The Web and 1

The Legend of Neil (season 2)

2009-11-23T11:00:00.005-05:00

Grab your cheap wooden sword and your foppish green outfit as we head for Hyrule

Watch: http://legendofneil.com/
Below: Episode 1

Writers: Sandeep Parikh & Tony Janning
Director: Sandeep Parikh
Starring: Tony Janning

Season 2: 7 episodes, run time approx. 50 minutes

In The Legend of Neil, alcoholic slacker Neil wakes up in the middle of the classic Nintendo game The Legend of Zelda. If you're a fan of the Zelda video games, you're going to have some fun with Neil; if you're unfamiliar with Zelda, then there's no point to watching this show. But since LON has now finished its second season and the creators hope to do a third, here's a review, because there are elements that must be improved.

Neil is at its best when it's disciplined as an homage to The Legend of Zelda. The further the show strays from the source material, the worse it gets. In season two, Neil visits two underground pleasure huts. One is the money-making game, where Neil is conned by a trickster, and it's a smart take on material in the Zelda game. The other trip Neil makes is to a bar. It has nothing to do with Zelda, and instead turns into an odd and unnecessary homage to Cheers.

At the bar, another problem emerges: LON is way too crass, way too often. Dirty humor can be a real benefit to web series, free from the censorship of TV. But it's not a benefit it the show devolves into dick joke after dick joke after dick joke. Neil learns that Moblins, a common enemy in the game, have three penises. If this were just a side comment, it could have made for a hilariously subversive visual. But instead, they beat the three-penises gag into the ground, bringing it up again and again over three episodes.

Furthermore, the crudeness comes out of nowhere. There's a fairy with nymphomania and a wise guru with Tourette's - awful one-note characters whose one note has no basis in the source material. Why is it a problem that these odd elements aren't based on the source material? Because Zelda is pretty trippy on its own, that's why. If you want to be weird, there's plenty of weird stuff in Zelda already. Inventing things that have no basis in the original material just seems lazy, like you didn't try hard enough to find material in the game.

It's when Neil makes light of odd elements in the Zelda game that the show is at its best and most focused. How do hearts work? How does Link carry so much crap around with him? Why do enemies have ridiculous names like Dark Nuts? When the show is focused on elements like these, things in the game that are ripe for sendup, LON hits its target. If Neil continues his quest into a third season, hopefully the show can get these things right.

Girl Number 9

2009-11-17T10:38:00.002-05:00

A fascinating philosophical exercise, wrapped up inside an unfortunately disappointing show

Watch: http://www.canyousaveher.com/
Below: Trailer

Writer: James Moran
Directors: Dan Turner, James Moran
Starring: Gareth David-Lloyd, Joe Absolom, Tracy-Ann Oberman

6 episodes, run time approx. 27 minutes

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In Girl Number 9, Joe Absolom plays a psychopath named Vincent who has been abducting and murdering young girls, and Gareth David-Lloyd plays Matheson, the cop who has finally arrested him. These are two fine British TV veterans, with Torchwood's David-Lloyd the most recognizable to a U.S. audience. Unfortunately, whatever value GN9 gets in having these actors is squandered by directing that doesn't let them play off one another.

The bulk of the show takes place in an interrogation room, with Matheson trying to get answers from Vincent. But these scenes are badly directed and edited. Whenever Vincent is delivering a line, it's shot from the same camera angle below him, and then when Matheson has a line it cuts to another stationary camera angle. So all of their scenes end up being back-and-forth between two camera angles - no reaction shots from the other, no dialogue where both characters are in the frame. What should be intense scenes between two intense characters end up just being boring.

It seems crazy that a series in which there's an onscreen clock at times counting down to when somebody is supposed to be killed could still feel so laggardly paced. Matheson spends the majority of the first few episodes repeating that he doesn't want to hear what Vincent has to say. Of course, we know that this conversation has to happen, so Matheson is just delaying the inevitable, and it makes the show feel awfully slow.

Even the show's title is a pacing problem in itself. At the top of the series, we are told that Vincent has killed seven children, and Vincent toys with the cops and tells them that he has an eighth girl kidnapped and about to die. The problem, of course, is that you're wondering, well, where's Girl Number 9? And it's not until the end of episode three - the midpoint of the series - that the idea of a ninth victim will be brought up.

Here, the tension finally ramps up. Vincent tells Matheson that he has Matheson's 8-year-old daughter, who up until this point had never been mentioned. At this point, we have learned the following: a) Matheson has a young girl; b) Vincent abducts and kills young girls; c) Vincent refuses to deal with any other cops besides Matheson. Matheson's not a very good cop if he couldn't figure out where this was all going.

Vincent offers Matheson a deal in which he'll release Matheson's daughter if Matheson does something really horrible. I won't spoil the terms of the deal, because Girl Number 9 is worth watching solely for this question. Would you do what Matheson is asked to do? It's a sadistic philosophical exercise, but also a fascinating one.

Dead & Lonely

2009-11-11T19:32:00.000-05:00

Dating is scary. Online dating is scarier. Online dating when you're a vampire is ... beautiful?

