8 Brooklyn TV Shows: How Real Are They?


One of the secret pleasures of TV viewing is coming across a show that’s set in New York and watching it carefully, only so that you can tear it apart. Tearing things apart is one of my favorite pastimes, anyway. At least, it is when I’m frustrated with my own life. It’s not what anyone would call healthy exactly, but there is something therapeutic about it, as any doctor would tell you.
Actually, though, I haven’t even had any time for TV in some time now, so I get my tear-down thrills vicariously. Like when I saw that the show Glee would partially be set in Bushwick now, and two of the characters would be living in a airplane hangar-like loft for $1,800. This is bullshit! You can’t even get anything in Bushwick anymore for that much. Well, you could get something but not an airplane hangar-like loft. I call major bullshit on this one. I’ve never watched Glee, but that doesn’t stop me from judging its lack of reality when it comes to NYC real estate. So, in honor of the new TV season, I figured I would look back on other shows—many of whom I have also NEVER seen—and judge them according to a somewhat (highly) arbitrary system that I’ve developed.