I’m not so interested in that “Girls” show that John wrote about a few weeks ago. I don’t like tv verité, other than “The Wire” (personality goes a long way). I’d rather watch a beautifully back-lit, coiffed, coutured Christina Hendricks and Jon Hamm sip cocktails over Sinatra, the way Jah intended. If I wanted real life, I’d leave my house. But I was struck by this:
The actresses playing these true-to-life Gen Y losers are unusually privileged in real life. Ms. Williams is the daughter of the NBC anchor Brian Williams; Ms. Mamet’s father is the playwright David Mamet; Ms. Kirke’s father plays drums in the rock band Bad Company;
It’s bad enough that Official Discourse revolves around the fee-fees of the rich and famous, now we unwind by watching their loser kids whine about their fee-fees. I’m sure William Saletan and Sully are ready to convince us that being the offspring of cue-card readers/mediocre rock-drumbers/shtick-heavy winger playwrights makes you a member of the deserving cognitive elite.
toschek
It’s almost like we have a cultural elite and it turns out they suck.
EvolutionaryDesign
Don’t worry Doug. It’s not a very good show.
smintheus
@toschek: Right off the bat you win the thread.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
And Williams fils is about to start a career as a sportscaster, IIRC. Which suddenly reminds me, I can’t believe I ever forgot, that Li’l Punkinhaid whom I’ve so often called totally unqualified and inexperienced, started out doing a sportstalk XM show with Mr Mary Matalin. I remember Monsignor Punkinhaid and Mr Matatlin yukkin’ it up about nepotism like the two regular guys they are, on American’s most Serious forum of the Serious discussion of Serious issues.
I was late to the Wire, Madmen and Breaking Bad. I have a feeling I won’t be playing catch-up with Girls
Spaghetti Lee
Doug, I think you spend more time thinking about Andrew Sullivan than Andrew Sullivan does. That’s quite an achievement, and not the good kind of achievement.
celticdragonchick
I watched half of one episode of Girls.
I was ready to put the barrel of my .30-06 deer rifle in my mouth and pull the trigger.
I have no words to descibe how fucking pathetic the characters were. Unlikable, whiny, callow cretins does not begin to describe them.
Todd
Life has always been about obtaining privilege for the C student progeny of the meritorious inheritors. If you notice, the biggest wails come about from the notion of shoving some deserving C student inheritor out of a top school or boardroom slot. The second biggest wail is reserved for the exclusion of D students (the sons of the small tradesmen who might get rich someday) from leadership roles in police and fire squads by pretending that standardized merit test scores accurately predict leadership potential or job performance.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Spaghetti Lee:
I use him to troll you people.
Jewish Steel
Bad Company? Blech.
They were Nickelback before it was cool.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Jewish Steel:
That’s a bold statement.
celticdragonchick
@Spaghetti Lee:
Agree.
You are stretching on this one to work in a gratuitous insult to Sully, and he really has nothing to do with this.
I really fail to see why you depise him so much, Doug. Hell, he agrees with positions here about 75% of the time.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@celticdragonchick:
I barely mention him anymore, unless I want to drive up comments.
Spaghetti Lee
I also like Bad Company and will make no apologies for it. Although the heretofore-unknown cultural importance of their drummer makes me wonder if I shouldn’t throw my support behind John Panozzo as an alternative candidate. And where does Peter Criss come down on all this? Questions like this are of grave importance.
Mnemosyne
Uh, you do realize that one of the leads on “Girls” is also a regular on “Mad Men,” right?
Mark
Lost in the “controversy” over ‘Girls’ not having any white people on the show is the fact that Lena Dunham is basically the 29th generation of trust fund kids in her family. Her dad paints paintings of penises and testicles, FSS.
Mark
Lost in the “controversy” over ‘Girls’ not having any white people on the show is the fact that Lena Dunham is basically the 29th generation of trust fund kids in her family. Her dad paints paintings of peni ses and test icles, FFS.
Alexandra
Last night’s episode was fab. I may just love Mad Men more than I love reading Balloon Juice.
celticdragonchick
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
Trolling your own blog. You need a better hobby…
;)
Spaghetti Lee
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
Don’t let me spoil your fun. But I can’t help but wonder if the best way to help shake off the pernicious influence of the sinister cultural elites isn’t to stop talking about them so damn much.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Alexandra:
Every episode should just be those two sitting around a vintage mid-town bar in the afternoon, right?
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Spaghetti Lee:
I don’t mind mentioning Sully or Glenn G because I think their blogs aren’t that pernicious anyway.
hilts
Girls is a super sized, putrid, steaming pile of excrement.
Congrats to the cast and crew of House for producing a brilliant series finale for one of the all-time great tv dramas.
Gin & Tonic
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: Sure, minus John Hamm. I’ll watch Christina Hendricks drinking alone for 60 minutes just fine.
M. Bouffant
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: It’s the absolute truth.
Justin Morton
I get that America needs another TV show about privileged white girls living in NYC, like it needs another combo KFC/Pizza Hut/Taco Bell restaurant. I get that.
But the show makes me laugh. Out loud. A lot. The girls are all complete dicks. Stop thinking of it as TV Veritae and instead think of it as It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia or even Seinfeld. It’s a sitcom about assholes.
And you know what actually tastes pretty fucking good: KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.
TheMightyTrowel
@Gin & Tonic: Sacrilege! Especially after Pete’s throwaway line last night ‘you woulda kissed me on the lips…’ I’ll totally ship that.
