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ThatCguy posted:Seconding this. It was a well done, very organic and spot on portrayal of what is probably the most insufferable and unlikeable demographic out there currently, the mid 20's unemployed, over-entitled, neurotic "gen y" white kid. It nailed the "I have huge plans, tons of confidence, and know I'm special, yet haven't done anything and bring absolutly nothing to the table" mentality. I feel the exact same way, especially living in brooklyn and trying to make it without any parental support, while I have friends that are getting tons of cash from their parents and feel the need talk about how they aren't getting paid enough at work and complain about everything, while they are getting everything for free. I see that enough in real life. edit - new page, so more discussion. The only thing that struck a weird cord with me was Hannah and her friend (names?) taking a bath together. That seemed a bit forced compared to the rest. Can any girls on here verify this is a common thing that you like to do? bows1 fucked around with this message at Apr 16, 2012 around 16:23 |
| # ? Apr 16, 2012 16:18 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 07:03 |
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Nope. The bathing together thing is pretty weird. Watching it right now. Mostly see White People Problems. Also, I'm personally really tired of NYC as a setting. Are all the characters supposed to be so annoying?
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| # ? Apr 16, 2012 16:53 |
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I really enjoyed this episode. The sex scene on the couch is one of the most honest portrayals of sex I've ever seen on film.
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| # ? Apr 16, 2012 16:59 |
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Atma McCuddles posted:Watching it right now. Mostly see White People Problems. I think it's safe to assume that the show is going address this in Hannah's character arc. I do wish this were set in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan, though. Bored To Death used Brooklyn wonderfully and I could see that serving well here. Agreed with the sex scene, that was pretty great and wonderfully honest. Seemed slightly strange that Dunham had two nude scenes (post-sex and shared-shower) which were awkwardly framed in order to not show nudity - HBO loves any time they can get boobs on screen. I guess you have that luxury when you create the show yourself.
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| # ? Apr 16, 2012 17:09 |
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I saw Allison Williams on Letterman recently and she was just as good a guest as her father (NBC Newsman Brian), which is quite an accomplishment seeing as how I'd never seen her in anything else before and he's pretty consistently awesome on every show he's on. That alone made me want to watch this. I'll have to catch the first episode and see how it was.
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| # ? Apr 16, 2012 20:24 |
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feedmyleg posted:I think it's safe to assume that the show is going address this in Hannah's character arc. I've read that she gets naked a lot. In fact, critics love to mention that fact she gets naked and doesn't have a perfect body. Also, Apparently Hannah and her roommate live in Greenpoint, but that didn't look like Greenpoint to me. Maybe some of the streets between Manhattan Ave and Franklin, but most of Greenpoint doesn't look like that.
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| # ? Apr 16, 2012 20:37 |
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bows1 posted:I've read that she gets naked a lot. In fact, critics love to mention that fact she gets naked and doesn't have a perfect body. I briefly thought that it looked a bit like a few areas in Redhook, but maybe just seeing Hannah come out of her parents' hotel threw me and I assumed it was one of the more brownstone-centric areas of Manhattan. It definitely didn't read like any of the areas of Brooklyn where I know people in her similar financial situation.
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| # ? Apr 16, 2012 20:45 |
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feedmyleg posted:I briefly thought that it looked a bit like a few areas in Redhook, but maybe just seeing Hannah come out of her parents' hotel threw me and I assumed it was one of the more brownstone-centric areas of Manhattan. It definitely didn't read like any of the areas of Brooklyn where I know people in her similar financial situation. Well up until the first episode they had a cushy place supplied by their parents. Which isn't like the places she would be living now. Like she said, she has 3 days left that she can afford haha
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| # ? Apr 16, 2012 20:54 |
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I appreciate the aesthetic of the show more than I actually like the show. The sex scene in particular stood out for how real it felt. The show also does a great job in terms of wardrobe and how it shoots New York. Still, I'm not really sold on it. I'm okay with Hannah being a bit spoiled, but I was disappointed to find that it seems all the characters are in the same boat. As a twenty-four year-old living in New York, I work all the time. My friends definitely have fun, but we do it despite the fact that we're constantly tired and overworked. I know that it's not necessarily a fair criticism, but I do find it annoying. Instead of having an accurate representation of what it's like to be my age, I felt like I was seeing how people who rage against the Occupy Movement imagine my generation to be. I really don't like how the show's secondary characters feel more like characters than types. The Sex and the City obsessed cousin, the lame boyfriend, the douchey dinner guest, his overly eager girlfriend. They didn't seem like real characters. The disdain or negligence that the main girls showed only made the core cast even more unlikable. Oh well.
