Review – How To Make It In America
How To Make It In America – HBO – 10:00pm Sunday – USA
How To Make It In America is a new HBO comedy from the producers of Entourage. I know what you’re thinking; shouldn’t the producers of Entourage be fixing the many, many problems with Entourage instead of just starting a new show? Sometimes it’s just easier to let a lazy repetitive corpse of a show eek out its dying breaths while you move on to newer more exciting ideas.
How To Make It In America follows Ben and Cam, two twenty-something New Yorkers trying to make it in the Big Apple. Ben has designed a skateboard that nobody is interested in buying, Cam parties all night and sells leather jackets on street corners to get by. Ben has an ex-girlfriend who he hasn’t gotten over, while Cam likes to talk about the many women he’s slept with. Ben has sweet new sneakers and Cam has an Uncle who’s just got out of prison played by Luis Guzman. Naturally the boys owe this Uncle five grand. Sigh.
This is all fairly pedestrian stuff. Ben tries to avoid his girlfriend; he tries to forget her by hooking up with another girl while Cam tries to play everything loose and cool. It’s like they remade Swingers but took out all the good bits. There are a bunch of Hey! It’s That Guy! moments with Eddie Kaye Thomas from American Pie, Samaire Armstrong from The O.C. and Dirty Sexy Money, and especially when Ziggy from The Wire appears as an up and coming young photographer, but other than the surprise of seeing somebody you like in something else there’s not a lot going on here at all.
Bryan Greenberg, who plays Ben, has all the charisma of an Entourage combo of Vince and E, which is to say that he has none at all. Bryan previously made his mark in One Tree Hill and October Road and the guy could put babies to sleep with his performance. Victor Rasuk as Cam doesn’t do any better with a performance that balances between Vince and Turtle. How To Make It In America can’t help but feel like Entourage without the interesting backdrop of the movie industry.
This is just a bunch of go-nowhere twenty-something guys dealing with life and love in the big city. Who cares? Honestly. This has been done before and it’s been done better. Sure the show looks nice, but it’s HBO everything looks nice – except The Life & Times Of Tim. This is nothing more than a coming of age buddy comedy about a pair of douchebags who come up with harebrained get-rich-quick schemes. If it was any other network it would have been laughed out of the room.
It’s not just a case of How To Make It In America being unfunny, because there don’t seem to be any jokes here at all. While Entourage slathers its lame ass jokes on with a trowel, HTMIIA just seems to have forgotten put any jokes in the script. There is no reason for this show to exist. I’ve been saying that a lot lately with HBO’s new comedy line up. The Ricky Gervais Show, Funny Or Die Presents and How To Make It In America – none of these shows need to exist. They’re all pointless rehashes of stuff we’ve seen elsewhere. I look forward to a time where HBO doesn’t just churn out another boring comedy. Boy, Treme, The Pacific, Boardwalk Empire and A Game Of Thrones can’t get here soon enough; HBO needs saving, hurry guys!
Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Bad