Watch: www.ifc.com/dead-and-lonely/
Below: Episode 4

Writer/Director: Ti West
Starring: Paige Stark, Justin Rice

5 episodes, run time approx. 25 minutes

Dead & Lonely continues a tradition of short 'n sweet web series from IFC. The prior series with a highest degree of similarity to D&L is another IFC show, Like So Many Things. Both shows depict the quiet, awkward getting-to-know-you stage of a lonely guy and girl. There's just one little difference in Dead & Lonely - in this show, one of the participants just so happens to be a vampire.

Like LSMT, silence is a primary weapon in this show's arsenal. There is no dialogue for the entire first three minutes, and silence continues to be the standard for much of it. If that sort of thing frustrates you, then the show just isn't for you. Me, I'm pretentious; I love lingering shots of tortured souls' moody faces.

Since there is so little dialogue, Paige Stark and Justin Rice have to do so much of their acting with their eyes, and they're up to the challenge. Still, the hero of this story is director Ti West, who oversees some really arresting photography.

West is also a red-hot young horror director, whose film "The House of the Devil" is now in theatres. D&L and "House" are similar in their pacing, with a very slow build up to the climax. It's a formula for success - "House of the Devil" has an excellent 88% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Although Dead & Lonely is a vampire show, and West is a horror director, the "horror" here isn't blood 'n guts. It's the scariness of dating. D&L's Lee and Justin are two sad figures who find each other through online dating. The fact that Lee is a vampire is a canny commentary on how hard it is to trust people's online identities - she seems cute, but what's she hiding?

But there's an even more poignant allegory here if you consider things from Lee's perspective. This is dating in general. You try to present a nice image of yourself as you're getting to know somebody - but how long can you go until your base instincts come out and your true self is revealed? So in the final episode of the series, Lee is trying to act like a normal girl, but the whole time you keep waiting for her to lose control. Will she be able to contain herself, or is it just inevitable that her true self will take hold and she'll go for Justin's blood? It all culminates in a beautiful, haunting final scene.

Yes, there are lots and lots of vampire shows out there. But put aside your vampire fatigue, because Dead & Lonely is worth sinking your fangs into.

Delayed Teen Angst

2009-11-11T19:09:00.006-05:00

This tale of video game boxing enthusiasts is not quite a knockout, but it lands a decent impact

Watch: http://www.moctod.com/dta/
Below: Episode 1

Writer: Claire L. Wasmund
Director: Karen Bullis
Starring: Tristan Scott, Fernando Noor, Amy Vorpahl

6 episodes, run time approx. 36 minutes

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Delayed Teen Angst is the story of two young men who spend an idle day playing video games, and what happens when one of the guys starts losing interest in PlayStation and turns his attention to his friend's sister instead. When Lionel's sister Evie starts flirting with his friend Damian, Lionel is horrified - not because he fears somebody violating his sister, but because it might just represent the beginning of the end for his childhood friendship and the days of nothing but video games and movies that represent that childhood.

Lionel is the one for whom the title of Delayed Teen Angst is most resonant. Games represent Lionel's attempt to retain fun and innocence as he's growing up; all he wants to do is lounge on the couch, play games and watch movies. He's positioned at the brink of adolescence and adulthood, afraid of giving up his childhood pursuits and conscious of the possibility that he and his best friend are drifting apart as they grow older. He just wants to remain a kid and play video games, and he doesn't understand why everyone else has to go and make things all adult and complicated.

Even worse for Lionel than the thought of Damian violating his sister is the thought that Damian might reject his sister - from there, it's an easy hop over to the idea that Damian could reject him, and the idea of losing his childhood best friend is terrifying. It's all very challenging and scary, and so it's no wonder that Lionel would want to remain in this cocoon of arrested development.

There is one element of DTA that could be a real dealbreaker for some viewers. The show has an odd narrative style in that characters will frequently stop mid-scene and start speaking soliloquies directly to the camera. It takes some getting used to, but ultimately I'm OK with that part. What does bother me is the fact that the characters are so much more eloquent when they're talking to the camera as opposed to when they're talking to one another. The characters are awkward and immature with one another, and then as soon as they're talking to the camera they're wise and philosophical. In their soliloquies, they're mature and self-aware, and suddenly the scene shifts back to regular dialogue and they lose it. I understand the idea of wanting to do the show this way, as it lends the series an air of being profound that wouldn't be there if the characters were just the immature young adults they are regularly. But the execution never totally clicks.

The Scare Game (episode 1)

2009-11-10T20:37:00.009-05:00

A clever ode to slasher flicks and the fans who love them

Watch: www.thescaregame.com
Below: Episode 1 (edited version)

Writer/Director: Phillip Hughes
Starring: Jenn Daugherty, Scott Bryan, Jason Witter, Kate Costello, Ryan Jason Cook

Pilot episode: run time 10 minutes
Future episodes' air dates TBA

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I suppose the best compliment I could give to new horror-comedy The Scare Game is this: I'm not just going to recommend that you see the pilot episode of the series; I'm going to recommend that you see it twice.

In TSG, a group of horror movie fans are roused from watching a slasher flick when the power goes out. What has happened? Have they stumbled into a horror movie scenario of their own? I can't give away too much without spoiling the fun, but the payoff at the end is well done. If you're lucky enough to get to go into the episode unspoiled, you may have some questions about the characters' strange actions, wardrobe, and goofy dialogue as they're getting chased by an apparent madman. When you get to the end, it'll all make perfect sense, and it'll make a second viewing fun as you get to see the cleverness behind it.

