Hacker Cinema
Broad City
2014 · TV series · 30 min episodes · 5 seasons
Created by Ilana Glazer, Abbi Jacobson
Broad City follows two women throughout their daily lives in New York City, making the smallest and mundane events hysterical and disturbing to watch all at the same time.
3 positive4 neutralfrom 7 commenters
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7 comments on Hacker News
Just for whatever this is worth to you, and I know you probably already know this, but networks rejected Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, South Park, Mad Men, and, I think most infamously, Stranger Things.
There's nothing wrong with that --- perhaps the networks involved should have rejected those shows! You pick one, you gotta turn down another one. But having more venues specialized in a specific type of show means that, for instance, when BET passes on your thing, it can still find a home somewhere else.
I don't know anything about these particular shows. But look at the first couple episodes of Broad City --- not the extremely successful TV show, but the low budget web series that started it all. I'm inclined not to dismiss things based solely on production quality relative to what's on FX.
The rest of these points are probably well taken!
That is the actual plot of the SheWork episode in Broad City.
It's interesting that everyone is talking about the newly produced original series on HBO and competitors. I wasn't thinking of those; Netflix and Amazon between them have many of the great films ever made in any country, plus many 3rd party series that are great (nobody has mentioned Broad City, the best comedy TV in history, and there are shows like (EDIT: Man in the High Castle,) The Americans and Transparent, which many people love though I haven't watched them). It takes some digging to find them, but that's ok; my Netflix and Amazon queues are filled with films better than any HBO series IMHO, except The Wire, and are so large that I won't live long enough to watch them all.
I didn't say it was both, but here goes. One caveat is that this is a very US/UK-centric response, and it might not resonate with worldviews of people from other places with different cultures and histories.
1) It's stupid because he's making an extremely opinionated comment without understanding the thing he's commenting on.
The push for diversity is not a push to remove white, "Oxbridge" (upper-crust) men from media. It's to recognize that media isn't anywhere close to being a meritocracy, and there are barriers for poor, minority, and/or female talent that didn't exist for people like Terry Gilliam.
The industry is growing, and there's space for Terry Gilliam, lots of other white men, and also people from other backgrounds. As we've seen with The Hurt Locker, Black Panther, Broad City, and other movies/TV, women/minorities can make very profitable and prestigious work. A true media meritocracy would be more diverse than what we're seeing right now.
2) Whether it's offensive depends on the person. Some people are offended by it because it implies that black lesbians are given things in society only because of their minority status.
People on that side of the issue would say that either A) that isn't happening, or B) it is (and should be) happening because black lesbians also have fewer opportunities than non-minorities and face discrimination.
speaking of cringeworthy Hillary videos, I saw this the other day while catching up older Broad City episodes: https://youtu.be/lJgM4_C3gvE?t=43s
It wasn't just Clinton's campaign that was awfully run, it was the whole DNC who screwed up by conspiring to make her the candidate.
Seems like the path is increasingly to focus on creating your own short-form content first. This route has led to television series pickups - Broad City and Insecure are two that come to mind immediately. There's also a bit of discussion of its effect on the film circuit here: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/a-generational-shift-in-independent-filmmaking-at-the-2017-maryland-film-festival
I actually agree with much of the articles reasoning, other than the title, and everything about Ghostbusters:
> More specifically, a vocal portion of men on the internet — shall we say — go out of their way to make their voices heard when it comes to judging entertainment aimed at women, and that appears to be happening with the new “Ghostbusters.”
The thing with the new Ghostbusters has nothing to do with them being women. I'd see Bridesmaids 2 or any other comedy with Kristen Wiig (probably have), and I like Paul Feig fine.
The problem with the new Ghostbusters is that it's not Ghostbusters, not that it's necessarily a bad comedy.
The old Ghostbusters is shot and built up as a dark disaster movie, that just happens to be really funny. The new one is a Paul Feig movie (again, not knocking). It doesn't fit.
I noticed the same thing in the last season of Veep when Ianucci left. Instead of it shot more like an Office-type documentary (without the interviews, like its predecessor The Thick of It), if you look at the Christmas episode (of Veep) as the clearest example, it's shot like any other honestly mediocre sitcom, with saturated colors and honestly phoned in jokes.
Sorry about the tirade, but as a guy who does like good female media (Broad City and Lady Dynamite are my latest favorites), seeing this argument be made with terrible examples is unfortunate.