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| # ? Apr 16, 2012 22:16 |
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I thought this was fantastic and I'm hoping to catch an encore.
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| # ? Apr 16, 2012 22:39 |
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bows1 posted:I feel the exact same way, especially living in brooklyn and trying to make it without any parental support, while I have friends that are getting tons of cash from their parents and feel the need talk about how they aren't getting paid enough at work and complain about everything, while they are getting everything for free. Yeah, as a 20-something female living in NYC, I found a lot of the characters to be hilariously insufferable. Girls hits all those types pitch-perfectly. I'm not sure I could stand to watch this every week - I try to avoid girls like this in real life, why watch them interact for 30 minutes a week? - but the writing was pretty solid and the situations, amusing. Nothing to write home about, but definitely enjoyable.
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| # ? Apr 16, 2012 23:07 |
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futurememory posted:Yeah, as a 20-something female living in NYC, I found a lot of the characters to be hilariously insufferable. Girls hits all those types pitch-perfectly. I'm not sure I could stand to watch this every week - I try to avoid girls like this in real life, why watch them interact for 30 minutes a week? - but the writing was pretty solid and the situations, amusing. Nothing to write home about, but definitely enjoyable. Hopefully its just the pilot, and the characters become more likable or something. I'll keep watching for a while to see where it goes.
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| # ? Apr 16, 2012 23:23 |
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Lovely, which is a weird thing to use for a show like this. The strongest pilot since Friday Night Lights. I really liked all the characters (with the possible exception of the British expat), it laid down its gauntlet regarding its form, theme, and general thrust of the show, and it made me laugh. Maybe not as much as a show as Happy Endings (whose pilot wasn't that hot, by the way), but more deeply, if I could use that word. All the humor came from people acting like people. Really looking forward to where the show goes.
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| # ? Apr 16, 2012 23:24 |
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Himuro posted:I thought this was fantastic and I'm hoping to catch an encore.
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| # ? Apr 16, 2012 23:56 |
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I don't really know what to make of this show, but I'm willing to give it a three episode test and see if it gets better (or worse). That said, the brief shots of Manhattan make miss travelling to NYC. 