Since the characters are horror movie fans, all of their behavior is dictated by having seen all these movies and knowing what to do and what not to do - like, don't go by yourself to check out the weird noise coming from the darkness. It makes The Scare Game a smart take on the densely populated horror genre, constantly giving a knowing wink to the audience. Note also that I'm not referencing any character names in this post. It's the show's intent; the characters are all playing types that are an homage to the stock characters of horror films.

TSG gets additional praise for the fact that it's made in Albuquerque, which adds to its indie cred. I always root for a show made outside of the L.A. bubble. I mean, rooting for the little guy is part of the appeal of web series in general, right?

The Scare Game isn't perfect. The soundtrack could definitely be tweaked - they've got some good original music over the end credits and the final few seconds of episode one, which only serves to reinforce that the music earlier in the episode was lacking. In the chase scenes, you may expect some pulse-pounding, chill-inducing tones on the soundtrack, and they're just not there.

For a show that bills itself as a horror-comedy, TSG isn't really going to make you go LOL-ing yourself. It's cool and clever more so than side-splittingly funny. The pilot episode is so predicated on the twist ending that outwardly big humor earlier on might have spoiled it. But it's the twist ending inside the twist ending that will give the show life going forward beyond a simple well-made short.

The Crusader

2009-11-10T20:08:00.005-05:00

A mockumentary that's badly plotted, illogical, mean-spirited and unfunny. But, hey, other than that ...

Watch: http://watchthecrusader.com/
Below: Episode 6

Writer: Kelly Parks
Directors: Kelly Parks, Vernon Mortensen
Starring: Colin Cunningham, Ron Choularton, Matt Bradford, Annemarie Pazmino

8 episodes, run time approx. 42 minutes

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In The Crusader, a snooty British documentary filmmaker captures the downward spiral of a broken-down guy whose only respite from a crumbling marriage is a quixotic quest to rid the world of the pestilence that is people taking up two parking spaces with their cars. It's a mockumentary that is occasionally funny, but not nearly enough.

British filmmaker Jonathan Ashton III stumbled onto Paul while completing a prior documentary, "America: What Else Is Wrong With It, Then?" That's a great title, and suggests that Ashton might be some kind of witty bastard. But that's only half right. Ashton isn't really very witty, but he is a bastard. Paul is sad and pathetic, but Ashton bullies him so much that you have to root for Paul no matter how pathetic he is.

But where the show really gets lost is in Ashton's quest to discover the cause of Paul's obsession. It turns out that Paul's breakdown - there had been a time when he held a regular job instead of spending all his days patrolling a parking lot - came after his wife started up her own porno site, FistingDenise.com. But it's never at all clear what that had to do with Paul taking up this specific calling. There's no obvious link between his wife having sex with other men on camera and Paul becoming obsessed with people taking up two parking spaces, and even less of a link as to why Paul chose one particular parking lot several miles from his home. It's clear why Paul may have become obsessed with something; it's just never clear why he became obsessed with this thing. In neglecting to give viewers any rationalization, Ashton doesn't tell a good story - and neither does The Crusader.

The whole storyline about Paul and Denise's relationship so consumes the series that Paul's parking lot crusade is totally ignored in the last two episodes of the series. The final scene of the series lingers on the question of whether Paul can forgive Denise, with no reference to whether Paul would give up on or continue his parking lot crusade if he does. And that's too bad, seeing as it's, you know, what the show's about. The premise of "man becomes obsessed with stopping people from taking up two parking spaces" is far more interesting and unique than "man whose wife cheated on him." So not only does The Crusader lose focus, but it loses focus to shift to a definitively weaker storyline.

Vampire Killers (episodes 1-6)

2009-10-28T15:30:00.008-04:00

Lesbian vampires: a good phrase to get Google traffic, not necessarily a good series premise

Watch: http://www.vampirekillers.tv/
Below: Episode 3

Creator: Doug Hutchison
Writers: Doug Hutchison, Marco Mannone, Tim Baldini
Director: Tim Baldini
Starring: Doug Hutchison, Marco Mannone, Tim Baldini

6 episodes, run time approx. 15½ minutes

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When you first reach vampirekillers.tv, the website states that there are hundreds of thousands of vampires but only four vampire killers to combat them. But there aren't four vampire killers in the show. There are five. And there are five for the majority of this six-episode run. One of them is killed off in the second half of the series, but the majority of this series takes place with five vampire killers.

That's just one way in which the Vampire Killers website seems to be playing in a whole different ballpark from the Vampire Killers series. The site's heading gives a tagline of the series, "Thirteen Vampires. Thirteen Ways to Die." But we don't meet thirteen vampires. Only two vampires, in fact, have any dialogue in the six-episode run. And good luck figuring out what in the world "thirteen ways to die" means. Ways that you can kill vampires, or ways that vampires can kill you? Nothing like that comes anywhere close to being referenced on the show. These feel like things that the makers of the show want to depict in the future, but that future will probably never happen.

These six episodes feel like nothing more than a prequel, a prequel to a story that, again, may never end up being told. Web series creators are always doing this. When the makers of Vampire Killers knew that they were going to scrounge up enough money to film six episodes, they had a responsibility at that point to tell a story in those six episodes, not just tell the first chapter of a story.

