You can’t fire up a Roku these days without immediately being offered a steady stream of shows about twenty-, thirty-, and fortysomethings figuring out their lives in the hip ‘burgs of cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. (See: Love, You’re the Worst, Master of None, etc.) The most recent additions—Easy and High Maintenance—both dropped within the last couple weeks, and while we here at WIRED Culture are enjoying them, they’ve got us wondering: Are we at peak millennial slacker-com? (That’s not what these shows are actually called; we just made that up.)
On one hand, the Monitor crew argues, it is possible that too many shows in the same vein can be overkill. But on the other, these shows come from smart creators like mumblecore maverick Joe Swanberg and stoner comedy mavens Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair—and with most of these shows being on streaming services like Netflix and HBO Go, they’re great for leisurely consumption. So maybe the answer is, appropriately, just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Regardless, we’d like to know. And we’ve got writers and editors Peter Rubin, K.M. McFarland, and Angela Watercutter in the booth hashing it out and we’d love to have you listening in. Also, stick around after their discussion to hear Rubin and a few other members of the WIRED cohort engage in a little pun-off. (It’s funny. Promise.)
A few helpful links for things we talk about in the podcast:
-WIRED’s binge-watching guide for Love
-Liz Stinson’s story on High Maintenance
-Angela Watercutter’s review of the Easy pilot
-Jason Tanz’s feature on the Duplass brothers
