Company-Town Indie: How to Make It in America made New York look quiet as hell
Entourage is insane to watch now
In 2011 I had a Samsung keyboard phone and unlimited internet. I read Quartersnacks, because it updated the most of all the New York skate sites. RIP NY Skateboarding. I ended up reading Roctakon's Boy's Life NYC in like 6th or 7th grade. It was a memoir blog about dating as a sober DJ in New York, and like, skating Tompkins and going to Mogador with Feedback Ted and Alex Olson. Yknow blogs? Like lehipsterportal but not insanely depressing?
It all looked so cool. Living downtown. Takeout for every meal. Fashion Week and The Jane and 1Oak and The Standard and Corona beers and Tompkins when there was nothing there to skate. What was the personhood of a woman on this blog? I don’t know. The tides were turning. XoJane was dominating. Girls were people again, like it was 1976. They don’t seem to have been people in the 2000s.
Entourage might be the most misogynist thing I've ever consumed. It's not unsettling at all though. It's not refreshing either. Women exist on this show to do business or to fuck the guys on the show. If they are doing business their fuckability is made light of every second they are on screen. If it isn't, it is because they are old or evil. Once that's clear and you can stomach it, it's a fun watch.
It's sick the first couple of seasons because everything comes together after 30 minutes and you feel good about it. Vince is so cool and the guys always call each other slurs and punch each other. Indie director Billy Walsh is the best character of all time he is better than Ralphie. The first episode of season four is a documentary-style exploration of his directing of Vince in a Pablo Escobar biopic and it is the best episode by miles.
Turtle plays Xbox Live. Ari torments the only gay guy Lloyd. Drama wears cool graphic tees with snakes on them. In season 7 Vince dates Sasha Grey and he gets weird about her work. Then Ari gets cancelled on Deadline for being incendiary and you feel bad for him a little. After hours and hours of the show it's unnerving to see real stuff happen to guys on the show. Vince goes to rehab. Drama works. Turtle does business stuff finally. E solves his oneitis by getting engaged to Sloane.
How To Make It America was Mark Wahlberg's 2011 attempt to do Entourage about New York guys, but it was a bad time for New York guys. Entourage works because it's about a likeable Tobey Maguire and How To Make It got cancelled because it's about an FIT grad and his high school best friend. Everyone on the show is mad goated and there are a bunch of Supreme guys on it and Kunle Irak and James Ransone. Bryan Greenberg has so much fucking sauce and Victor Rasuk is sick. Like that Gamespot review of PS4 Spider-Man - the show makes you feel that cool New York whatever, just going to parties and having an ex-girlfriend and hustling up money. Asking your parents for advice. It's like the Dill 411. Just go watch the pilot on HBO; it's like out of my brain. Rasuk's character is talking about this girl he fucked who's a lesbian but has an exception for black guys - which is like, woah. So true. This kid on the train offers to buy Greenberg's Jordan 1s. They find some denim and sell it to Japanese people.
It's a superfuture show, but that's like, normal guy culture now. There's a funny episode on Entourage where Turtle gets ninja'd by DJ AM for limited Air Forces. That's legible to a zoomer. But the raw denim and the fucking graphic tee shit and Shannyn Sossamon's trust fund gallerist "Gingy" and the Puerto Rican mobster going straight and the character who is literally just Javier Nunez playing Billy Rohan on How To Make It is not. Rasuk's guy goes down to old LES to try to sell boards to a young Yaje Popson. I think it's sick as fuck personally but I'm just one guy. In 2011 America wanted Brooklyn and a shit ton of it. Hence Girls. They didn't want to see a beautiful Jewish man get dumped.* America wanted hipsters, not hustlers. It was too cool. On Girls they're pretty much losers for most of the show; on this thing they were all sauced-out and intimidating.
It didn't have the appeal that Entourage did because most people don't care about New York cool guys and hot-ass art handler girls and raw denim. Maybe if it was a show about women. It's a bit navelgazey. It's out of my brain but I was unlucky enough to be born in the same hospital as Miranda's kid on SATC.** Also the main guy is the E character in that he can't get over his ex, Lake Bell. She is so cute on the show and in the second season she finds herself and you see her tits. Her character is interesting in that she is just an interior designer with a normal boyfriend and not super downtown or anything. The Ari of the show is her boss at her firm, Martha Plimpton being like racist or whatever. She's funny. Bell starts profiling James Ransone's character in the second season for work and they like ride bikes around Brooklyn. It was too little too late though. Kid Cudi is good on it as the guy who knows everybody just like in real life.
*This is why MTV's Peter Vack vehicle I Just Want My Pants Back also got canceled even though it's also goated. This lady thinks so. Nearly New Girl-level, I'm serious. Kim Shaw is really good
**The guy who plays him now went to Lag