2013: TELEVISION

having read approximately all 568348235 articles about Girls in every newspaper, magazine, and cultural criticism website on the planet, it's safe to say that I already had some preconceptions about Lena Dunham and "Girls". Having been offered generous use of a friend's HBOgo account, I jumped at the chance to finally watch the show for myself. Now that I've seen the first show, what can I say? I liked it. The characters are spoiled and selfish and they call out their friends and SOs for being spoiled and selfish and it just makes for a lot of passive-aggressive and stupid and miserable fights. Which is pretty true for a lot of 20-something college graduates. It's hard to believe that these interns are making enough to afford their large and pretty Brooklyn apartments but there's a lot of awkward, unpretty sex to balance it all out.

note: I still think Dunham is a privileged white girl who drops casual racism because that's the ironic hipster thing to do but she may change if she's open to criticism (her actions have led me to believe she's not).

(Review for the very short first season, which I started watching because I was bored while waiting for the NFL season to start.)

Decently funny show even if you're like me and don't know that much about football (or even anything about football). The gay bro-type jokes do get repetitive and it's hard to buy that these dudes, successful as they might be in their careers (which is unconvincing in itself) are able to land such beautiful wives and girlfriends. I mean, Nick Kroll as a big time attorney with a complete babe of a wife? C'mon.

I watched the first season and a bit of the second season and I can't say that I'm dying to finish the show, but I certainly would watch it if I were channel surfing.

I watched the first four seasons at the end of 2011 to the beginning of 2012, just in time to catch up with the final season. This will be more of a review of the second half of the fifth season, since this is supposed to be a list for the shows I watched in 2013.

What else can I say about the show that hasn't already been said before? A landmark in American television, completely original, the perfect convergence of good writing and good acting. When I saw "Granite State", I knew that it would make it on my list of top Breaking Bad episodes. The finale is absolutely satisfying.