Vogue may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. This FAQ is empty. This is not a show in which things happen. Directed by Thomas De Napoli. Sound familiar? This is a world more intimate than delivery from Amazon. One character has everything delivered to him: eggs, button-downs from J. A couple stressed out by a mouse in their apartment chooses to calm down by smoking up and playing Bon Iver’s “Flume” at high volume. Title: Season: OR . But then something happened as the seasons progressed, and we all lost that connection we once felt with Girls. It’s decriminalized in New York, but it’s still against the law — and the greatest risk is taken by the dealers, because selling weed has much higher fines than mere possession. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. This is New York, and these people are its tastemakers. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 1/1/20) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated 1/1/20) and Your California Privacy Rights. The second season — which is now funded by Vimeo, who will be charging a nominal fee for the six episodes — lets the show experiment with better production values and bigger casts. There are clever pop-culture references sprinkled throughout, from **Petra Collins’**s temporary Instagram ban to House of Cards binge-watching to juice cleanses—“She’s looking good since she started doing Blueprint,” says one of the characters in “Olivia.” And that’s just one of the quotable lines the series constantly churns out: "Her Tumblr is actually beautiful" and "I’m a proud A-sexual" sound like things we’ve all heard someone say on the L train at some point. More purchase options ... listening to the two creators go on about the episode before the episode even begins really kills it for me. Created by husband-and-wife duo Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld, the show follows a marijuana messenger—played by Sinclair, who looks like John Malkovich, if Malkovich had a Bushwick beard and rode a fixie—as he goes in and out of people’s apartments delivering merchandise from his Tupperware container. Later on, I had flashbacks to a dingy electronic party I was dragged to in Long Island City, after I saw the episode where the four friends end up in a remote warehouse rave in Brooklyn. “The traumatic end to the mouse-glue-trap-creature we locked in our bathroom still gives me nightmares,” she later said over cries of laughter. Looking for some great streaming picks? Episodes are usually named for an offscreen figure who pops up in conversation — “Matilda,” when two characters are trying to see the eponymous play on Broadway; “Jonathan,” when several stand-up comedians in the episode have just seen or are about to see Jonathan Ames. Likewise 'the guy' is just an excuse for the series to be in these people's homes. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Another had an ex who came out years after their relationship ended, and yet they both remained very close after that, à la Elijah and Hannah. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Perhaps even more terrifying is the story of a girl who takes the cute guy from her spin class back home only to realize he’s a total creep and not at all as he originally seemed—any single girl’s worst nightmare come true. But to answer the question posed by **Lena Dunham’**s character, Hannah, on whether she was the “voice of her generation,” this underrated Web series is a lot more accurate in depicting the lives of millennials today. Add Image. Its details are eerily recognizable. The New York milieu of “High Maintenance” is a wink at the trust-funded creative classes milling about Brooklyn, but that is not where the show lives, as one might expect. SALON ® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon.com, LLC. Of course it does. The show seems to understand this, hence the second season’s attempt to introduce more nonwhite characters. “High Maintenance” can’t work for people of color — and, specifically, for black and Latino men — the way that it does for everyone else. One of the unique things about living in New York is the fact that you can order anything—dinner, groceries, batteries, even pot—straight to your door. “Dinah” showed a glimpse of a couple’s fridge covered with dozens of wedding invitations. The opening two episodes have style and energy but for me the main one is the third which, although none of them are really strong, it is the one that makes the most of the characters beyond it being a bit of a sketch. It’s not a collection of those moments that are jokingly called “only in New York” — it is New York, or at least a certain subsection of New York, right down to the passive-aggressive subway interactions. 