Even if the makers of Vampire Killers had unlimited resources to tell the story they wanted to tell, it probably would've been a mess anyway. The whole thing does feel skeevy. The first scene of the show features two lingerie-clad ladies making out on a motel bed, while a third woman sits on the edge of the bed watching porn (which, yes, seems redundant). It's ridiculously prurient. The makers of the show want to grab you right from the start with shock value and adult content, but instead it's a turnoff. The first scene makes you feel as if the show is being produced by horny 13-year-old boys. And the rest of the show does nothing to change that.

The vampires, it turns out, are all lesbians, and they celebrate a fresh kill by making out with one another. I don't even want to get into the writers' thought process on that. But, hey, everybody on the web exploits women. This show exploits vampires, too, piggybacking off a pop culture phenomenon. It's just sleazy.

Roommating

2009-10-28T14:20:00.003-04:00

Joel and Erin's friendship is a constant series of cruelty, blackmail, self-involvedness - and hilarity

Watch: http://roommatingshow.com
Below: Episode 3

Writers: Joel Church-Cooper & Erin Gibson
Directors: Joel Church-Cooper, Erin Gibson, Tyler Gillett
Starring: Erin Gibson, Joel Church-Cooper

12 episodes, run time approx. 59 minutes

Joel Church-Cooper, one half of the cast of Roommating, wears the same t-shirt in virtually all of his scenes the entire series. His wardrobe is monotonous that when one day he stops wearing jeans and instead wears khakis, his roommate Erin is so freaked out that she has to stage an intervention and let Joel know that she fears she may not like the person Joel is turning into. This all tells you two things about Roommating. First, both Joel and Erin are frightened of changing, and even more so frightened of the other one changing. And second, Joel is damn lazy. If you wear the same clothes every day, that's laziness. But that's OK. Lazy is good. Lazy is funny.

Roommating is a low-concept show. It's two friends hanging out. That's it. We never see them having to work, giving them what appears to be infinite time to hang out and cause trouble. The premise is that Joel and Erin originally met on Craigslist, but the story would be the same even if they were friends long before they moved in together - no matter how good friends you are, if you live together in a confined space you're still going to drive each other nuts. Joel and Erin are perfectly suited for cohabitation, as the worldview they share would probably make them ill-suited for living with just about anyone else.

Joel and Erin's friendship is a constant series of blackmailing one another, ruining each other's relationships, and making sure that the other one can't get ahead. If you only love the people you're horrible to, then Joel and Erin must be the closest of friends. They're really horrible to one another, albeit always in a way where the next day they act as if nothing ever happened. In particular, the punishment inflicted on Erin when she spoils The Wire plot developments is quite ghastly - but well-deserved, to be sure.

Erin Gibson and Joel Church-Cooper really give everything of themselves to sell these characters. It's probably ironic given what slackers the characters are that as actors Gibson and Church-Cooper will do whatever it takes to sell a gag. The end of episode ten offers a wild scene of Erin in the shower as Joel dumps tomato juice and ketchup on her, trying to get the stink of a skunk off her. Gibson's willingness to submit to that indignity is great. As for the show, we don't need to be quite so ambitious. There's nothing at all stinky about Roommating.

My Pal Satan

2009-10-28T13:41:00.002-04:00

The least scary, least interesting screen depiction of Satan ever made

Watch: www.mypalsatan.com
Below: Episode 1 teaser

Writer: Dennis Heaton
Director: Vivieno Caldinelli
Starring: Jefferson Brown, Rachel Wilson

6 episodes, run time approx. 23 minutes

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My Pal Satan is structured to be like a parody of cheesy TV sitcoms centered around mismatched roommates, one of them straight-laced and one of them wacky and unpredictable. Here, the straight-laced one is Donna, a young professional who put up an online ad looking for a roommate, only to have that new roommate turn out to be Satan himself. So the premise of each episode is simple: Satan causes trouble, Donna gets annoyed, hilarity ensues. And like any other cheesy sitcom, everything gets reconciled at the end of the episode as the pair learns a lesson about friendship, and they share a happy smile.

The show comes complete with opening credits and a theme song straight out of the 1980s. Unfortunately, the show loses the vibe after that. If you're going to parody those kinds of sitcoms, you have to go all the way. There's no laugh track here, and there should be. And the series is shot in single-camera, when, if you want to be a true parody of old sitcoms, it has to be multicam.

Of course, the real problem is that it's not 1987 and Perfect Strangers is not a top 10 Nielsen show. So there’s really very little point to a parody.

The humor of My Pal Satan is crude and childish, because this version of Satan is crude and childish. This Satan has the mindset of an eleven year old boy - Satan seems to have a particular joy for vomit and excrement. MPS has the unfortunate timing of having premiered just a month after the end of Ray Wise’s brilliant portrayal of The Devil in TV’s Reaper, and this Satan is just so lame in comparison. Instead of a Satan to be feared, this is a Satan who deserves to be mocked. But is a Satan who's just a tool really a good idea?

I'm just not sure that I'm willing or able to accept a Satan who is, quite frankly, a loser. Satan pines over Donna for the entire series, only to be constantly rebuffed. By the end of the show he is reduced to alternately looking like a sad puppy dog and acting out like a tantrum-throwing four year old. He's pathetic. And if he can't even convince Donna to like him, you can extrapolate from there that he's probably not a very good Satan. Satan should be smooth, charming and unflappable. It's hard to imagine this Satan, a Satan who is constantly flustered by Donna, being any good at winning people's souls. This Satan is a loser. Where's the fun in that?

