TV likes to portray New York City as a millennial fantasyland, from High Maintenance to Russian Doll

The New York Times

Recent hip New York City-based TV shows, including Netflix's Master of None, are "erasing diversity through the act of depicting it," says Willy Staley. "To depict young New Yorkers’ lives on TV with even a modicum of fidelity, you must take this fraught remapping of the city into account: This is how your critics live, this is how many of your viewers live and, thanks to the collapsing value of creative labor in the age of streaming TV, this may be how you live, too," he explains. "And while New York is still the pleasure dome that less ethically burdened depictions (Sex and the City, for example, or even Girls) made it out to be, it’s no longer quite so easy to enjoy without reservation. There is some sense that this all comes at a cost — one that mostly falls on others. And who wants to think about all that while watching TV? But this unease can be sublimated into an idealized vision of the city, achieved by bringing in a more diverse array of New Yorkers while extinguishing the class differences that sometimes exist between them. Its days as a melting pot long behind it, the city can be reimagined as something more like a hot tub."