Citizen_X
Now that’s a BJ tagline.
Gin & Tonic
@TheMightyTrowel: Yeah, missed last night due to travel. Torrented it tonight, should be able to watch tomorrow.
Nutella
Meritocracy! No need for affirmative action or safety nets since the most qualified and hard-working people always get chosen as TV actors and other well-paid gigs. You peons must not be trying hard enough.
Villago Delenda Est
We’ve got an aristocracy of absolute shitheads with no noblesse oblige.
Mnemosyne
@Nutella:
I’m pretty sure that Hollywood has never been a meritocracy. It’s probably the most nepotistic industry on Earth and has been since the silent era.
ETA: Also, too, I look forward to you denouncing Joss Whedon, Colin Hanks, and Robert Downey Jr. as talentless hacks just getting by on their family connections. Not to mention Jason Reitman and Duncan Jones.
ETA 2: Since some people may be unaware, Joss Whedon is actually a third-generation Hollywood writer — his grandfather wrote for “The Donna Reed Show” and his father was also a TV writer.
Another Halocene Human
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, but he can actually write worth a darn. Just like some of those second and third generation actors are really good at what they do.
Not every family business is a conspiracy. The tragedy isn’t that really talented children of the elite do well… it’s that everybody else is cut out before you say “boo” … and what jobs there are are snarfed up by the unproven and intellectually lazy lucky duckies. The direct consequence of economic inequality, right in our faces.
Another Halocene Human
As Americans we look down on those who don’t succeed, or those who think they should have a chance at something but whom we prejudge to be lacking.
Not only is there a lack of empathy but we are cutting our own throats. Nobody can work hard enough to overcome 12 orders of income and wealth inequality. And our society works better when everybody can contribute something, no matter if they aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed, or they have a physical disability, or they only work part time because they are caring for a relative, and so on.
Mnemosyne
@Another Halocene Human:
You don’t have to tell me about it — I have a master’s degree in screenwriting. The only people who found jobs right out of school were the ones who were able to work at full-time unpaid internships for a couple of years so they could get hired on staff. Us poor suckers who had to work for a living in addition to going to school were pretty much SOL.
My point is more that I hear all kinds of complaints about nepotism and privilege when it comes to Sofia Coppola or Rooney Mara or (now) Lena Dunham, but somehow it never comes up when it’s Jason Reitman or Robert Downey Jr. or Joss Whedon or Colin Hanks, does it? I wonder what could be the possible difference between the two sets of people that could account for the discrepancy?
Mnemosyne
@Another Halocene Human:
And, no, I’m not using my screenwriting degree, though it probably didn’t hurt when the temp agency sent me to the secretarial job at the Giant Evil Corporation where I now work since it’s in the “entertainment industry.”
Debbie(Aussie)
It’s all abOut the elites keeping it all in family, I think. Nepotism writ large and all over. Shit kickIhg, Garbo collecting and all ‘thOse’jobs for us
El Cid
You people clearly hate the all-American values of meritocracy, where after years and years of hard efforts in passing on wealth and connections and cultural knowledge relevant to upper class success to your progeny, you can watch them achieve success using nothing more than their own skills at using what you and the entire environment they grew up in have already given them, and what you give them directly.
I’m pretty sure that’s called “meritocracy,” right?
Kiril
@Justin Morton: Seconded. This show is frickin hilarious. The hate it’s getting bizarrely over the top. At this point, I just want to see what that crazy girl is gonna do next.
JoeC
Simon Kirke was also the drummer in one of the all-time great blooze-rock bands, though, Free. Just sayin’…Paul Kossoff RIP…
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
It’s fascinating to see the praise for curb your enthusiasm, a mostly white show about rich entitled assholes behaving badly, and ‘girls’ gets constantly slammed for being whiney, unlikeable entitled white girls because they are assholes who behave badly.
velouria
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac: I’ve seen that response a lot and I don’t think it’s fair. Shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia feature completely unlikeable characters but they are also completely absurd and not supposed to be sympathetic in any way.
Lena Dunham seems to want it both ways. She wants to have a cast of mostly terrible characters that the audience is sympathetic to. Those tonal issues are what really doesn’t work about Girls for me.
Plus shows like Curb or Sunny are actually funny, unlike Girls, so they have that going for them.
Jamey
Jesus was smart and talented, too, but he wouldn’t have been successful without his Father’s help.
phein39
Wait a minute, wait a minute:
You’re saying that Bad Company is still a band?
Wasn’t sucking in the 70’s and 80’s enough for them?
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
@velouria: yes, because nuanced characters can’t be unlikeable. They must be absurd and unrealistic. The joy of girls is hoping that these characters will learn. Also, always sunny isn’t funny and is unwatchable, so there.
Billy K
SPOILER: It has always been like this; we just weren’t aware. You’d be surprised how many “struggling musicians” are just trust fund kiddies.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
What do you think accounts for the discrepancy (and no, this isn’t snark).
And, BTW, I think some of the stuff here about cultural elites and show business is somewhat overbroad. And I didn’t know about Joss Whedon’s background.
Zmayhem
Delurking for:
@Brachiator: Mnemosyne will likely have a detailed and articulate response of her own; mine would be to point off in the direction of Badass Digest and say, “What Film Crit Hulk said.”
(And if capslock Hulk-type writing makes you headachey, you can always paste it into ConvertCase.)
I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve foisted that article on since some blessed soul foisted it on me, but it’s one of the most painfully terrific things I’ve read this year, if not this decade.
-relurking