Meet the Mayfarers (episodes 1-10)

2009-10-06T19:41:00.000-04:00

One family hates being forced to make nice, but you'll like it quite a bit

Watch: http://mayfarers.com/
Below: Episode 5

Writer/Director: Todd Norwood
Starring: Todd Norwood, John Depew, Jessica Erin Sylvia, Jenna Paone, Candace Hopkins, Jessica Webb, Jeffrey Gitelle

Episodes 1-10: run time approx. 32 minutes

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Porter Mayfarer, apparently the world's richest fishmonger, has willed his $5 million fortune to the rest of his estranged family only upon the condition that they make nice and stay together for a full year. It's quite the request, as the family has a lot of baggage. So why does Porter request that his family stay together for a year? Because he was a sadistic old man, that's why. It's his way of torturing them as posthumous revenge for the fact that nobody ever visited him. And for us, it's a great setup for a really fun ride.

Porter was a dirty old man in more ways than one - he also married a woman his grandkids' age. Grandson Nick learns this fact only after a one-night stand turns out to be his "grandmother." The woman, Isobel - clearly having been a match for sadistic old Porter after all - subsequently tries to blackmail and seduce Nick when they meet again for the funeral.

The men of this family clearly like 'em young. Nick's father Phil left Nick's mother long ago and is now with a girl younger than Nick's sister. Phil's a huckster who became a local celebrity by annointing himself a love doctor with his own dating service and romance seminars. He's now hooking up with a college girl, Barb, an indignity both to Phil's estranged wife Maggie and also their daughter Claire - for it turns out Claire went to high school with Barb, where Barb stole her boyfriend.

Mayfarers is yet another The Office-inspired series in which characters have "talking head" scenes where they talk directly to the camera about things that are going on. In the first ten episodes, the most talking-head scenes go to Barb the collegiate mistress. She's played by Jessica Erin Sylvia, a model who's posed for Playboy, and ... she nails it. She turns out to be not just the female comic lead but actually good at it. Shocking.

Now, you might assume that younger women who shack up with older guys might be gold diggers. You'd be right. Isobel and Barb each scheme to get the money all to themselves. All this intrigue bubbles over at the funeral, which devolves into a donnybrook as the family lawyer rips up the first check from Porter's estate. Game over? Not remotely. Meet the Mayfarers is scheduled to go on for a full year, matching the year that the family is supposed to stay close. How on earth is this messed-up family supposed to patch things up? Well, they probably won't. But seeing them fail should continue to be really funny.

The Black Dawn

2009-10-06T18:50:00.004-04:00

A gritty, intense, beautifully directed series following the survivors of a horrific catastrophe

Watch: http://www.webserials.com/blackdawn/
Below: Episode 1

Writers: Abraham Sherman, Brian Walton and William Hellmuth
Director: William Hellmuth
Starring: Jordan Warren, Eamon Glennon, Misty Madden, Tristan Scott, Kevin Harland, Kerri Hellmuth, William Landsman

24 episodes, run time approx. 119 minutes

In The Black Dawn, one morning the sky above Los Angeles suddenly turns pitch black, and people in the street immediately begin dropping dead. Thirteen college students find one another and realize that they're the only ones on campus still alive - maybe the only ones in the entire city still alive - and maybe the only ones anywhere still alive.

The biggest asset of The Black Dawn is in its directing. The show looks gorgeous. Special effects are limited, largely to the very beginning and very end of the series, but the work done in episode one is extremely impressive. Midway through the first episode of the show, the main character Adam takes a look out the window and watches people keeling over in the street below as the sky gets darker and darker. It's one of the more haunting, lasting images you'll see in any medium this year.

The biggest challenge facing The Black Dawn is that it's one of those shows where there's a major catastrophe, but nobody has any idea what happened, and the show needs to figure out the pace at which the answers are revealed. I'm not going to say the makers did a perfect job - if you watch the show on YouTube, there are commenters on every episode grumbling about not getting enough answers to that point - but in general I actually think they do an effective job with the pacing.

The 24 episodes of the show are broken into six "chapters" of four episodes each, and the chapters tend to have their own little mini-arcs and mini-cliffhangers at the end of each one. The ability of the show to run through the course of a mini-arc or pay off the answers to a cliffhanger keep the show fresh and keep your interest even as the answers to the larger mystery are slow in coming.

Like any show or movie with a major disaster at the center, there's some sketchy science involved. The best thing that the creators do in regard to that is answer possible critics with a four-episode prequel series, The Black Dawn: Catalyst, which fills in a few gaps and attempts to justify the show's science. You may still scoff at the science even as the show attempts to justify it, but at least they're trying.

Intense directing, a legitimate mystery, and a fantastic hard-driving soundtrack will keep your adrenaline rushing the whole way through. There are far more goofy comedies than dark dramas on the web. But here's one intense drama that proves it can be done, and done well.

