I’m old school baby like cocaine and caviar.
-Cam
How To Make It In America or as I’ll call it, THE HUSTLE SHOW. This show is like the opposite of Entourage and equally as good. This show is about two young New Yorkers trying to make it. Trying to live the American dream even in this recession. Where Entourage is escape, How To Make It in America is a show that is more relatable even with the SoHo parties and Conde Nast account having friends. I think show does show pretty well what it’s like to be young and have potential and not be where you thought you would be. Basically a quarter life crisis show, but with hustling. To give you the basic plot of the pilot, we meet Ben (Bryan Greenberg) sitting in his apartment with tons of skatedecks. Clearly this sets up a hustle that didn’t work out. Ben looks depressed and bored of his situation. Then we meet our second main character Cam (Victor Rasuk), who appears onscreen with cam’ron’s “Oh Boy” playing. We learn that Cam is the idea man even though it might not work out. They go help out Gingy (Shannyn Sossamon) set up her art show before Ben has to go to work at Barney’s. Gingy attempts to hook up Ben with her homegirl Jane, who she says will sleep with him (SCORE!). Ben goes to work where he runs into a high school classmate David Kaplan (Eddie Kaye Thomas), who he learns is in finance aka BALLIN’. Cam goes home and sees that his Cousin Rene (Luis Guzman) is home from prison. And Cam owe Rene money from a loan he gave him to make the skate decks. Cam has another plan to pay back Rene which deals with selling some leathers off of the back of a truck. Later Ben and Cam goes to Gingy’s art show where we meet Ben’s ex, Rachel (Lake Bell) who Ben still has feelings for. We also meet Domingo (Kid Cudi) their homeboy with all the connections. This episode sets up basically their goal to be the “MAN”. It has a great soundtrack, very New York sounding. Cam’ron, Diggable Planets, Hercules and Love Affair are all played during this episode and sets a great mood. This is NYC where Entourage is LA. It’s a great setup to what I feel is a great new show in what could be the second great HBO era of TV. Or maybe I’m too close to this show, cause I know Ben, I’ve been am there.
Perfect lyric quote for this episode is…
I want the money,
Money and the cars,
Cars and the clothes,
The hoes,
I suppose,
I just wanna be,
I just wanna be successful.-Successful:Drake featuring Trey Songz
Blissful Review-How to Make It in America episode 2:Crisp
So the second episode of this was great to me. It showed the characters moving forward and steady pushing their goals. It added some more characterization for Rene that’s more than just “Cam’s criminal loan shark cousin”. We got more Domingo. We see Ben less depressed about his situation and with fire in belly on the hustle. See the Hustle is what drives this show, seeing these characters strive for something out of nothing in a really hard industry like fashion. We get less focus on Cam this episode and it is really a focus on Ben as we find out more of his back story like him dropping out of F.I.T. (Fashion Institute of Technology). I like that in this episode a character flat out tells them to quit and they basically look at each other and decide to screw that we are GOING IN. Again the music of this show is on point, great fit for the scenes they are used and are perfect for the characters. So far this is my favorite new show of this overall 2009-2010 tv season.