BIT TORMENT Bitsie Tulloch

1) A very pale, dark-haired 20-something waif, who has a penchant for introspection, crying jags, video, combative dudes, and a tendency to make sweeping statements about her generation and the importance of art is asked to "define irony" on a job interview: Gamine No.1: "Irony. Uh.... Irony. It's a noun. It's when something is ... ironic. It's, uh.... Well, I can't really define irony ... but I know it when I see it!"

2) A very pale, dark haired 20-something waif, who has a penchant for introspection, crying jags, video, combative dudes, and a tendency to make sweeping statements about her generation and the importance of art pitches a magazine story to her boss. Uptight Boss Lady: "I literally don't know where you come up with these ideas" Gamine No. 2: "It must be all the hallucinogens I take." UBL: "You do not." Gamine No. 2: "No, I do not, Britney. That's called irony."

Only one of these gamines cannot define irony. Only one of these gamines makes you want to throw empty Diet Coke cans at her smug, humorless pout. Needless to say, they are not the same gamine. No. 1 is, of course, Winona Ryder in Reality Bites. No. 2 is Dylan Krieger (played by Harvard grad Bitsie Tulloch) in the Web-drama-cum-NBC show Quarterlife, which wants to be to Gen Y what Reality Bites was to Gen X so badly its scribes have written Dylan the following lines (which she delivers while vlogging, natch): "We blog to exist, therefore we are idiots."

Quarterlife is the creation of Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the terminally beloved duo behind My So Called Life, thirtysomething, and Once & Again (Devon Gummersasl, aka Brian Krakow, has directed episodes of Quarterlife). In it, they turn their attention to 20-somethings, specifically three very pretty boys and three very pretty girls working, shagging, drinking, and dramatizing in two apartments in L.A. They have lost their touch. An indication of why can be found in Herskovitz's recent piece on Slate, in which he argued that the Internet is missing a community of creative people who are all nice to each other. In other words, Herskovitz, and his show, are officially anti-snark. If The Believer made TV, this would be it.

But a little snark is exactly what any show about a bunch of privileged, angsty, arty, 20-year-olds taking themselves too seriously demands to be at all palatable. The difference between Reality Bites and Quarterlife, both ostensibly about a group of friends trying to "find themselves," is that Reality Bites had the good sense to make some fun of its heroes—who, though attractive and charming and likeable, were also brats who knew very little, not even the definition of irony. Quarterlife, on the other hand, presents the inherently embarrassing and lame (if real) problem of a "Quarterlife crisis" as though it is the most serious thing in the world, which by definition it's not. Quarterlife may be able to define irony, but it has absolutely no sense of it.

Yet, even given all this earnestness, in eight-minute installments on the Web, where the show is still airing, it's bearable. Watching writers and actors trying so hard to "say something" is an interesting enough way to kill 10 minutes at work (believe me). But for an hour, in your house, the extra-irritating acting (especially from drunk, self-destructive, slutty-but-never-had-an orgasm, hottie Lisa, played by Maite Schwartz) becomes insufferable. It's a pretty good Web show, but it's still bad TV.