> The company spent aggressively to develop its content. Its lineup of star-studded programming included a court show featuring Chrissy Teigen, a romantic comedy with Anna Kendrick ...
Sounds like top shelf content, let's try a review:
"My most recent pick was Dummy, a show where Anna Kendrick becomes friends with her boyfriend’s sex doll. When I turned my phone horizontally, suddenly I could see a widescreen version of the same series: The sex doll’s legs splayed further along the floor, and in the background I could now see Donal Logue, the actor who plays the boyfriend. ... The episode of Dummy lasted six minutes, just long enough for me to think, What is this?, when I realized that the boyfriend was a barely fictionalized version of Emmy-winning TV writer Dan Harmon. Then it ended."
"“Dummy” is a semi-autobiographical comedy from Cody Heller, whom Kendrick plays, with Donal Logue portraying her real-life partner Dan Harmon, the Emmy-winning showrunner of “Community” and “Rick & Morty.” The 10-episode series sees Cody imagining that her boyfriend’s sex doll is sentient and high jinks ensue. It is breezy viewing at an average of seven minutes apiece, but the show deserves Emmy recognition for how its frames are so deliberately composed in service of advancing the art form. Relatively few shows contend for Best Short Form Comedy/Drama Series; that the category exists is a testament to the academy’s continual acknowledgement of the evolution of television, which “Dummy” embodies."
"The Internet" device. All the tech illiterate coworkers. Jen's imposter syndrome. Moss's on-the-spectrum reactions. Online dating when it was still nerdy. Novelty websites. Viral cultural events.
But it wasn't exclusively geek humor. There were broader episodes involving Jen's and Roy's romantic lives too.
Tangentially, this is where the works of Dan Harmon (Community, Rick and Morty) fall down; his shows slide into self-referential, in-group pleasing messes.
As a counterpoint to the Silicon Valley show accuracy, I recently marathoned Betas, which is an Amazon original series which attempted to add comedy to Silicon Valley culture (and actually predates the HBO show). The problem is that it played the culture completely straight.
The presentation at times looked like it was ready made for comedians to spoof. Tim Cook's delivery is like something out of Office Space. And that TV section. Statements of the sort "Look! What we've just watched has been added to the recently watched list.", "This is going to change the way we watch TV."
I actually liked Betas, which is Amazon's Silicon-Valley-based show. I hated it at first (it made me cringe a lot), but then I realized it wasn't that the writing was bad. Rather, it was so spot on, it made me cringe because I know people (and companies) like that.
Once I realized they were in on the joke, I liked it a lot better.
They clearly knew SV culture really well. There were a lot of great references, and many scenes were clearly shot in SF.
I think you're overlooking the work and talent that goes into producing this (Emmy Award-winning) show. Here is an excerpt from an article that takes a look at the behind-the-scenes routine to making a typical episode:
For the next hour, Stewart paces diagonally across a windowless eight-by-eight-foot room, sucking on an iced coffee and grabbing handfuls of candy. Projected in front of him on one wall is the current script; beneath it, at two keyboards, sit Kristen Everman, a production assistant, and Kira Klang Hopf, an indefatigable senior producer. Head writer Steve Bodow and executive producers Josh Lieb and Rory Albanese perch on small couches. As the studio audience files into its seats down the hall and tonight’s musical guests, Arcade Fire, tune their guitars in the greenroom, Stewart and his team go on a nonstop, rapid-fire jag that tears up and rewrites nearly three-quarters of the script. The typist transcribes, cuts, and pastes; as visual gags pop feverishly into Stewart’s brain, Hopf calls down to the art department, ordering up new video montages and a collage of an “Anchor-Me Terror Baby” to go with a reference to the “birthright citizenship” debate. Many of the new ideas will be scrapped only moments later. ... As Stewart speeds along, hours of work by writers and producers are cut, replaced by improvised digressions.