'Jamie.' Jamie When Girls started, I remember identifying with Hannah during the opening scene, when her parents share the news that they’re cutting her off. They’re also a privileged set—few of these people seem to have steady or high-paying jobs, yet most of them have enough disposable income to buy pot—and "Do you know what I mean?" Crew, toilet paper and, of course, weed. The characters in each are instantly engaging even if the viewer is outside of the world in which they live. 19 webisodes of High Maintenance have been released. In 2016, High Maintenance moved to HBO. “Ruth,” though, might be the best episode the show has done yet, and its longest, at 15 minutes. The first episode I saw was titled “Jamie,” and found two roommates discovering a still-live mouse on a glue trap in their kitchen, calling their pot dealer for help (and a joint to calm their nerves). © 2020 Condé Nast. But the strongest hook of the show isn’t its style or its setting, which are both executed very well, but are also in competition with every other show about hip New Yorkers. One explores the inability of a comedian (played by Hannibal Buress) to Tweet jokes after a shooting at one of his stand-up gigs. The details are uncanny. Buy HD $2.99. High Maintenance is set in the same universe as Girls. They’re both from different races. All rights reserved. S1, Ep11. They pictured unkempt African-American men and women slouched in alleyways or young blacks hanging around urban street corners.” This, even though for the last two decades, “Whites have engaged in drug offenses at rates higher than blacks.”. The latest fashion news, beauty coverage, celebrity style, fashion week updates, culture reviews, and videos on Vogue.com. There’s a strong case for much of the show’s appeal being rooted in its portrayal of young, bougie New York. Copyright © 2019 Salon.com, LLC. It’s a conversation most of us who graduated during the recession had with our own families—mine took place six months after commencement. The best new culture, style, and beauty stories from Vogue, delivered to you daily. is uttered in uptalk in almost every episode. He is the hipster, bearded Everyman of the series — nondescript enough to be a cipher, distinctive enough to move seamlessly through New York via subway and bike and pedestrian traffic, wearing Vibram five-fingers, no less. Use the HTML below. A good cycle that is enjoyable for what it is but also offers more to come. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Episode List. From The Virgin Suicides to On the Rocks, IMDb dives into the cinematic stylings of Oscar-winning director Sofia Coppola. The weed dealer enters the private lives of his customers and then flits away again with a casual intimacy that very few other people manage. And because you can’t sell drugs in a store, and it looks awfully suspicious on the street, he delivers — right into people’s homes. Year: Season 1. Terrified clients ask The Guy for more than just weed when a mouse appears in their apartment. One wasn’t that into her hopelessly sweet boyfriend and couldn’t find the heart to break up with him, much like Marnie and Charlie. I felt the opposite once I started watching High Maintenance. Who knows, maybe even Lena Dunham will stop by. “High Maintenance” is not an overtly political show, but its politics are front-and-center; in addition to the question of weed, there are episodes on homelessness, public school education, queer lifestyles (including cross-dressing), and look, even Airbnb is political now. Watch with HBO. Not some other, non-white Guy. The show isn’t going to be about crime and punishment like HBO’s “The Wire,” which is still the best show made about the drug trade in America, despite being more than a decade old. All rights reserved. Meanwhile, the guy gets high with two professional stoners. It’s a subtlety that calls out to the just-overheard, constantly overlapping teeming masses of the city. A couple stressed out by a mouse in their apartment chooses to calm down by smoking up and playing Bon Iver’s “Flume” at high volume. That is the unstated central question of the Web series “High Maintenance,” a short original that debuted its second season today. The writing is good even from here because even within these shorter sketches, we get a good sense of character and lives in these few minutes. This Guy, who has the privilege of doing this job because he can do so with less risk. Our dealer — the one person who connects all of these disparate stories — is just a guy, who is credited as The Guy, and he is played by “High Maintenance’s" co-creator Ben Sinclair (the other creator is Sinclair’s wife, Katja Blichfeld). Marnie became too out of touch. Jessa had a quickie marriage that never made any sense, and Hannah got a book deal seemingly out of thin air. A smart way of looking into the intersecting lives of eclectic New Yorkers, the series mainly takes place in the condo and loft land of Williamsburg.