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 03:43 |
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I didn't love this show, but it's alright. Could be funnier, however. The Louie comparisons seem a bit out of touch -- that show is ridiculously hilarious with nearly every episode yet also manages to have the same level (or better) of humanity present in this show.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 03:44 |
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I can't quite put my finger on exactly why internet critics are falling all over themselves to gush about this jarringly shameless slice of navelgazing mumblecore. I couldn't get a fix on just how much the show's tone is expecting us to laugh with its characters instead of at them, ideally it will be made clear sooner rather than later. Right now it seems to have aspirations to be a shining ode to bohemian trust fund entitlement and all its zany first world foibles. It's pretty ominous that the cartoonish airhead explaining her life via degrees of relation to sex and the city characters wasn't even the most repellent personality on hand. And man oh man, is this cast mighty white or what? The modern twee arthouse dilletante comes in more flavors than this, surely? That said, it wasn't terrible and I'll stick one more week to see if the pilot was less than the intended vision of AUTEUR Lena Dunham (Did you know she wrote, directed, edited and starred, all in a row? Consult the credits!). I hope they start adding jokes, though! To me the the funniest thing about this pilot are all the talking heads scrambling to inexplicably compare it to Louie after a single episode just so they can claim they were clever enough to be on the "ground floor" via their twitter accounts a year from now.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 04:04 |
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Are there any good shows out there with "likable" main characters? I'm looking at my own DVD shelf, with it's Always Sunnys and Dexters, and wondering if anyone really casts likable shows, or writes likable novels, anymore. Like Hannah in the show, who I do NOT see as aspirational, I'm overeducated and underemployed, with well-off parents who are living it up while I jealously watch. And while it's well and good to mock people with that problem, whether you're Adam Corrola bashing Occupy Wall Street or what have you, that doesn't answer the question of what to do NOW. Okay, Gen-Y is boned because we're entitled shits, there's not enough jobs, we've been taught we're too good to work at McDonalds and when we do apply there we get ignored as overqualified. But what do we do about it? The show is is the position to explore that question, and I'm really interested to see what they do with it.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 04:27 |
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Christmas Jones posted:Are there any good shows out there with "likable" main characters? I'm looking at my own DVD shelf, with it's Always Sunnys and Dexters, and wondering if anyone really casts likable shows, or writes likable novels, anymore. Happy Endings and New Girl have likable characters. I also think Wilfred has a likable cast, too.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 04:31 |
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Christmas Jones posted:Are there any good shows out there with "likable" main characters? I'm looking at my own DVD shelf, with it's Always Sunnys and Dexters, and wondering if anyone really casts likable shows, or writes likable novels, anymore. Parks and Recreation is the best example of this
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 04:37 |
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Being likeable and being a piece of loathsome, morally corrupt poo poo aren't mutually exclusive, though. I love the Seinfeld Four forever and they were always incorrigibly petty and greedy to the core. And P&R is unquestionably the most positive contemporary sitcom around (as well as the best, incidentally). My issue with the lack of clarity in the tone is pretty well encapsulated by the guy making the tea telling Hannah she sounded like Clueless for looking down her nose at fast food employment seemed to play more as antagonistic instead of a sensible injection of reality into each primary character's hermetically entitled bubbleworld. I'm not gonna condemn the show yet for questionable elements in an otherwise serviceable pilot, here's hoping it gets decent/winningly funny if it's gonna be something the media's incessantly buzzing about. TheRationalRedditor fucked around with this message at Apr 17, 2012 around 04:45 |
| # ? Apr 17, 2012 04:40 |
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Every critic who called this "edgy" or something similar must have lived a pretty drat good life so far (not unlike everyone involved in the actual show). How anybody could have even thought of bringing Louie up in comparison to this relative fluff baffles me. It feels more like Entourage for hipster English major Brooklynites than anything. At least it's not just dudebros who have their own drab and soulless trying-too-hard show on HBO now.Christmas Jones posted:Are there any good shows out there with "likable" main characters? I'm looking at my own DVD shelf, with it's Always Sunnys and Dexters, and wondering if anyone really casts likable shows, or writes likable novels, anymore.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 04:41 |