I haven't watched the show much, as I've lived and worked in Silicon Valley for 20+ years and I don't see much besides a superficial resemblance. I saw a bit of an episode where a few 'brogrammers' were making fun of the main character like it was a 'mean girls' high school, and I thought it was ridiculous. Then I saw another bit where one of the characters was threatening a kid for his Adderall prescription and, again, thought it was moronic. I haven't watched much else.
I compare the show to Entourage: Amusing to those outside Hollywood, but completely ridiculous to anyone who actually works in the industry.
I was working in the bowels of GE's Schenectady site (Zip Code: 12345 - respect), doing tape monkey/account admin stuff, when that show started. In addition to be hilarious on its own merits, the sheer amount of subtle satire about GE culture they threw in there was almost as overwhelming as it was brilliant.
I mean, just the use of the "GE Inspira" font was $(chefs-kiss)
This sounds absolutely terrible. Hopefully they've made significant changes, but the stuff included in the OP's link fits with the story beats mentioned in my link below.
From a review submitted to AICN:
"If this script is unchanged as HBO begins production, it will be one of the worst pilots HBO has ever aired. The draft I read is dated mid October, so God willing Mike Judge (and other writers John Altschuler & Dave Krinsky) get their act together. Frankly, I had to re-read this twice to really take in just how God awful it is.
Even shorter review: Mike Judge drives through Silicon Valley. Once. He then fills a script with uninteresting stereotypes. It is not funny. At all."
"This isn't Office Space humor of reality/biting sarcasm. This isn't Idiocracy humor of the absurd. It's like a drive by concept, that in execution lacks any semblance of humor, because the world they've created isn't believable and the characters they've populated in it lack any semblance of reality."
What's amazing to me is that even with broadcast TV, theoretically the medium that they have the most experience with, they still delivered an abysmal product that the author was kind in describing as "tolerable".
Convincing someone else that a Show HN doesn't deserve the word "impressive" is not a discussion. It's just boring dismissal, something we have enough in this world and on HN.
"Circle of madness" to me describes what HN would be without all of the effort to keep this place from devolving into a bunch of assholes crapping on every project.
> It isn't impressive at all. It's a toy [...] he completely fails to understand the market. It's a top class r/shittykickstarters.
I mean, for fuck's sake. Is this guy your arch nemesis? Just keep it cool.
I actually thought the same thing as I watched it. Once I realized that the cringe was intentional and that it was poking fun at how ridiculous some "startup people" are, I actually started to like it.
It's not my favorite TV show by any means, but I definitely enjoyed it.
Sounds like top shelf content, let's try a review:
"My most recent pick was Dummy, a show where Anna Kendrick becomes friends with her boyfriend’s sex doll. When I turned my phone horizontally, suddenly I could see a widescreen version of the same series: The sex doll’s legs splayed further along the floor, and in the background I could now see Donal Logue, the actor who plays the boyfriend. ... The episode of Dummy lasted six minutes, just long enough for me to think, What is this?, when I realized that the boyfriend was a barely fictionalized version of Emmy-winning TV writer Dan Harmon. Then it ended."
-- https://www.vulture.com/2020/04/the-bites-are-quick-and-bad....
Okay, bad roulette spin. Here's another view:
"“Dummy” is a semi-autobiographical comedy from Cody Heller, whom Kendrick plays, with Donal Logue portraying her real-life partner Dan Harmon, the Emmy-winning showrunner of “Community” and “Rick & Morty.” The 10-episode series sees Cody imagining that her boyfriend’s sex doll is sentient and high jinks ensue. It is breezy viewing at an average of seven minutes apiece, but the show deserves Emmy recognition for how its frames are so deliberately composed in service of advancing the art form. Relatively few shows contend for Best Short Form Comedy/Drama Series; that the category exists is a testament to the academy’s continual acknowledgement of the evolution of television, which “Dummy” embodies."
-- https://www.goldderby.com/article/2020/anna-kendrick-dummy-q...
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