thesmythley

Fleabag is such a over-hyped television programme of the last decade or so. The problem with Fleabag's group of fantatics is that they take all of the characters to be actual representations of everyday life. This is ultimately the aim of the self-centred diatribe of Fleabag's writer - to simply perpetuate stereotypically jaded characters and slapping on the label of "that's reality" onto it. Instead of challenging anything regarding all of the subject matters it broaches, it ends up simply reflecting the public's already glaringly dogmatic & harmful prejudices about dating. Namely, "playing the dating game." Fleabag treats everything going on around her as a sophomoric prank UNLESS it is all about he own feelings. There is minimal redeemability due to the shallow depth of the entire programme.

The so-called special, ingenious comedy in Fleabag consists of:

• Fleabag herself, who desperately tries in vain to convince the audience why she's just as normal as other narcissistic, emotionally stunted, upper middle-class people through cringeworthy, juvenile irreverent invective. Fleabag has all the hallmarks of an uninteresting, self-centred streamer, youtuber, tiok-toker - take your pick. She stirs up drama at every turn which is apparently supposed to be how all women behave. Yes, she has her tragic backstory which serves as a manipulative yet crude attempt to foist pathos into the audience's hearts. Furthermore, it is her tragic backstory that weakly attempts to hide the lack of actual emotional depth to Fleabag, making her seem more relatable, giving the audience the mistaken impression that she is capable of a deeper form of love.

• A cheap, ineffectual breaking the fourth wall device encapsulated in Fleabag's haughty, self-indulgent know-it-all monologue styled remarks that are supposed to sum-up everyone's jaded "modern" view about people and relationships.

• Even when she falls on hard times Fleabag can rely on the bank of mummy and daddy when things turn south, even though they are less than perfect because, YET AGAIN, we have to be reminded in the most cliche, everything-is-grey, narrative possible: "that's reality". We, as the audience, have to be reminded that being quite well-off is not all prosecco and garden parties. They have real dysfunctions because how else can Fleabag make us feel pathos towards her?

• All males apart from the main man are treated as base individuals who either say dogmatic things about women and "play the dating game" by engaging in stupid social cues indicative ofvsaid dating game (because everyone's doing that, right? *wink, wink*). The portrayal of most of the men in this way is likely executed by Waller-Bridge to give the illusion that Waller-Br-, sorry, Fleabag, the illusion that she is ever so slightly better and more three dimensional than them, even though she is just as toxic.

It's incredibly sad that people who heap praise on this show seem to confuse it's cliche dialogue as cutting edge, original British comedy. In actuality, the show has as much entertainment value as a teenager's online vlog and forshadows the long-term decline of Britain's comedy in a more fragmented comedy culture.

Don't Hate The Playaz is lowest common denominator bread and circus stuff. The show is gives you a taste of what it would be like if you dragged a segment of the most vain, showboats and narcissistic people from of social media websites and put them on a television show. In many ways, Don't Hate the Playaz is Reminiscent of the experimental flops they used to air on channel 4 in the 90s. Tries desperately to mask it's own boringness by appearing outrageous and over the top and full of narcissistic, boring, uninteresting, conformist personalities. There is nothing really here except drumming up a gullible, impressionable crowd into whooping at everything the cast say, very much like they often do in the US. Day-time to is more entertaining than this!

Underneath the flamboyance and the deadpan comedy is a cardboard cutout that contains very little. The Grand Budapest Hotel is perhaps a dramatic kind of postmodern parody of early 20th century old films, yet I can't see the appeal of why it is regarded as funny by it's admirers. The main character is a wealthy, flamboyant, hedonistic, bisexual bachelor and con-artist who we are supposed to be rooting for because, presumably, he's 'fun.' We are supposed to find his hedonistic antics and the fact he's had lots of lovers funny too, possibly because the people who do love this film are boring middle-class people are like imagining being in this role? Who knows. It is supposed to be funny that the Lobby boy, the typecasted deadpan sidekick, does all the preverbial heavy lifting due to his laughably diverse skill-sets. But it isn't funny. As the farcical series of pantomime-styled events unfolds, The Grand Budapest Hotel relies on wooden, stilted dialogue and various forms of mise-en-scene to generate some amusement from it's audience but it doesn't really work and comes across as stale, vapid and is infantile farce of a production. To call it pretentious means to call it a film that is under the delusion that the material that it employs is more sophisticated that is actually is and attracts a cohort of idolisers who think likewise.