{"id":5396,"date":"2015-08-07T11:45:01","date_gmt":"2015-08-07T15:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/?p=5396"},"modified":"2015-08-07T11:47:59","modified_gmt":"2015-08-07T15:47:59","slug":"hulu-hits-gold-mine-difficult-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/2015\/08\/07\/hulu-hits-gold-mine-difficult-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Hulu Hits a Gold Mine With Difficult People."},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.papermag.com\/uploaded_images\/difficult%20people%201.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"394\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Bold is an empty word to describe this hard hitting comedy that will have you laughing or utterly disgusted. Either way it doesn\u2019t give a damn.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Difficult People<\/i> is a tour-de-force original comedy brought to you by Hulu Plus that made it\u2019s splash on screens everywhere on August 5th. The show is written by the comedic masterminds Julie Klausner (<em>Ugly Americans<\/em>) and Billy Eichner (Emmy-nominated<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span><em>Billy On the Streets<\/em>) where they play over the top self loathing\u00a0versions of themselves aspiring to be comics living, working, and maneuvering day-to-day issues in New York City. While their friends and acquaintances (nearly everyone but themselves) move on to find success and love, while they continue to struggle with careers and relationships, and blame the world for their problems.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The hard hitting pilot finds our ruthless, unapologetic, perpetually ego-centric, hypocritical main characters, Billy and Julia, racing through the concrete jungle of New York dodging as many tourists as quickly as possible to get to their matinee showing of <i>Annie<\/i> where they find themselves quickly coming up with an entrepreneurial scheme to sell bottled library water fountain water while Billy, the pasta loving and self aware terrible waiter, is \u201cFacebook stalking\u201d his recent ex boyfriend and Julie, the Twitter-fingered, online reviewer, finds her self in trouble after sending a controversial tweet involving the beloved, Blue Ivey and R. Kelly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In &#8220;Devils Three-way&#8221;, we find our relentless dynamic duo on quests to find approval from people other than each other.\u00a0<\/span>Julie goes on a voyage\u00a0to find her high school crush and bring him back to bed with her and Arthur, while Billy auditions for a film and realizes he needs to find a father figure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The first episode is seething with jokes and surprises that you wouldn\u2019t believe were able to leave the writers room and sails the show in the right direction. Episode two continues it&#8217;s comedic\u00a0triumphant reign and\u00a0crosses the line that it has no plan on returning too.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In recent years it has been hard to find a sitcom that doesn&#8217;t flop after one season. But why? Is it poor acting? Corny dialogue that gives you second-hand embarrassment? Audience doesn\u2019t get the humor? Or is it the confidence in the writing itself that doesn\u2019t seem believable? A close friend of mine recently told me as a writer you need to write like you&#8217;re the best\u00a0writer breathing. If you don\u2019t believe in what you\u2019re writing then how is the audience going to believe it? Most importantly how are your characters going to believe it? Create the content you want to see, don\u2019t be afraid to say what you truly want to say, and most importantly be confidant in yourself. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">That being said, Billy and Julie are the most confident comedic writers and actors in the game and their just getting started. Every joke is told with an assertiveness and a type of swagger that is unmatched to any show and an element that has been poorly missing in comedy for a remarkably long time. They know they&#8217;re the best and not afraid to put it on display. Which makes their show engaging and more importantly, believable. <i>Difficult People<\/i> is remarkably concise and wastes no time delivering the punch line. Every joke acts as plot point and propels the story forward. Every episode comes full circle. Most importantly, <i>Difficult People<\/i> isn\u2019t afraid to trek into waters unknown and battle with the sharks. It makes for delicious over-the-top comedic situations that will have you digging your teeth into for hours and will leave you with a hankering for more.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Streaming service such as Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, and the streaming champion that is Netflix have created their own original series such as, <i>House Of Cards<\/i>, <i>Transparent<\/i>, <i>Daredevil<\/i>, <i>Bloodline<\/i>, <i>Grace &amp; Frankie<\/i>, <i>Orange Is the New Black, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, <\/i>just to name a few<i>. <\/i>These shows have only risen the bar for television content that cable could only dream of having. We\u2019re witnessing the most creative revitalization to hit our culture in long time and it\u2019s only going to get better. Streaming services are giving their artists carte blanche to deliver the best product they can without any hindrance. Which has been an element that has been sadly missing from Hollywood and cable television and it\u2019s beautiful to see there is still a chance for aspiring artists to have 100 percent creative control that they\u2019ve always wanted. <i>Difficult People<\/i> may very well be the goldmine that Hulu Plus has been digging for to help give them a competitive edge and hopefully put them back in boxing ring with the other streaming services. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">While we cannot judge the entire show or it\u2019s entire season, we can safely say that\u00a0<em>Difficult\u00a0People<\/em> is off to an extraordinary start and only time will tell. You can catch <i>Difficult People<\/i> on Hulu-Plus every Wednesday for new episodes. Episodes one and two are available for stream and I recommend taking 46 minutes out of your day to watch the show that you didn\u2019t know you needed and won\u2019t be able to live without.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bold is an empty word to describe this hard hitting comedy that will have you laughing or utterly disgusted. Either way it doesn\u2019t give a damn. Difficult People is a tour-de-force original comedy brought to you by Hulu Plus that made it\u2019s splash on screens everywhere on August 5th. The show is written by the<\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/2015\/08\/07\/hulu-hits-gold-mine-difficult-people\/\" title=\"Read More\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":198,"featured_media":5411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2119,2,175,176],"tags":[2284,1082,2278,2279,1691,2282,1931,2281,2020,691,817,2277,239,238,2283,2205,2280,1818],"class_list":{"0":"post-5396","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-online-series","8":"category-television","9":"category-television-criticism","10":"category-television-reviews","11":"tag-amazon-prime","12":"tag-annie","13":"tag-billy-eichner","14":"tag-billy-on-the-streets","15":"tag-bloodline","16":"tag-blue-ivey","17":"tag-daredevil","18":"tag-difficult-people","19":"tag-grace-and-frankie","20":"tag-house-of-cards","21":"tag-hulu","22":"tag-julie-klausner","23":"tag-netflix","24":"tag-orange-is-the-new-black","25":"tag-r-kelly","26":"tag-transparent","27":"tag-ugly-americans","28":"tag-unbreakable-kimmy-schmidt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/198"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hardwoodandhollywood.com\/pop-culture-spin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}