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Yung Jacques posted:Every critic who called this "edgy" or something similar must have lived a pretty drat good life so far (not unlike everyone involved in the actual show). How anybody could have even thought of bringing Louie up in comparison to this relative fluff baffles me. It feels more like Entourage for hipster English major Brooklynites than anything. At least it's not just dudebros who have their own drab and soulless trying-too-hard show on HBO now. I really miss How To Make It In America. One of HBO's best shows ever. If Girls was a female version of that show, I'd be all over this singing its praises. That really was a show about people struggling in NYC and it was loving realistic as hell. This probably a little exaggerated, but I laughed at this: 
Azure_Horizon fucked around with this message at Apr 17, 2012 around 04:57 |
| # ? Apr 17, 2012 04:42 |
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I really enjoyed this, but I think it's really marketed wrong as being a comedy. There were some funny moments, sure, but I really don't think that's what it's all about. To me, it really hit home on what it's like trying to be someone in your mid-20's trying to make it in a creative field. For myself and a lot of my friends, it really does seem like your choices when living in a major city are "work at a place you don't like in order to keep paying your rent or hope your parents come through for you so you can pursue your passion." There's really no in-between for lots of people, and every Summer when film production shuts down, I see a ton of people my age out looking for work just to keep making it until August rolls around again. I really don't see where people are complaining about "white people problems" with this show. Not everyone can just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and even Hannah tried to ask for a paid job from her internship, but his reaction and subsequently firing her is exactly what happens a lot, at least out here in LA. It is not a fun time to be in our 20's and trying to find a good career that's not tech industry or finance. I can see how some people won't like it because some of the characters are unlikeable, and that's fine. But, to me, that's because not everyone in life is immediately likeable to begin with. Everyone has their moments, and it's good to see a show that portrays both the ups and downs of someone's personality. the most important thing, I think, is that you can see where they're coming from, which is admittedly hard to establish in just a pilot. I'll have to see a few more episodes to see if it holds up, but just judging off the first episode, I could pinpoint more than a few moments that were almost exact copies of situations my friends or myself have gone through. Aside from the weird SATC obsessed girl, this is the first show in awhile that seems to be a reflection of real life rather than just entertainment for half an hour. Well, aside from showering with other dudes or something, I guess.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 05:02 |
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I really enjoyed it. If you are going to be angsty about how you hate people who live off their parents then of course you aren't going to like the show. It's a humorous portrayal of a fairly common scenario now adays that a lot of people can relate to in one way or another. I can totally see how making it about aspiring twenty-something artsy-folk in Manhattan is taking it to an extreme that can be off-putting if you take it too seriously and aren't acclimated (or maybe are a little too familiar) with those kinds of people. Still, I feel the overall problems portrayed in the show are done in a pretty clever and funny way and the actors did a really good job at seeming like people you could know in real life. Problems such as requiring parental support or being in an awkward romantic relationships or being an over-educated liberal arts major with lofty ambitions or having a lovely job (or none at all) or knowing a carefree jetsetter trustafarian hit really close to home with a lot of people in this age group.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 05:07 |
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I liked it. I thought it was funny in an uncomfortably honest sort of way. I feel like this honesty is where critics keep drawing comparisons to Louie, but I think anyone going in expecting another Louie is going to be pretty disappointed. Louis C.K. is a 43 year old standup comic/single dad, Lena Dunham is a 24 year old liberal arts major. The honesty that comes through in Louie is going to be funnier than Girls. I can definitely see why people don't like the show. All the characters are entitled shits, but I like the writing enough to want to see where it goes.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 05:50 |
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Ok, I'm in an interesting position here. I was meh on the pilot and could understand why a lot of you are baffled by the raves, but I borrowed a friend's screener and watched episodes 2 and 3, and now I'm fully on board. So I have to say to everyone who's at least on the fence: chill out and wait a couple of weeks. This is making the negative side of the internet's pick-apart-everything-now-now-NOW tendencies incredibly apparent. To address specific comments: - It's definitely not wrong to call it a comedy. The next two episodes are funny all the way through. - Shoshanna and Jessa definitely drew the short straws in the pilot, but one of them is fleshed out enough that she's probably my favorite character now, and I trust that they'll get around to doing the same for the other. - IMO, any perceived inconsistencies in tone have more to do with you having only seen the pilot than any fault on the filmmakers' part. I don't mean to sound dismissive here, I just don't want to get into spoilers. Again, all I'm really trying to say is be patient, give it a chance, and try not to hold all the rave reviews against the people who made the show--they didn't write 'em.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 05:53 |
