Though it got overshadowed by the more attention-grabbing hook of a Practical Magic adaptation, HBO Max announced earlier this year that it was developing a TV show called Generation from executive producers Lena Dunham and Zelda Barnz. Now, Deadline says the streaming service has given Generation a full series order, the first of its pilots to do so. Barnz, who is a teenager, created the show with her father (Daniel Barnz, who will direct), and it’s a “dark-yet-playful” dramedy about “a group of high school students whose exploration of modern sexuality (devices and all) tests deeply entrenched beliefs about life, love, and the nature of family in their conservative community.”
So, based on that, we’re going to say it’s like a less-sci-fi Black Mirror crossed with Euphoria, but with a conservative community and Lena Dunham thrown in (though Dunham is only producing it, as far as we know). In a statement, Zelda Barnz said, “I wanted to see myself and kids my own age represented on TV in a way that felt real, without judgement or nostalgia.” The cast of Generation includes Nathanya Alexander, Chloe East, Nava Mau, Haley Sanchez, Sam Trammell, and Martha Plimpton.
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Say what you will about Lena Dunham.
She’s…sure something!
Okay. This picture of her feels awkward without Salacious B. Crumb on her shoulder.
This picture is giving me serious Danny Devito penguin vibes.
Come on, man, there’s no need to make fun of her weight. She’s terrible in every other conceivable way.
Oh come on. You’re better than that. This community is better than that. Yes, be snarky. Yes, be cynical. But be fair. No reason to shit on someone for weight.I can’t stand Lena Dunham’s career contributions either, but lots of shitty low blows in these threads for weight issues.Boo-urns, AVC comm. Boo-urns.
Okay, don’t say that.
No.
That’s okay, your username is already a more than sufficient response!
I share her alma mater and we all hate her, too.
Ooh any juicy goss? Do dish!!
-Perd Hapley.
I suppose it’s refreshing to see a thoroughly mediocre, narcissistic woman failing upward and continually being offered opportunities like this for a change!(Definitely not refreshing enough to ever watch this or any of her other shows, but I digress)
I mean she is white, which always gets you a fair bit of failing power.
lol of course she pierced her septum now.
People are tanning their septums now. It’s a thing.
“Way ahead of you.” – The internet.
Barnz, who is a teenager, created the show with her father (Daniel
Barnz, who will direct), and it’s a “dark-yet-playful” dramedy about “a
group of high school students whose exploration of modern sexuality
(devices and all) tests deeply entrenched beliefs about life, love, and
the nature of family in their conservative community.”
You just know her dad is one of those parents.
I was holding my breath waiting for the cast list and growing ever more skeeved out as I was afraid she was also going to be the star doing raunchy nude sex scenes while her dad directed.
Any chance of getting Thora Birch on as a creative consultant?
What’s the HBO Max equivalent to “Netflix and chill”, “Be groggily indifferent and fall asleep on the couch until the ‘clump’ sound from upstairs wakes you both when the youngest falls out of bed again oh god we’re so very tired”?
Grow old and die.
“Attempt hand stuff, get distracted by phone”
“Honey, look at this.”“What is it, a recipe?”“Yeah.”“Oh, that’s the stuff.”
“HBO Cli-Max.”
“Everyone needs something from me”.——Lena DunhamIs anyone here going to tell her or do I have to?
Generation
also known by its alternate titles:Everybody Hates This Voice of a GenerationDon’t trust the Bitch who said she’s the Voice of a GenerationThis Voice of a Generation Can WaitThis Voice of a Generation Can Go Fuck Herself…
HBO Max wants more of Lena Dunham and Zelda
They’re making Legend of Zelda with Lena Dunham?!…Barnz’s teen drama … Ahh, read to the end of the sentence, cool.
Nose ring…not a good look.
nose rings are the worst fashion item ever. they weren’t even cool when they were popular
Says “mullets4ever!” I kid…but I will argue that the worst fashion item ever is ear gauges. Saw a guy at Sheetz this morning who looked like Charlie Day, but had metal rings in his lobes that were a good inch in diameter.
I know someone who had wooden ear gauges and his skin somehow grew into the pores of the wood (or something like that) and the gauges had to be cut out of his earlobes.
That’s less “gauging your ears is gross” and more “not taking care of your own body is gross.” Most thing on/in your body will have problems if you don’t adjust or clean them.
You haven’t seen the tribal tattoos yet!
Like Amy Schumer, before she pissed a lot of people off Lena Dunham was primarily a really great writer. The first season of Girls was painfully familiar to a lot of people. Hopefully she can get back to that, and consistency, and basics.
… but to Lena’s credit, when people say “Great writing!” to her, they mean it. In Amy Schumer’s case what they really mean is “Great Plagiarism!”
Watch “12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer” then come back here and admit you haven’t looked into what you are talking about.
I watched that when it aired, actually. I’ve come back here – are you ready to admit that doesn’t change the fact she’s a plagiarist?
She wrote that episode from top to bottom by herself. Are you denying that? Fake claims of joke theft are just masked sexism against a someone who (used to be) an important female artist.