Valley Peaks (episodes 1-9)

2009-10-06T16:32:00.006-04:00

Evil praying mantises, stolen clock radios and whipped cream can addictions all mix in a hilarious soap satire

Watch: http://www.valleypeaks.tv/ or
http://www.koldcast.tv/#/show:valley_peaks
Below: Episode 6

Writers: Tanner Beard, Kayvon Esmaili, Phil Donohue, Philip Jessen
Director: Tanner Beard
Starring: Tanner Beard, Phil Donohue, Jean-Louise O'Sullivan, Amelia Meyers, Kayvon Esmaili, Russ Cummings, Jacqueline Hickel, Diana Fraser, Holly Weber, Cathy Baron, Meredith Giangrande, Ryan Adams, Philip Jessen, Erika Schaefer, Kellan Lutz, Brandon Rogers, Brea Grant, Jennifer Lyons

9 episodes to date, run time approx. 53 minutes

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It's never specific just which shows Valley Peaks is skewering - it's some hodgepodge of 90210 and its ilk, The Hills and its ilk, and every soap opera out there. It doesn't really matter. Valley Peaks doesn't need to specifically target any show to be funny. It's funny by its juvenile, ridiculous lonesome.

Valley Peaks ends up taking on a number of general TV clichés. You know how a cheesy show will do a flashback scene and the way you know it's a flashback scene is by the characters having terrible haircuts and facial hair? Yeah, that's accounted for here. Many of the characters also fit into standard soap opera and teen drama types as well - the cutthroat bitch, the wacky foreigner, the bitter alcoholic, the gawky nerd, or the girl who returns to town after being cryogenically frozen. OK, so that last one's probably unique to this show.

One of the other common types is the new kid in town who arrives on the scene just as we viewers arrive, and as a result becomes our surrogate new eyes taking everything in for the first time. In Valley Peaks, that's Brittany, who has come to stay with her half-sister after the murder-suicide of her parents. And yes, VP makes talk of that murder-suicide a running gag, hewing to the web comedy adage that if you're not doing something that could be seen as wildly offensive, you're not trying hard enough. Like pretty much any good web comedy, it's dirty funny.

Most of the humor, though, is simply predicated on how stupid all the characters are. Humor based on mocking dumb people is low-hanging fruit in the world of comedy, but it works here anyway. The lines that come out of these characters' mouths can be so mind-bendingly stupid as to become genius. Watch this series and I guarantee you'll come out of it with a half-dozen ridiculous one-liners that you'll be repeating for days.

The storylines are equally ridiculous, in the best way possible. This is a soap opera in which the drama is just as likely to come from people cheating on one another as it is to come from ... a stolen clock radio ... or man-disintegrating lasers. If you like this show, a show that does everything in its power to be ridiculous, there must be something wrong with you.

Clearly, there's something wrong with me.

Woke Up Dead (trailer)

2009-10-04T22:11:00.006-04:00

Jon Heder stars in a new zombie comedy. I kinda wish it was just "Napoleon Dynamite, Zombie."

Watch: http://crackle.com/c/Woke_Up_Dead
Below: Series Trailer

Writer: John Fasano
Director: Tim O'Donnell
Starring: Jon Heder, Josh Gad, Krysten Ritter, Wayne Knight

Series Premiere Oct. 5

It's no coincidence that Woke Up Dead, a new zombie comedy web series, will debut right after "Zombieland" was the #1 movie in America this past weekend. "Zombieland" is a Sony movie, and Woke Up Dead premieres on Sony's web video portal Crackle. It's a nice little bit of corporate synergy.

Unfortunately, it's also the biggest threat to Woke Up Dead actually being any good. "Zombieland" received really strong reviews (a 90% Rotten Tomatoes score), but nothing in Crackle's history would portend similar excellence. Crackle's shows are, by and large, really juvenile - they make no secret of the fact that the site's target audience is young men, and apparently Sony believes that the way to reach young men is to really dumb things down.

Maybe this fall will change all that. The forthcoming The Bannen Way is one of the most-anticipated web shows ever, with promises of gorgeous production values and an adult storyline. Maybe Woke Up Dead is the first domino in Crackle showing a new commitment to quality.

The cast is certainly impressive. Krysten Ritter is mesmerizing, Wayne Knight has been off our radar for far too long, and Taryn Southern makes an appearance to shore up the show's web series cred. But ultimately, the series rests on the shoulders of Jon Heder in the lead role of Drex, a twentysomething slacker who finds himself undergoing a mysterious transformation in which he may or may not be turning into a zombie.

Heder's in need of a hit, having gone a few years since being in a big movie. You have to feel bad for him; everyone obviously just wants him to be Napoleon Dynamite and is inevitably disappointed in any other role he plays. As for Woke Up Dead ... well, I kinda wish it were "Napoleon Dynamite becomes a zombie." Oh well.

The excellent I Am Not Infected has set the bar really high for a zombie web comedy. Woke Up Dead seems to be operating from a similar playbook, for better or worse. Both shows employ first-person cameras - in IANI, the guys live on an old reality show set, whereas in WOD Drex's roommate is an aspiring filmmaker who follows him around with a camera all the time. Hopefully WOD doesn't continue to feel like a carbon copy beyond that. But hopefully they do copy the part about being good.

Tease (episodes 1-3)

2009-10-04T22:05:00.001-04:00

An effort to make a PG-rated show about a strip club. Works about as well as you'd think.

