High Maintenance - Very good web-series. Discuss.

just watched most of the new ones for a second time, they are actually all really good and on par with or better than a lot of the original web series imo

just listened to the two dope queens episode with ben sinclair. he is a very charming dude.

https://www.thecut.com/2018/01/profile-katja-blichfeld-of-high-maintenance.html

huh. extra curious to see these first episodes now.

Dire article.

A distateful level of celeb fawning:

“She’ll be the only one who’ll notice an extra’s socks and say ‘They’re wrong for this neighborhood,’” he says. “We’ll think that’s crazy, and then in the playback we’ll be like ‘The socks are wrong.’” With Katja, “There’s just a thing that everybody does, we kind of look to her to see if she’s smiling, or if her eyebrows are up, or if she’s attentive, or if she’s not really into it. You kind of try and read how she feels to gauge how to move forward.”

I see the same thing when we’re eating lunch a few weeks pre–tattoo date at Marlow and Sons, a restaurant where she knows everyone, of course. There’s a subtle way she wields control that makes everything about the situation perfect.

not necessarily arguing that, extra curious to see what a diversified (? at least more than just these two) writing room does for the show

Dire article.

― Luna Schlosser, Tuesday, January 16, 2018 3:12 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha yeah i found it kind of nauseating tbh

i couldn't make it through the second paragraph, about how perfectly she handled telling the tattoo artist to waive the rule about not letting anyone else behind the counter because she was going to be interviewed

Even though the shop has a rule that no one who’s not being tattooed is allowed past the reception area in front, Blichfeld convinces them to waive it for me. She does this without being a jerk but without being apologetic, either — she just listens to the explanation for the rule, making eye contact the whole time, then tells the artist why I need to hang out with her while she gets tattooed: “I’m being interviewed and this is the activity I said we’d do,” she says, un-self-consciously, like “being interviewed” and “doing an activity” are nothing to be ashamed of, which they’re not, but still. Blichfeld treats everyone she interacts with pretty much exactly the same, which is to say, she treats everyone with patience, curiosity, openness, and honesty, and then at the end of the interaction she gets exactly what she wants.

fuck everyone in this century

checking out some other stories on thecut.com. oh cool, look at this promising rectangle on the front page. i bet it's going to move up near the top of the rectangles for a while, and even after other rectangles get to the top of the mountain, it'll linger on in the 'more stories you might enjoy' section for at least a day or two longer, fantastic. equinox is a really great company, i wonder how the ceo handles life

https://i.imgur.com/sfTt5lK.png

Nussbaum likes the new season:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/22/high-maintenance-an-anthology-show-that-really-works

In the show’s second season on HBO, airing this month, the ease is back, thank God, and the series feels, even in slighter moments, newly confident, with an increased ability to reflect a larger world in flux.

crossing my fingers. I need this right now!

Yay! I love this show. That interview/hagiographic puff-piece, though...

ben sinclair was super chill about his split with his ex wife on colbert, seems like a good guy

they’d have to be pretty chill to still collaborate, although like the article says, some of the scripts kind of got a harsh vibe for a bit there

Money moves mountains tho

What is "propaganda for egg-freezing"?

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTixIvhRTFcp46VRzAsYbkElEyJZq04Pz6buHuxIlJ0qynpn-5V

xp presumably single women who think they might not be in the right spot to have kids when they're most fertile putting some eggs on ice just in case they decide to later

yeah, i have family that did that shit; it's expensive and painful and frustrating and ultimately not super likely to be useful

i understand what egg-freezing is, my partner and i have done it. i'm not sure why "propaganda".

ah, sorry. there's folks who argue that, without a specific plan, it's a way to profit off of the intersection of women in the workplace and biological clock without addressing the underlying issues.

your personal situation is your own, not trying to be disrespectful.

would welcome your feedback on that tbh. i feel like it put my family through a lot of pain and frustration and cash following a messy breakup.

ha, it was the most stressful experience of my life, and the most expensive, but we're both glad we tried

the fact that egg-freeing became 90s comedy shorthand for "crazy lonely lady" is just heaping cruelty on something that's already a lifetime stress-high

generally though, i think it's great, i think people more should do it, but it should not be that fucking expensive, and come with better counselling options than it currently does

[/end thread deviation]

Premieres tonight

I hated the season opener last time (about the two friends having a nervous breakdown) - too cruel, where the series had never been cruel before. Would love to start watching again if it's improved.

yeah, cruel was p good word for the last opener. fingers crossed for this season

new one is kind of o_O

yeah I thought it was pretty bad

the best part of the show is a little dip into someone's life around the time the guy passes through

this one tried to make the general atmosphere of NYC on a bad day the main character, had a really one-note "whoa gross" joke, and then filled the gap with the personal doings of the guy which weren't all that well-done

the weird nightmare was a little too something

at least the web-series is very good

mh otm but it still felt good to be back

yeah, this is still a welcome return, even in the ongoing diminishing returns

I do laugh whenever Homeless Heidi shows up, guiltily

That was ok, I enjoyed the vibe even if several moments were eye-rolling.

I'll never get tired of watching Ben Sinclair's reaction shots.

I assume non-white actors get super bored of playing the "dignified but unknowable" role

Y'all are such whiners. I loved the premiere! Really captured the everything's-going-to-shit-but-it's-affecting-me-mostly-only-tangentially thing that's happening right now. The threesome twist was revealed perfectly, and even the bit with the balloon was done well (I thought). I laughed, I teared up, what else do you want, jackels?

i also loved the premiere; thought the "omg, the worst thing is happening right now" moment was a dead on hit as to what NYC felt like in the days after trump was elected... i saw multiple people crying in the streets. I think i cried in the streets!

it didn't seem believable that the type of people who would be so distraught by trump winning would also spend election night off the grid having some sex party

well that is (at least one of the reasons) why they didn't make it about the election but instead made it LOOMING HORRIBLE THING THAT HAS HAPPENED

okay, but also it was totally about the election, so

It wasn't about the election. Something completely unexpected happened overnight.

it wasn’t specifically about the election but... it was about the election

Thought this was fairly solid. DJI OTM about the threesome twist, well executed. Only complaint here is the leaden and clumsy dialogue which takes me out of it, characters feeling like one-note stereotypes (the brief conspiracy guy scene where he mentions elon musk).

they left the traumatic event vague for a reason, and it was clear that it was related to trump, but it wasn't about the election, imo. it could be all sorts of things: trump using a nuclear bomb, an drone strike killing even more civilians than they commonly do, trump going full on fascist and ordering a special force to murder a bunch of US citizens, etc.

Karl otm

Is "the guy" rich?

he makes a pretty decent living indicating he’s skirting the line between dealer and distributor but his overhead appears low

this show is good but yes I want jackals

it was ok

about as good as some of the other episodes last season. it does suffer a little from having to fill the time slot imo

balloon moment was a little too feel-good we-are-all-in-this-together

last ep was heavy handed