ABC's "My Generation" is repugnant

Hey! Remember 9/11?

Then you'll love our new show!

I don't know if I'm going to be able to fit all the things about this show I fucking hate without having seen into one coherent essayish thing, so I'm just going to go in order and list them in more or less chronological order.

1) The song.

Aah, yes! What song sums up those of us who came of age in the 2000s more than 1997's "Bittersweet Symphony?" It's a bittasweet symphanee this LIII-HIIIFF! THIS SHOW WILL DEAL WITH WEIGHTY ISSUES.

2) The shot of the smoldering Twin Towers at 00:09.

Umm, seriously?

Has there been another instance of the Twin Towers being used in a commercial like this? This is fucking odious. This is a fucking mocku-drama on ABC and you're giving me the Twin Towers NINE FUCKING SECONDS IN. Jeeeesus Christ. I want to personally beat the shit out of whichever soulless marketing goblin is responsible for this.

3) All the other dumb shit in the montage.

ENRON. FAKE PROTESTS CLEARLY SHOT WITH LIKE EIGHT EXTRAS. A CHEESY COMPUTER-GRAPHIC WORMHOLE WITH "Y2K" WRITTEN OVER IT. Wow, it's like it's nine months ago all over again!

Wall Street and a house with a foreclosed sign -- man, those were some crazy times we lived through, when Wall Street and foreclosures were both invented.

Bush and Gore -- haha, remember that SNL skit! There's the smoldering wreckage of the worst terror attack on American soil again! Hey, Hurricane Katrina! Remember where you were when the hurricane hit? (I was at home, thinking to myself, I can't wait until this horrible tragedy is reduced to an empty signifier in a drive-by of the Decade's Greatest Moments as exposition to promote some trite fucking ABC mocku-drama.) Soldiers and a map of Afghanistan -- man, I came of age so hard when that happened! Clinton -- hmm, that was the 90s I think, but sure.

Thanks for showing us a bunch of things that happened. What does this have to do with your show? Your show that is SET IN THE PRESENT? "Wow, man, even the mundane is significant when set against the backdrop of world events." Go get fucked.

4) The fact that this is a mocku-drama.

Go away fake documentaries. So so so so over. Even the good shows that do it are horrible at it, so why would I want to see this shit. Nothing is more contrived than this.

5) Everything looks wrong.

We've got a bunch of 30-year-olds dancing at the prom. The basketball player is wearing some bizarre jersey that is neither the shape nor the design of any basketball jersey I've ever seen, and it has no team name on it. I think they just cut the sleeves off a football jersey or something.

6) THE JOCK.

Oh man, the jock. Seriously, that's a quote. "OK, guys, let's have some characters." "How about the jock?" "Ok, what does he do?" "You know, plays sports." "Great work everyone that's enough for today."

7) ANOTHER SHOT OF THE FUCKING WORLD TRADE CENTER at 1:02

I want someone stoned for this. Someone deserves to suffer some for using pictures of thousands of people dying to flog some shitty ABC show that (God-willing) will be canceled by Thanksgiving. What, ABC, no jumper footage? Couldn't get the rights or something? IT'S A BITTA-SWEEET (go to hell immediately everyone involved with this show).

8) The little blinking "REC" in the corner of the screen.

Ahahahaha.

9) THE PUNK.

Oh man the punk married the jock, what a paradigm shift. You're really throwing all my preconceived notions of high school out the window, you pieces of shit. BUT THEY'RE UNLIKE! HOW CAN THEY MATE?

The first two characters we're introduced to are The Jock and The Punk. This is so fucking lazy. ABC next time you want to tell me you hate me and find me beneath contempt just swing by my place, knock on my door and spit directly into my mouth instead, and then show me pictures of the September 11th attacks.

10) THE NERD.

That's it, those are literally all the kinds of people that exist in the world, well done producers of ABC's My Generation. Oh and hey he's still an awkward nerd who owns a sperm bank or something (and the jock is still fit and the punk still wears, uh, heavy makeup (could this show handle the idea of punk worse than NCIS handles goth? probably not, but it's in play, which is something) (that NCIS actress is 41 by the way)). The lesson as always: no one ever changes.

11) They had a son when they slept together on prom niZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

12) THE BEAUTY QUEEN

is in an icy marriage. My head is spinning. Are there any cliches left in the cliche book? SAVE SOME CLICHES FOR SEASON TWO!

13) The high school couple still has a thing for each other.

No no no no no no fuck you show Jesus. Did I miss the scene where they step out of the frozen fucking carbonite they've been in for the past ten years? This is so stupid. I feel myself getting stupider aaahhhh aaaahhhh I can feel it slipping away I'm losing everything aaahhh tell everyone I love them I'm sorry.

14) "I'm done"

Whoa you're really pushing the bounds of the fake documentary, you fucking hacks. Nice lavender sweater w/ yellow collared undershirt.

15) HAVE YOU CHASED YOUR DREAMS?

Die.

16) "You Can't Always Get What You Want"

...unless what you want is triteness, in which case ARE YOU EVER IN LUCK! Also see conclusion.

17) Phony war footage.

This is almost as disgusting as the 9/11 stuff, of course. IT'S MAKING ME FEEEEEL.

18) That look when the one chick asks the other chick if she's going to have a kid.

Oh man I wonder if she's happy in her marriage CAN YOU TELL? Clearly you loathe your husband, can you not even pretend you don't when asked a question by someone you barely know? No one is that transparent except in shitty mocku-dramas that are so poorly written and so dripping with phony pathos that there is literally no other way to show it (except she probably says it straight out in a talking head right after that because the producers of ABC's My Generation think we're all brainless).

19) THIS IS ABOUT THEIR LIVES. OUR LIVES.

No it's not. It's about the lives of some white bread stock characters who don't even deserve to be called "characters," honestly, much less entities with "lives." THE PUNK THE JOCK -- they're words with faces. Also, it's not OUR LIVES because that announcer is clearly a 60-year-old man doing his "young hip show" voice.

CONCLUSION: Everyone involved with this show is fucking old. Hell, the second behind-the-scenes guy they talk to (Warren Littlefield) was played by Bob fucking Balaban in 1996's "The Late Shift" (no seriously). These people have no clue what it was like to come of age in the 2000s. They know what it was like to be old and get older. They don't have the first fucking clue about "our" generation (is Facebook anywhere in this show?). This, like every other piece of poisonous, masturbatory navel-gazing nostalgia our culture has shit out over the past few decades, could only be the product of baby boomers. For God's sake, the trailer features a 90s MOR radio hit and a Rolling Stones song, the title is a Who reference -- they can't help themselves! They know nothing else! The show's not even about "our" generation in any way. It's another way for old people to talk about themselves and try to trick those youngsters into listening. Which, whatever, I don't want anyone to tell me what my generation was like, but especially not some old people. At least the constant 60s/70s nostalgia shit this planet has been subjected to was a little bit honest.

The reason I'm hopeful this disgusting show will fail is that I don't think this generation is really that interested in all that nostalgia stuff yet. I hate when people do this kind of generational sum-up, but I'm going to be hypocritical for a second here and do it myself: it seems like we're so enthralled with the present that the past, even the recent past means very little to us. Sure we love remembering our old Nickelodeon shows and Super Nintendo games and shit like that, but we don't try to imbue it all with some mystical meaning like the awful baby boomers responsible for garbage like this (if for no other reason than it's not far back enough yet). So I don't think anyone will watch this show. Please, please, tell me I'm right.