How to Make It in America Season 2

Product Description This half-hour comedy focuses on the urban adventures of Ben (Bryan Greenberg) an aspiring designer who has seen previous passion projects derailed by fate and fortune, and Cam (Victor Rasuk), Ben’s best friend, free spirit and would-be mogul. This season, as they continue to hustle to get their CRISP line of T-shirts and hoodies off the ground following a (potentially) lucrative trip to Japan, Ben and Cam scour the downtown NYC scene for new business connections, following any lead they can get to get noticed in the ultra-competitive fashion industry. Among those who rub shoulders with Ben and Cam in and around the city are Ben’s ex-girlfriend Rachel (Lake Bell), an interior decorator now searching for meaning after a globe-spanning trip to Africa and Europe; Domingo (Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi), a well-connected street pal with his own “entrepreneurial” business; David “Kapo” Kaplan (Eddie Kaye Thomas), a hedge-fund manager and high-school acquaintance; and Cam’s cousin Rene (Luis Guzmán), an ex-con who is eying his own get-rich scheme by marketing his Rasta Monsta energy drink. Amazon.com Season two of HBO's How to Make It in America is just as compulsively watchable as the debut season--following young people both ambitious and laconic as they try to gain traction doing what they love (or what they have to do) in New York City. The cast, led by Bryan Greenberg, Victor Rasuk, Shannyn Sossamon, and Kid Cudi, is stellar, and the actors embrace their characters' conflicted and conflicting emotions as they try to claw, or surf, their way to the top in achieving their dreams. As fledgling street-clothing designers Ben (Greenberg) and Cam (Rasuk) try to get their hoodie line, Crisp, off the ground this season, they are cut off by the ever-changing tastes in New York hip. "You know, Tim and Ivan's line? The New York Neanderthals?" says a shop owner apologetically as she explains why she has to showcase another fashion line. "It's more about the guys than their clothes--they have the story behind them. Junkies-turned-fashion designers." Their lawyer friend's advice to get better publicity? "One of you needs to get shot." Having more success this season is Rene (Luis Guzmán), whose new energy drink, Rasta Monsta, is becoming a hot commodity, complete with bootylicious billboards (which unfortunately have fallout for Rene's love life). Lake Bell is lovely and believable as Ben's conflicted ex. Like Entourage (whose executive producer, Mark Wahlberg, does the same duties here), How to Make It in America blends comedy and drama, love lives and pursuit of success, high art and street cred, in an irresistible package that feels as real as the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn. -- A.T. Hurley