https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmvpbTMGXBE

If you’ve been away for the last couple of months and this is your first time back on the Internet, here’s what you missed.

Sure, let’s have a backlash against “I Want It That Way.” I mean, what else do you have planned for the afternoon?

by Jordan Carr

I hate to be the 8-millionth person to jump on the bandwagon, but we need to talk about that show about young women on TV! In it, a group of young women have awful, degrading sexual relations due to their economic circumstances, and try to convince themselves that it’s anything but degrading. The characters are desperately struggling to make ends meet, but nearly every problem can be solved with a man ejaculating to an incongruous indie music soundtrack. And our heroine, with her back against the wall and not a dollar to her name, does what any woman in her situation would: get a job at a sensual massage parlor and start handjobbin’ so her kids can have Christmas and/or a house to have Christmas in. Right. We are not talking about “Girls,” though we will have to talk about “Girls.”

Because I recognize that you are a skeptical internet person with limited time, let me lay out my arguments for the cultural importance of “The Client List,” the new Lifetime series starring Jennifer Love Hewitt that has created absolutely zero hubbub and argument on the Internet.

First of all, do any television shows at all warrant this kind of criticism? Are they really that important to the culture?

Yes, they are. Or can be, anyway. There is a growing body of study suggesting that parasocial (parasocial meaning via media and usually one-sided, rather than actual human-to-human) contact with people who are different from the viewer (to date, the research mostly deals in gay characters) can decrease prejudice in the same way that actual contact has been shown to do.

The parasocial contact hypothesis states that “If a majority group member has little opportunity for interpersonal interaction with minority group members, parasocial interaction potentially could provide such contact.” As it turns out, people can learn to be more tolerant from exposure to minority groups in television (actual line from that study: “’Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ provides an unusually rich stimulus”). By at least this standard, media influences people.

Well, ok, but does “The Client List” in particular warrant this kind of attention? It has nowhere near the cultural impact that “Girls” does.

I am sure that you are more likely to have seen “Girls” than “The Client List.” However, each of the first three episodes of “The Client List” have been watched by about 2.8 million people. The first two episodes of “Girls” were watched by about 1.1 million per episode — and those numbers include the same-night repeat episode. (“Girls” did 858,000 viewers for the original run.) “The Client List” is 40 minutes, while “Girls” is 30 minutes. Sure, “Girls” is smarter and Zeitgeistier, but that only counts toward winning on the internet.

The evidence for “Girls” otherworldly importance is simply not there, and pretty sure Lena Dunham would be the first to agree. So, how did Girls become the most-tweeted about show evar?

For starters, I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say “Girls” has the best title for a show in the history of television. Everyone likes girls! How was “Girls” not taken already? It’s a pretty bold move to name your show after a diminutive for an entire gender.

HBO went for those Louis C.K.-style profiles of the comedian/auteur, and flung all credit for the show’s production at Lena Dunham like the little rose petals that her servants drop at her feet as if she were Jaffe Joffer, King of Zamunda (or so I’ve read on some Tumblr somewhere, it must be true). It’s really easy to pick a subject for a story about a show created by Lena Dunham, written by Lena Dunham, directed by Lena Dunham, starring Lena Dunham, brought to you by Executive Producer Lena Dunham. You just talk to/about Lena Dunham. That she’s a “new face” makes it even easier. That she’s a great interview helps even more.

(The Judd Apatow co-sign helps: his support for a woman-centric comedy is useful because he has a reputation for producing hugely successful male-centric, at-times misogynistic things, so it creates this air of “oooh, he must see something magical in the show if Dunham pulled him away from making Knocked Up 2: Planned Parenthood.”)

And why did the Internet spend two weeks on fire about “Girls”? Because it naturally courts at least one oft-marginalized group of people: smart young women who are smart young writers. You know where else you can find smart women who either want to be or are writers? Writing on the internet! And in magazines! Cool! Salon’s Willa Paskin — ironically enough in light of the show’s whole “all-white” problem — referred to the show as FUBU, as in For Us, By Us. (She did not say this about “Veep.” Which, incidentally, did 1.7 million viewers in the night.)

All of these reasons account for the endless chatter, and (likely!) contributed to its modest but strong early ratings. And meanwhile, while newspapers all bit and did their share to fill their TV columns, almost literally no one on the Internet is talking about “The Client List.” Why is that?

