So, Last night my boyfriend and I watched the much hyped premiere of Lena Dunham's new HBO series, "Girls".....Um, oy vey ist mir.
Beyond the pathetic portrayal of twenty-something women, I was dismayed by the absence of critical responses to the show. In line with my mildly-reactionary tendencies, I have effective gone off:
Ahem.
Dunham's character, Hannah, and her impotent friends were pitiful and downright boring. Watching the pilot was akin to biting into a mealy apple. The hype surrounding 'Tiny Furniture' certainly created an appetite for her glib, superfluous style of narrative but like the flavorless, sawdust flesh of the apple, the show has thus far left a bad taste in my mouth.
Anyway.
Maybe it's because both of her parents occupy prominent positions in the art world that I was expecting a show with interesting characters, insight, or at the very least, well-constructed conflicts. I'm disappointed bot not surprised that thus far, the show has been well-received.
With shows like "Two and a Half Men", "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", "Entourage", and "How to Make It in America" pulling in millions of viewers a week, it's not suprising that this vacuous drivel has found a willing audience. Now, parasitic twenty-somethings and aging hipsters alike can rejoice in a show that is the cynical equivalent to "Everybody Loves Raymond". My face hardly waivered from it's cringing sneer through the entire episode.
I'd say don't waste your time, but I think you need to witness the mediocrity for yourself. I suspect that the characters are thinly-veiled versions of the actors themselves, albeit with exaggerated personas that mimic the archetypal hipster flaws.
Poor character development aside, the 'conversations' throughout the episode were so lackluster, and lacking in authenticity that it made it difficult for me to develop an interest in the characters at all.
Seriously, why do we care about entitled adult-children having unrealistically awkward, casual sex?-- I hate to even mention it, but the sex scene on the couch was so art-school.
The episode reminded me of eavesdropping on:
A) Iowa-native American Apparel employees
B) Drunk asian girls sitting on the L train
C) Pratt undergrads who dress like a yikes! pencil
I like to think of this phenomenon as the 'Emperor's New Clothes Effect' reinterpreted for the identity starved.
Ironically, the joke is on us.
