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Whitney Cummings: I'm Your Girlfriend (2016)
Mildly Funny, Then Mean Spirited and Preachy. More Sermon than Comedy.
Though Whitney starts by engaging the audience as a way for them to relate to her self-deprecating humor — it comes across as rage. What should be a funny trip into role reversal and observational humor ends up as a 59 minute rant about how unfair life is, now that Whitney is in her 30s, has the career that she's always wanted and has money. To quote the Atlantic's Megan Garber, "To the extent that I'm Your Girlfriend, for all its jokes about porn, ends up scanning, at times, more like a sermon. Or a lecture. Or a TED Talk."
The full article which dissects why the is special is so uneven can be googled. Use the search terms "The Triumph of Soap-Box Comedy, Whitney Cummings's new HBO special, I'm Your Girlfriend, often sounds like a TED Talk. It's in good company."
Happy Valley (2014)
3 Hours of Good TV Bookended by Unnecessary Exposition and Angst
I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Happy Valley is good TV book ended by too much angst and exposition. It takes two very pedestrian episodes to really get into the series. And after what seems to be the series climax, another hour of pablum to get to the end.
The narrative has a very thinly veiled bias against men. All are represented as incredibly flawed. To the point of being stupid, unfaithful, weak or inept. Furthermore a lot of misinformation about cannabis is perpetuated. Last there are some police procedures that senior officers should know about from experience that puts them in situations that require back up. All these procedures are ignored at the expense of narrative to make things more dramatic. This is not only inconsistent but goes against the grain of how law-enforcement is done in the UK.
My suggestion would be to skip episode one, go right to episode three and watch all the way through episode five. Skip episode 6 all together. In doing so, you'll still get to enjoy the gist of story and the series AND save yourself three hours worth of additional TV watching that brings little to the overall narrative.