“The Client List” is on Lifetime. Lifetime’s new branding position is “Not Your Mother’s Lifetime.” That is about enough said. Lifetime is so un-Internet-ey that the domain name lifetime.com takes you to Lifetime Products, Inc., makers of outdoor furniture and residential basketball equipment.

It can fairly be assumed the demographic for “The Client List” skews older and less urban than that of “Girls” because I think everything’s viewership is older and less urban than that of “Girls.” There’s a price to pay for that (presuming you care about Internet hubbub).

“The Client List” is a familiar, schlocky drama, so much so that it can be difficult for younger viewers to suspend disbelief. In the first episode, our protagonist Riley Parks’ husband “goes to the store to get a pack of cigarettes” never to return. It’s not until the third episode that she drops a BOMBSHELL when she questions her unwavering commitment to the husband who, I’ll repeat, walked out on her unannounced. The third episode! I found that hard to relate to. But if you’re really a till death do us part type, I could see why you might empathize. This show is all about Finding Inner Strength, which is a thing that plenty of people like doing.

But what’s wrong with The Client List?

It’s really, really easy to dismiss The Client List straight away on account of it is all about handjobs and Jennifer Love Hewitt’s cleavage and her shockingly bad Texan accent for someone who is actually from Texas. But there are even more issues with this show — oh yes!

1. The Handjob Palladium’s madam is a Magical Negro named Georgia Cummings. 2. An absurd emphasis is still placed on getting a man as the road to happiness. 3. Sex work is evidently as a non-stop joyride of friends, laughs and therapeutic handjobs for unrealistically attractive dudes. 4. There is also a Fat Best Friend (Type A), but she hasn’t done much yet.

The groundswell against the lack of diversity (university?) on “Girls” has worked to the fullest extent that such things can. Dunham vowed to make changes in the second season. “The Client List” escapes criticism of that kind because it is already so naturally offensive on so many fronts that it would seem ridiculous to go all Mike Wallace on Jennifer Love Hewitt for portraying sex work as just a fun, hush-hush way to show off a hot new outfit. As it turns out, the greatest PR trick “The Client List” could ever pull was convincing the Internet that the show doesn’t exist.

Jordan Carr lives in Los Angeles where crossing Jennifer Love Hewitt might be a career-ending mistake. Of course he has a blog and twitter.

A West Palm Beach restaurant set to open in just a few weeks is already gaining a lot of attention all because of its name.

It’s called fuku.

The owners say it’s a Japanese word with a wholesome meaning….In a letter to the owners’ attorney, the Florida Department of State Divisions of Corporations denied the trademark request because, “The mark consists of, compromises or includes immoral, deceptive or scandalous matter.”

GOD HELP US FLORIDA IS STUPID.

The number of Britons naming their children after knives has dropped dramatically in the last decade.

This tranquilized bear went viral yesterday, but here is ACTUAL FOOTAGE of his drop. That is one tranquilized bear!

How does everything about this not make you want to run to Al Gore’s house and pull the plug on the whole Internet? (via)

“My predecessor (and the former keeper of the comma shaker) told me that she used to pester the style editor, Hobie Weekes, who had been at the magazine since 1928, to get rid of the diaeresis. She found it fussy. She said that once, in the elevator, he told her he was on the verge of changing that style and would be sending out a memo soon. And then he died.”
 — Will no one rid The New Yorker of the tiresome diaresis?

“I am currently copyediting my second Twitter-to-book manuscript in a month. It is a trend I find [Darth Vader voice] disturbing…. The one I’m wrestling with now is incredibly whatever-the-real-opposite-of-clever-is. I won’t give the Twitter feed’s name here, since I don’t want to be an über-douche about it, but seriously, it’s not good…. Some guy who works in television as a writer on a popular sitcom keeps a Twitter feed where he and a few friends enjoy retweeting others’ posts that are at once self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating, in which it’s obvious that the main thrust is the self-aggrandizing part and therefore the tweeters are shown to be kind of d-bags…. Any ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ fans out there? It’s kind of like that, but it’s just one guy talking back to Twitter, in book form. And not funny. Like, hardly ever.”
 — Rough day at the copy desk. (via)

I don’t quite understand what exactly it is, but apparently something very bad will happen to your computer on July 9, probably because of all the porn you look at. But there’s a site you can go to that tells you if your machine is ok? I guess? I don’t know, given what I’ve seen on the Internet recently you might just be better off letting your machine get eated.