A Comment I made on AV Club that I’m Posting Here
So NBC premiered two new comedies last night and I kind of liked both of them but I was struck by how generally similar they were in a whole economic/social/political/racial sort of way. The both feature “upper middle class” to filthy stinking rich (mostly) white people in high level media careers basically dealing with various “first world problems” like “work life balance” etc. Up All Night is the more obnoxious of the two on this score. If Applegate’s character really was the right hand woman of someone who’s obviously meant to be Oprah she’d be making kajillions of dollars a year and this is never even discussed as a reasonable tradeoff to her being on call basically 24/7. I thought the show might change things up (and acknowledge the “mancession” a little bit etc.) by making Will Arnett’s character a failed writer or something but no such luck. It turns out that not merely was he a successful lawyer but he ran his own big firm! (At least I think that’s what was being implied) assuring that there will be no non super rich/successful person represented on the show. The corporate publicists on Free Agents are way down the food chain compared to the characters on Up All Night but even they lead a lifestyle that the vast majority of Americans can barely dream of today. I realize entertainment has always had an escapist element even during (or perhaps especially during) bad economic times. Great depression era movies were often about the antics of rich people etc. And sitcoms have mostly always had to do with glamorous, successful people. (The characters on I Love Lucy were basically the equivalent of the characters on Up All Night with glamorous entertainment careers, fancy NYC apartment etc.) but I find it odd how little the Great Recession is being represented on TV at all and how out of step these two shows seem.