Watch: http://www.youtube.com/user/15Gigs or
http://www.hulu.com/tease
Below: Episode 1

Writers: Micah Goldman, Peter Marc Jacobson
Director: Peter Marc Jacobson
Starring: Lisa Jay, Devin Kelley, Samantha Cope, Crystle Lightning, Mark R. Gerson

3 episodes, run time approx. 15 minutes

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Tease is a TV pilot repurposed as a three-episode web series. The problem is that it's a web show that's really a TV show that really needs to be a web show. It's set at a strip club, a premise that calls out for the freedom of the web, where anything goes. But since it was made to be pitched to the broadcast networks, Tease has to be so safe that it's sapped of anything titillating. So, in effect, it's a PG-rated show about a strip club. And that's just a bad idea.

Tease has other problems, too. It doesn't seem to have a good sense of whether it wants to be a comedy or a drama. It's only rarely funny; there are at most one or two jokes per six-minute episode. Samantha Cope - who's getting to be ubiquitous around here, also having roles in The Lake and Private - gets almost all of the laugh lines, and it's no surprise that Cope is also the only actress that seems to be having any fun. Lead actress Lisa Jay, on the other hand, seems to be sleepwalking through the show.

Another major problem for the show is that it really shouldn't be set in LA. If you want to do a show about a strip club, LA is so unrepresentative of what strip clubs everywhere else are like. All the girls seem to have aspirations in fashion or modeling or acting or moving to Las Vegas to perform. A stripper in Minnesota or West Virginia or Louisiana probably has far murkier reasons for why she ended up in this profession. The club's patrons are similarly cookie-cutter; every guy here is wearing a suit. Have the show's creators ever been to a strip club?

The tunnel vision of the show's creators, who obviously never thought to do the show anywhere else but LA because LA is just where they live, is also apparent in the show's main character, Marie. Marie is working here undercover as a freelance journalist, for an exposé she hopes to write about the industry. We're told that Marie is a very smart girl, the high school valedictorian. But she's not smart. She is, in fact, very very dumb, for one very obvious reason: if you're going to go undercover working at a strip club, don't do it in the city you live in! You can't go undercover in a place where people you know may show up at any time. On Marie's very first day on the job, she runs into somebody she went to high school with. Well, duh. Stupid girl. Stupid show.

My Long Distance Relationship

2009-10-04T17:30:00.003-04:00

Sam uses webcams to try to hold on to his girlfriend away at college on the other side of the country

Watch: crackle.com/c/Long_Distance_Relationship
Below: Episode 1

Writer: Dan Levy
Director: Ramsey Mellette
Starring: Dan Levy, Rachel Specter, James Kirkland, Randy Wayne, Kate Albrecht

10 episodes, run time approx. 39 minutes

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In the Crackle.com series My Long Distance Relationship, high school sweethearts Sam and Samantha begin their freshman year of college on opposite sides of the country. Desperately trying to cling onto the relationship, Sam has made sure that they both have webcams, and he tries to keep the relationship alive by what appears to be a strategy of making sure Samantha can never be out of his sight, despite being 3000 miles away.

Sam's a one-dimensional sad-sack character. His whole thing is that he's so paranoid that Samantha is going to cheat on him that he constantly whines to Samantha to reassure him that she loves him. It's nauseating. He's pathetic, so pathetic that you're never going to really pull for him. In fact, you'll often want to reach through the webcam and punch him instead.

It's notable that the show is called My Long Distance Relationship. "My," not "Our." While Sam whines all the time, we never really get a sense of what's going on in Samantha's mind. She pretty much just sits there and looks perfect. Samantha is played by the actress Rachel Specter, who may go on to have a long and fulfilling career but will always be known, to me and every other young man of my generation, as "that girl from those body spray commercials." (If you don't know, look it up. And shame on you.) She's gorgeous. And clearly, Samantha was way out of Sam's league from the beginning.

So really, this show would be a lot more interesting if it were from Samantha's perspective more so than Sam's. Sam's whole raison d'être is simple: keep Samantha from dumping him. He doesn't have any other options. She does. She's the one who can actively make choices about what she really wants, whether to keep this long distance relationship going or just go for other guys who are closer. Sam doesn't have that option; he's hopeless and desperate. With the wider array of options, Samantha is the far more interesting character here. But it's Sam's show. Oh, by the way, have I mentioned that the show's creator Dan Levy also plays Sam?

So Samantha is gorgeous, faithful, and really sweet. She feels like a concoction, a girl that doesn't really exist. She isn't really the girl a nerdy college freshman has a long distance relationship with; she's the girl a nerdy college freshman makes up to impress his dorm mates. And you know what? That show would probably be much better than this one.

Duck N Cover (season 1)

2009-10-04T14:36:00.003-04:00

Two detectives practice the time-honored technique of "good cop, retarded cop"

Watch: http://www.duckncovershow.com/
Below: Episode 6

Writer: Brian Lerner
Directors: Sergio Pinheiro
Starring: Michael Holmes, Matthew Brent

Season 1: 7 episodes, run time approx. 33 minutes

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Duck N Cover is a buddy cop show that doesn't bother with the sentimental crap that inevitably comes into buddy cop movies. In your standard buddy cop movies, an unlikely pair is thrown together and chafes at first, before the guys come to respect each other, become friends, and prove themselves in the end by solving some big crime. Boilerplate stuff. There's no need to do that in a web series, where the whole principle of the web is alternative storytelling. So there's none of that self-fulfillment crap here. The two guys in Duck N Cover, Miller and McKenna, experience no personal growth. They solve no major cases. And they annoy each other just as much at the end of season one as they do at the beginning. And I think that's just great.

