Well now. In which we discuss the merits of television (“It’s not TV, Dave. It’s HBO”.) portraying our fair city . . . Do they get it right or nah?

By Willy Staley | Jan. 30, 2020

It was probably during the fourth episode of the second season of HBO’s “High Maintenance” when I finally noticed what it was up to. The show follows a weed dealer known only as The Guy while he bikes around Brooklyn, leading the viewer into his customers’ homes and lives, where the cameras remain long after he’s gone, letting us peer into their problems, quirks, traumas and anxieties. Like many representations of New York on TV, it’s loosely predicated on the notion that people who live here are inherently more interesting than people who live in, say, Milwaukee. This particular episode centers on a man named Baruch who has just left one of Brooklyn’s ultra-­Orthodox sects. His hair is still twisted into payos, and he’s crashing with a friend in a squalid railroad apartment, looking for whatever work he can find by plugging search terms like “kosher jobs” into Craigslist. He tells his friend that he’s going on a date with a shiksa, one who has been asking him penetrating questions. “Wait a minute,” the friend responds. “Is she a writer?”