AMAZING. I want Kelly and Lisa’s wardrobe, and Jessie’s for when I wanna workout/lounge around. Screech has some pretty amazing outfits too.
Jessie is a staunch feminist. And it is fucking AWESOME.
Dream couple of the early 90s. Zach is pretty awesome though. Maybe the best while male teenaged character of all-time. Big heart, quick made-for-squeeky-clean-tv vernacular. Brilz. Image via popstar.com
All in all, I’d say put it on in the background at parties, or in the background of an afternoon on the internet. In terms of observing American television from the late 80s/early 90s, it is a fascinating look into what the world on television was like when we were babies.
2PF 