Oh my goodness! Are you for real? You actually used the “masked sexism” defense! That’s kinda funny. And sad. (I’m only half joking when I say I bet she could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and people who spoke out against it would be accused by some of her fans of “masked sexism” …)Amy Schumer is a serial joke thief. She may have written many jokes all by herself, but she’s also used many jokes/routines created by other comedians, without their permission, and claimed she came up with them. Mainly from female comedians and comedians of colour. I mean, there’s video evidence of so many instances of this. Video. Side by side. Before and After. Theirs and Hers. But you clearly think each and every one is fake news. I mean, if you feel the plagiarism is not a big deal, fine. Own it. Say “she’s a plagiarist and I don’t care, because she’s also written some great stuff!” But it’s a little silly to repeatedly use one set of things she wrote herself as some sort of proof she didn’t steal another set of things. If you bought a skirt one time but stole a blouse another time, you’re still a thief. Stop trying to wave the receipt for the skirt in my face.
I saw the joke thief stuff and I don’t buy it, neither do any of the comedians who continue to work with her in that community. You believe it because you want to believe it. You want to believe it because ___
I really enjoyed the last few seasons of Girls – it allowed its own premise to disintegrate, acknowledging that the characters were bad friends, unhealthy acquaintances, and not-great people (except for Shoshana. She’s a delight). The very last episode summed it up – Hannah’s an immature mess, but she’s figuring out how to be a mother. That’s pretty much the show’s take on adulthood.
I agree, I think it stayed a very good show until the end (with exceptions…THE SINGING…and Hannah as a mother is a horror movie waiting to happen). But for the haters it is easier just to go with season 1 when the insufferability was still a little more meta.
Everything involving Marnie was so irritating that I wanted to shoot the TV, but I don’t see that as a bug. I don’t want every show to be about people I dislike, and I wouldn’t watch a whole show about Marnie. But I love the way the last few episodes play out – Hannah and Marnie don’t exactly fall out, they just realize their relationship can’t be what either of them needs. And Hannah being a mom is basically what parenting is – you’re an insecure person if a certain age, and you suddenly have to be the anchoring force in a vulnerable person’s life. Dunham can be a very good actor, and that look on her face at the end of the series was basically how I felt the first time I met my son.
So, HBO gave a show to the writer and director of last year’s indie darling Cake and they’re pushing the narrative that the daughter created it because it makes for better publicity, and AV Club decided to paraphrase the press release that was published by Deadline.
Which answers the question “How did an 18 year old with no resume sell a show to HBO?”. She didn’t. Her fathers did. Sure, she’s a part of it. And that’s impressive in and of itself. But let’s not pretend it’s this wunderkind story when it’s really not.
This is just lazy paraphrasing of a press release disguised as news.
Glad to see this comments section is still as gross and basic about Lena Dunham as it’s ever been. I’m not a big of fan of her work as I was in college but I still think people treat her incredibly unfairly. I mean good god, haven’t we seen enough terribleness from people in the last few years to give her a goddamn break?If you’re not buying that argument then I’d say Girls was pivotal for probably a few of your current favorite shows so go suck a lemon.
I finally and unequivocally gave up on her when she publicly accused a black man of sexually objectifying her on the basis of him saying no words whatsoever to her.
And that instance of possible racial bias is worse than the sins of Alec Baldwin or Johnny Depp or any of the other men we give second and third and fourth chances to, or else ignore the allegations against them. Social minorities, especially women, get written off for good while Shia Lebouf (the male Dunham once upon a time) gets major roles in prestige films.And finally that article you reference was about how she felt invisible due to her body type. If literally anyone else wrote it there would be a lot more sympathy in that situation.
I don’t recall anyone liking Baldwin and Depp either anymore as they both get savaged as much as Dunham, or how what they did excuses her behavior, but yes, please keep going, woketroll.
Huh? Baldwin and Depp get shit on all the time. And you might notice that the article we’re commenting on is not titled “Lena Dunham Can’t Find Any Work at All Because of Annoyed Internet Comments.” This article is about the continued success of Dunham in her field – she’s executive producer on a series for the top cable network in the US. So please save your fucking tears.
I’m happy to give Baldwin and Depp plenty of shit, and would be happy for them to stop getting work.Derham was not just talking about being invisible. She was saying that because a man who may not have known her did not say anything to her, he must have been evaluating her sexually and dismissing her. Apart from having absolutely no basis to publicly make this claim about him, she perpetuated a harmful notion that black men only think of white women as sexual objects.
Right and the context of her accusation is important and should be noted. But that’s not what people do. They label her a hard-R Racist. That is the trajectory I’m talking about. She slips on a banana peel and falls down a cliff.
People find reasons not to like her, which is easy if you’re looking for them. Of course, those reasons are usually innocuous stuff like “she’s self-centered” or “she said something stupid.” But to be fair, when she says something stupid she says something really stupid. People also get weirdly bent out of shape over how Dunham wants them to interpret Girls. The show works precisely because the characters are such messes, and it’s an honest representation of people getting in their own way. But it’s like the saying goes: If you write a funny, intermittently frustrating show about messed-up people who create their own problems, make sure it’s about a dude cooking meth or a 60s advertising agency, not some millennial women.
