“How to Make It in America,” HBO’s latest love letter to New York City, begins with a series of snapshots that reminds me of a high school photography project. You have your requisite photos of homeless people, graffiti and your friends putting on their hipster best in the hopes of convincing your photo teacher that you are urban and tortured. The pilot, though brief, resembles a patchwork quilt of filmic narrative and character cliches more than an original HBO show. And what makes it worse is that HBO seems to think that by throwing some modern music–Samaire Armstrong and Kid Cudi–and funky outfits at me, I’ll be entranced into watching. False.

Brief summary of the show that has plot and characters in the way that girls who wear leggings have pants: Ben (white) is a failed artist for the new generation (think jeans and skateboards), and Cam (not white) is his determined business partner. Cam gets involved in risky business deals, and Ben bemoans the loss of his girlfriend.

I’m perpetually frustrated by shows where you can see the artifices of development spinning and whirring with every shot–think about the vampire gimmick of “The Vampire Diaries,” any Fox reality show and increasingly HBO programming (“How to Make It,” “Bored to Death”). The New York setting, the attractive and diverse “bro” pair, the artist’s life, the inability to move on from an ex–all against a SoHo backdrop–scream “this is the life every middle to upper class college student wants, so we’re giving it to you 24 minutes at a time.” I can already tell that the show, like “Bored to Death,” will suffer from its model of episodic adventures toward the general goal of “making it.” I can tell because the characters in the pilot are intentionally forgettable, with the notable exceptions of Cam and his uncle, played by that guy from VH1’s “I Love the Decades” who pauses too much.

Comparisons to “Entourage” have been the most prominent feature of early criticism of this show, as Mark Wahlberg is one of the executive producers. I agree that “Make It” will follow the “Entourage” thematic and narrative emphases on finding adventure and resisting the Man. Paradoxically, my favorite part of the pilot came when we see Ben working at Barney’s on 5th Avenue. You can take the girl out of the East Coast, but you can’t take the East Coast out of the girl.

Jezebel.com has published a couple of articles in the wake of the “How to Make It” premiere about HBO’s lack of female-friendly programming. While on paper the comparison to Showtime, with “United States of Tara,” “Weeds,” “Nurse Jackie” and “Secret Diary of a Call Girl,” is striking, I would argue that this is less problematic for the network than the comparison of content. HBO’s TV shows fail to pop and commit to compelling setups in the way that Showtime does and even HBO films do.    Jezebel dismisses women on “True Blood” and “Big Love” as “buried” in ensemble casts, but I would argue that the model of an ensemble cast and the admitted gimmicks of vampires and polygamy create juicier female roles than the pigeonholed antifeminist counterparts so often found on TV. And who would want to play one of these boring characters in “How to Make It” anyway? Apparently not the current actors, who barely bother to act in the pilot. It could be that their performances are lost among the short scenes, the Polaroid montages, the music and the city scans; it could also be that the script is a joke.

“How to Make It” is essentially a less funny, creative, well-constructed and musical version of “Flight of the Conchords.” The pilot is also like every high school reunion episode of every sitcom, because a former classmate of Ben’s, now successful, recognizes Ben working retail and tells his Russian girlfriend how great Ben was in high school (getting a sense of the cliche ambiance?). I couldn’t shake the “RENT” vibe either: two guy friends/new age artists living poorly, going to art events, trying to make money and having sex…but not contracting AIDS. This is a Marky-Mark comedy drama, after all.