{"id":157,"date":"2014-05-07T12:48:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T19:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2014\/05\/07\/i-have-watched-the-entire-first-season-of-betas\/"},"modified":"2014-05-07T12:48:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-07T19:48:00","slug":"i-have-watched-the-entire-first-season-of-betas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2014\/05\/07\/i-have-watched-the-entire-first-season-of-betas\/","title":{"rendered":"I Have Watched the Entire First Season of “Betas”"},"content":{"rendered":"

And you know what? It’s pretty good. I’ll admit it: I even teared up a little during the finale. Sure, the payoff was a cheap shot at Zuckerberg (and shamelessly rode the long coattail of The Social Network<\/i>), but setting it up and turning it around in just two episodes? That’s some tight scripting.<\/p>\n

The first three episodes are free to stream on Amazon (entire season available to Prime members). One and two are a bit shaky, but the snappy dialogue carried it for me. And honestly, if you’re not sold by the time Avinash says “Aunties were involved” in episode three, I can’t help you, man:<\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

Also? It’s fun to pretend that Ed Begley, Jr.’s “Murch” character is actually Henry Starling<\/a> from VOY “Future’s End.” And hope that Sarah Silverman<\/a> will show up at some point. Hey, a kid can dream.<\/p>\n

Of coure, it’s not perfect. My second biggest complaint is the aggressively indie theme song. My biggest<\/i> gripe is the casual sexism that pervades the series.<\/p>\n

To wit: I know comedy must always tread the Very Afterschool Special line carefully, but devoting an entire episode to “Crazy Misogynist Guy”<\/a> becoming a meme and not actually addressing the issue<\/a> is either irresponsible or head-in-the-sand myopic.<\/p>\n

The most interesting and well-developed female character on “Betas” was written out after just four episodes, reducing the number of regular\/recurring female characters by a full third. Kelen Coleman<\/a>‘s guest shot as another startup CEO was a welcome change, but all too brief. And I would love to see another Mikki-centric episode that is actually about her job—you know, the premise of the series<\/i>—and not her family issues.<\/p>\n

(Aside: actress Margo Harshman<\/a> made the most of a limited role, and I would love love love<\/i> to see a spin-off about Lisa’s adventures in Seattle. MAKE IT HAPPEN, AMAZON.)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I’m still trying to figure out HBO’s “Silicon Valley.” I know Wired<\/i> slobbered all over Mike Judge’s geek cred<\/a>, and some of the satire is spot-on (we’ll leave aside the crass racism<\/a> for now), but it’s just not very… funny. And there is only one<\/i> substantial female character on the show, who is just now—in episode five<\/i>—starting to demonstrate any<\/i> agency. Not cool.<\/b><\/p>\n

I was a software engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area for over a decade. I worked at a startup where fully half<\/i> the employees were women, and the company could not have survived without them. I don’t want more shows where women don’t matter, because that’s not real life. And that’s not the world I want to live in.<\/p>\n

\"Curtis\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And you know what? It’s pretty good. I’ll admit it: I even teared up a little during the finale. Sure, the payoff was a cheap shot at Zuckerberg (and shamelessly rode the long coattail of The Social Network), but setting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41,64,16,12,56,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artcriticism","category-geeky","category-theiinmeat","category-thisbusinesswecallshow","category-tv","category-urdoinitwrong"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}