Holy fuck, are you really trying to compare Girls to Breaking Bad and Mad Men? “Why yes, if you enjoyed watching a milquetoast teacher slowly turn into an evil, manipulative drug kingpin, told though tens and often highly-detailed visual storytelling, then OF COURSE you should LOVE this show about annoying young adults living in New York and trying to figure out just what they heck they should be when they *really* grow up!”
And if you think the success of Breaking Bad or Mad Men was because they were “about messed-up people who create their own problems,” then I’m not quite sure any opinion you have can be trusted — and I say that as someone who think both BB and MM are slightly overrated (Mad Men had a extremely compelling first season, but didn’t necessarily live up to expectations as time wore on)
They’re all long-form comedy-dramas that debuted on cable television within a few years of each other, and they’re all about morally vacuous people doing awful things. So yes, I think there’s some standard for comparing them. It is true that Girls doesn’t have a ridiculous premise like Breaking Bad, and the writers don’t spend the whole run of the show saying “the main character is a violent drug dealer, but at least he’s not these other people who are even worse – now let’s watch him kill them.” Mad Men, though, is very similar to Girls. They’re both shows about the anxieties of privileged New Yorkers who drink too much and have awkward sex. Neither one of them has a series-long plot, just a lot of incidents involving the same characters. They even have similar endings. Girls obviously would have been better if Jemima Kirke’s character stole her commanding officer’s identity in Afghanistan, but I think that’s a forgivable misstep. Anyway, the tone of your post is kind of priceless. You imply that a show about self-centered young women learning to be adults is frivolous, but a show where a nerdy meth dealer blows a dude’s face off with a boobytrapped wheelchair is totally serious.
Anyway, the tone of your post is kind of priceless. You imply that a show about self-centered young women learning to be adults is frivolous, but a show where a nerdy meth dealer blows a dude’s face off with a boobytrapped wheelchair is totally serious.Really? Because that wasn’t my fucking point at all. I even said that BB is overrated. My point was that you are being — and continue to be — incredibly reductionist in attempting to conflate these three shows. Of course, the fact that you so completely miss the point isn’t surprising, considering you just stated one of the core differences between Girls and BB, yet remain completely oblivious to the fact that they are such different shows that people who like one might not like the other. To reduce all three shows to simply “well they’re all about morally vacuous people doing awful things so clearly all three should have the same fan base” is the dumbest fucking take ever. It’s like saying “If you like Star Wars the you are also morally obligated to like every single movie that follows ‘the hero’s journey.’” EDIT: Although, yeah, I’ll fucking say it – having seen enough of both shows, Breaking Bad has significantly better and more detailed visual storytelling. It’s flat out undeniable. And while that wasn’t what Girls was striving for (and yes, fuckwit, I’ve probably watched equal amounts of both series, considering I wasn’t a rabid fan of either), it’s something that can absolutely be called out as another reason as to why the two shows are different.
I didn’t say they’re the same. I said there’s a reasonable standard for comparing them. They share formats and themes, and they were created in the same historical and cultural moment. Talking about the similarities and differences between them is an interesting way to address those themes and that moment. It makes discussing art meaningful. I never addressed “fan bases” because that is a worthless concept, and I never suggested that anyone has a moral obligation to like any particular show. But the fact is that people have a visceral distaste for the show Girls. For example, you called me a fuckwit whose opinions can’t be trusted when I said that Girls was similar to (not the same as) two shows you clearly respect more, even if you think they’re overrated. It’s nice to know that you actually watched the show, since your capsule summary up above didn’t sound like you did. Your opinion is valid, obviously, but you should take a look around the board you’re commenting on. Girls generates a level of vitriol that very few things do. Including things that aren’t all that different from it.There could be plenty of reasons for that, but the fact that a whole thread is dedicated to calling Lena Dunham fat and ugly makes it seem like this might – just might – be a little bit sexist.
This is what you originally wrote:If you write a funny, intermittently frustrating show about messed-up people who create their own problems, make sure it’s about a dude cooking meth or a 60s advertising agency, not some millennial women.Which is obviously not about “discussing art meaningful[ly],” but rather trying to make some woke statement about how tough it is for a female creators, even though this article is about her continued success. (Which is not to say that women don’t face problems in many/all fields. Just that you’re barking up the wrong tree here)I’ve already lived through my 20s, I know exactly what fucking up as a 20-something looks like, and I’m not particularly interested in watching a show about it, whether it stars men or women. However, I’ve never been a cancer patient who becomes a drug kingpin, so it becomes more likely that a show like Breaking Bad might be more appealing to me. Trying to lump it all into some “messed up people” zeitgeist is just missing the point as to why some might like one and hate the other.
Lena Dunham is so terrible, her own body hates her.
She defended a rapist who assaulted a teenager at the time. Fuck her.