Krysten Ritter as Chloe: A New Kind of Role Model

Left to right: The Beeks, Chloe the role model, and June the roommate.

Girls in they're early 20's, put down your college textbook on the influence of 17th Century French poetry on the contemporary female psyche and listen to me! There's a new kind of role model in town, her name is Chloe and she lives in some really fabulous building in the esteemed West Village in New York City, parties all the time, has no regrets about anything, and has never worn underwear. How does she afford such a fabulous lifestyle? It wasn't cramming for finals in the crowded Starbucks on a Saturday night, she's a con artists, and she's a thief, and she's a liar, and everyone is obsessed with her. Including me.

It definitely requires some suspension of disbelief considering Chloe almost nightly goes out and drinks until she blacks out on the sofa in her spacious living room (unheard of if you've ever lived in The Village), and never seems to have a hang over, guilt, or a walk of shame. She's constantly fabulous. Which leads me to believe that she's some kind of renegade fembot from the future who's dropping hints for all of us Hannah Horvath types to drop the books, the whining, and the awkwardness and just go balls to the wall insane. Then perhaps one day we'll have that West Village apartment, beautiful silk gowns, flawless complexions, and James Van Der Beek for a best friend. Thanks, Don't Trust the B---- in Apt 23 for making it all so clear all of a sudden.

Even the protagonist, mouse-girl June Colburn (Dreama Walker) is questioning her intentions of going back to Law School and finding a job a serious pencil pushing, ball grabbing Lawyer's assistant on Wall Street and trading that in for the good life of endless Vodka launch parties, shopping sprees and casual sex with hotties who come into the coffee shop at which she currently slaves away as a Barista. 

Of course, this means you must have a pair of cast-iron kidneys, and absolutely no sleeping patters to interfere with pesky things like a 'job' and 'responsibilities', we can have those when we're 30, for now let's just all embrace our 20's or what's left of them, for what they are, says Chloe.

Of course a big plot hole is how exactly she makes a living from being a con artist (i.e. what is her con game) but it seems to me that all she really does is drown people in their obsession over her fabulousness, and makes them give her all of their time, energy, money, and alcohol. Seems to work out pretty well for her. Maybe we should all start taking notes. 

Promo below (different one) explains it all.

Why 'Don't Trust the B----- in Apt 23' is 100 Times Better Than 'Girls'

Ok here's why. 

Ritter and the Beeks get into all kinds of improbable shenanigans just being themselves.

I can compare the two because both are set in New York, and the main characters of each respective show are ideally the same. Both are young professionals, put down by crippling financial circumstances that force them into situations that make them uncomfortable.

But as much as I enjoy quirky slightly chubby girls bitch and moan about their white-people-problems, after a while, it gets rather old, and by a while, I mean one episode. The rule is if after three episodes, the show is tanking, then it's tanked honey. On the other hand we have a show like Don't Trust the B---- in Apt 23 which after a pilot episode which is usually problematic is already blowing me away.

We've seen this kind of sociopathic anti-heroine character a million times, literally. But Krysten Ritter comes at it with such a feisty-ness and unapologetic fervor that she's akin to a character like Brian Kinney (Gale Harold) on the much understated landmark program Queer as Folk (2000-2005), the hedonistic, opportunistic, vile, yet magnetic main character who is reviled and desired all at once. Of course Chloe (Krysten Ritter) is not the main character, she's the lovable antagonist, but for all of her outlandishness she still seems somewhat tangible and believable.

'OMG do you want to have ironic, misguided, and passive-aggresive conversations about how tough our lives are because none of us have jobs but all along we knew that this day would eventually come where we'd have to actually worry about it?'

 She's learned to use her feminine wiles to survive in an unforgiving place like Manhattan rather than bitching and moaning about it the way that Lena Dunham's character does in her adorable quirky way in Girls. But what Jeffrey Sconce refers to as 'the market in quirk' is getting out of hand in syndicated TV shows, and it's not just the Lena Dunham character with whom we are supposed to identify with that the networks are ramming right up our asses, but are any of her friends interesting? I mean seriously. None of them barely have a personality to speak of. They just wander through life with their individual quirks shitting a nugget of wisdom into the plot every once in a while. They remind me of those really banal roommates I had through college that made the worst part of my day after 4 back to back classes and a work shift until 11:30pm walking past them while they were cooking dinner in the common room together, talking forever about nothing. 

And the writing is just better in Don't Trust the B----... it's wittier, it's of course extravagant and skewed, but it's fun and it's genuinely hilarious, not that awkward kind of hilarious that you get with Girls where you're just waiting for the running joke to mercifully end but it never does. 

'Oh I just love goldfish, you wanna have sex with me?'

Honestly, the best and filthiest part of Don't Trust the B---- in Apt 23 is the Beeks. For those of you not playing the home game, I'm talking of course about Ke$ha video thespian and Katie Holmes' 90's paramour with the five-finger forehead James Van Der Beek who plays basically himself. He's Chloe's best friend and spends his time trying to prove himself a serious actor all the while nailing squeaky undergrads or as he likes to call them 'those fucking NYU students' (represent!) who want nothing more than for him to sing 'I Don't Wanna Wait' by Paula Cole and put on the flannel. He's just as much of a slut as Chloe and she refers to him as her straight gay best friend. Now, that's something that's relevant in today's youth culture, take notes Girls. 

So basically what I'm saying is, though both shows are skewered towards identifying with a lawless, fragile, and frustrated culture of New York's youth today who are just trying to get by damn it, and not have to live on old bagels for the rest of their 20's, Don't Trust the B---- in Apt 23 seems to have it down much better than Girls...so far that is. 

Promo below: 

Seductress Pick: Krysten Ritter

Don't Trust the B____ in Apartment 23 might be the most asinine title for a television show in the history of asinine titles of television shows, but I have to admit it has potential. I'm glad they gave the superbitch junkie that eventually chokes on her own vomit and ruins Jesse in the head forever from Breaking Bad her own show, because she's pretty badass. 

With her Bettie Page bangs, pouty lips, and penchant for tight black dresses, Krysten Ritter looks like a revamped smut version of Ingrid Bergman, and I mean that in the best way possible. She's kink on crack, and she's not a bad actress either. She speaks to the inner badass in all of us, that always wanted to order drinks and then not pay for them, wear mini-skirts with platform pumps and not be called a slut, and not have to purse our lips. We needed someone to fill that neo-goth ice princess pasty-skinned vixen void after Kristen Stewart started getting on our nerves with her not-so-adorable awkwardness which comes off as unbridled arrogance, and Krysten is doing it beautifully. 

She's just the right amount of rebellious without being irritatingly gimmicky, even though her name is spelled with an unnecessary 'y'. She has a unique look in a muted aesthetic world of baby-faced ingenues and buxom sexpots. I'm glad being an unapologetic cunt is becoming en vogue right now. We don't need many more field mice and frustrated housewives cluttering up our primetime line up. 

Season premieres April 11th. The Beeks will be on it. What more do you need?