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During most of my undergrad, I was the only person in my group of friends who did not get a liberal arts degree. I was also the only one who had to worry about paying off student loans eventually. Maybe it is because I am a dick who likes to snub the liberal arts, but I enjoyed the pilot as a cautionary tale to anyone who gets a degree to follow their dreams without actually thinking about how they are going to use their degree to make some sort of income. I honestly believe that people should follow their dreams, but they should have some sort of financial plan other than 'be the next big thing'. However, the most frustrating attribute to these kinds of people is the crazy mix of over confidence and under confidence a lot of people in my age group seem to have. Hannah is extremely confident in her capability to change the world through her memoirs, but is worried about having no skills. I've seen lots of people who worry about having no marketable skills, but put no effort into teaching themselves something. Hannah could most likely teach herself photoshop to get a job like her colleague. Generally the train of thought ends with "I need to know photoshop for this job. I don't know photoshop." The idea that she is capable of teaching herself that skill apparently hasn't crossed her mind because of a lack of confidence. Its like in their minds the world is split into two kinds of people: those who know things and those who do not. There is no crossing over. Goddamn I have so many frustrating experiences with this. In this day and age where there are limitless instructional guides on the internet, unless someone has a legitimate mental condition like dyslexia, anyone can teach themselves almost anything with enough time, effort, and motivation.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 06:39 |
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This show sort of reminds me of Seinfeld in a weird way... not just the New York setting, obviously, but these characters who are sometimes likeable (maybe? kinda up in the air on that) but capable of being terrible jerks. I'm interested in how well they can stretch out this style of show over a season, either good or bad.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 06:52 |
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No one says anything about Marnie as a character. The critics complained about Shoshanna being underdrawn, and Hannah and Jessa are very love/hate, but Marnie reminded me the most of people I actually know. There's always someone in the group who has to take care of everyone, and I've filled that role more than once. And damned if I haven't seen so many friends, regardless of ethnicity, location, or sexuality, sabotage "nice" relationships, which is really tragic. Also, I have no idea what Marnie is a diminutive of.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 07:04 |
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Well so far this show seems really uninteresting. They may be realistic characters with strengths and flaws, but unfortunately I don't seem to care about them or anything that is happening. However because a couple of goons said the next few episodes were really good I am willing to give it a couple more chances. Last show I watched that started off slow and got better eventually became of of the best comedies on television right now. Please watch Unsupervised.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 07:44 |
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Christmas Jones posted:Also, I have no idea what Marnie is a diminutive of. Marnie is a name by itself, it's not short for anything. Kind of surprised you've never heard of the name Marnie before.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 07:46 |
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Tinzen posted:Marnie is a name by itself, it's not short for anything. Kind of surprised you've never heard of the name Marnie before. I think the first time I'd heard Marnie as name was from True Blood! The almost-anal sex scene was hilarious and probably my favorite scene in the pilot. Also really loved the main character's parents.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 08:13 |
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Rudy Riot posted:I think the first time I'd heard Marnie as name was from True Blood! Ya, on second thought, I guess it's not really that common.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 08:22 |
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Wasn't there a Marnie in Wilson Philips?
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 09:10 |
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Clamknuckle posted:Wasn't there a Marnie in Wilson Philips? Carnie Wilson, hah. Another gem of a name.
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 09:25 |
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Are young women really dressing like 19th century Russian immigrants or is Hannah just hilariously lame?
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 09:28 |
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Azure_Horizon posted:This probably a little exaggerated, but I laughed at this: TheRationalRedditor fucked around with this message at Apr 17, 2012 around 09:51 |
| # ? Apr 17, 2012 09:48 |
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Irish Joe posted:Are young women really dressing like 19th century Russian immigrants or is Hannah just hilariously lame?
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 09:54 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 07:03 |
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Irish Joe posted:Are young women really dressing like 19th century Russian immigrants or is Hannah just hilariously lame? Come to brooklyn and thats about the standard "It costs a lot to look this cheap"
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| # ? Apr 17, 2012 13:38 |
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