Quarterlife's a Bitch, Then You Die

BIT TORMENT Bitsie Tulloch Compare and contrast:

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."