Miller and McKenna are two slightly-less-than-competent detectives who get the dregs of the case files, things like responding to calls about yelping dogs or single moms who are out drunk in public. The two guys are a fairly basic odd-couple pairing, the straightlaced guy and the wild card. Detective Miller is the uptight, suit-wearing one who's a stickler for rules and procedure. Detective McKenna, on the other hand, thinks little of rules and less of showing up sober to the job. McKenna is constantly getting under the skin of his uptight partner Miller, who in turn is constantly chiding McKenna for being goofy and irresponsible.

The guys are typically less focused on solving crimes and more focused on insulting one another. And occasionally their war of words turns to brawling with each other, sometimes even in front of people they're supposed to be arresting or questioning. There isn't a whole lot of the guys actually solving crimes - in fact, if they do solve a case, it's probably by mistake. In episode six, the guys inadvertently solve a murder by arguing so much in front of the suspect that it flusters her and she snaps and incriminates herself - but not before getting angry at what she perceives to be a rehearsed "good cop, retarded cop" routine.

As is generally the case with internet comedy, the more wildly inappropriate the show gets, the better. Between an erect dead man found floating in a pool and McKenna trying to fight a suspect in handcuffs, the show is at its comedic peak in the first season's final couple of episodes. If the show in season 2 follows the lead of the last few episodes of season 1, it'll be a great, great comedy.

Spirits

2009-10-04T14:34:00.004-04:00

A supernatural mystery set in New Orleans that ends up being disappointingly flavorless

Watch: http://spiritstheseries.com or
http://www.youtube.com/user/spiritstheseries2009
Below: Episode 13

Writer/Directors: Dave Weber, Duane Prefume
Starring: Haley Finnegan, Marel Medina, Vern Parker

48 episodes, run time approx. 156 minutes

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Residents of New Orleans bill their town as the most haunted city in America, believing that there are ghost spirits watching over the city and occasionally attempting to interact with people. Given the city's longstanding link to voodoo culture and the well-known fact that all of the city's dead must be entombed aboveground, the idea of New Orleans being a place infested with ghost spirits seems natural, if of course you're inclined to believe in the possibility of ghost spirits at all.

It's within that premise that we first meet Ray Carter, a New Orleans native who believes that spirits have been communicating with him but isn't sure what to do about it. Ray contacts Hailey, a recent college graduate living in Dallas, claiming to be receiving an order from Hailey's late boyfriend Michael, who died during Hurricane Katrina. Hailey is plunged into confusion and fear. As she wonders whether or not Ray can be trusted, Hailey decides that she must head to New Orleans, along with her best friend Joey, to search for the truth.

Hailey is super-cute, with a constant effervescent smile. But that's not really a good thing here. This girl who is haunted by the death of her boyfriend can’t stop smiling. Haley Finnegan, the actress playing Hailey, has the right name for the role but the wrong personality - she's better and more believable in a developing romance with Joey than she is as somebody searching for answers to a tragic mystery.

The biggest problem with Spirits is that it just doesn't make good enough use out of its New Orleans location. The show seems to want to be an ode to its beloved city, but by trying to paint this rosy picture of the city, they leave out so much of what really endears New Orleans to so many. Not a single video in the series takes place at night, so you only get this sanitized daytime version of New Orleans, and it lacks the character that so many people love.

There isn't enough elaboration as the series goes on as to how New Orleans came to be this hotbed of ghost stories and supernatural belief, and how this dynamic is different now from how it was pre-Katrina. New Orleans is Spirits' best asset, but it's also ultimately underutilized. And an ending that I found to be totally ridiculous means that this version of New Orleans isn't yet safe to visit.

Bleed (episodes 1-3)

2009-10-04T14:17:00.006-04:00

Being vampires pretty much sucks for buddies Brian and Perry

Watch: http://bleedseries.blip.tv/
Below: Episode 3

Writer: Matt Lawson
Director: Ben Snyder
Starring: Alan Seales, Eric Morales, Whitney Griffin, Hillary Trelease

3 episodes to date, run time approx. 17 minutes

Given the preponderance of books, shows and movies about vampires these days, some sort of backlash is inevitable. Or, at the very least, we should expect something of a postmodern meta-backlash, in which people still do shows about vampires, just shows that poke fun at their predecessors by claiming that "our vampires are not like your vampires."

Bleed could basically be described as "the loser vampires show." Two best friends, Perry and Brian, are turned into vampires, but realize that it's not so much fun as it is a pain in the ass. Vampires are supposed to be cool, glamorous, and able to have sex with everything in sight. But instead, Perry and Brian are just as average-looking as they were before, just as unsuccessful with women, and just as much stuck in crappy dead-end jobs.

The first two episodes present the origin story of how exactly Brian and then Perry become vampires, but I don't think such exposition is really necessary. The tone of the show feels a little lost in the first two episodes, as if the makers weren't sure how much of the balance should be tilted toward comedy and how much toward horror and action.

Things get much better in episode three, as Perry and Brian can just engage in various ridiculous misadventures, and it sets up the show to be the dark comedy that it's best positioned to be. The premise of episode three is that the guys, desperate to find somebody to feed on, track down a party of vampire fans - a group more sad and pathetic than they are. Here's where Bleed is really able to go to town on the vampire pop culture phenomenon - while of course still benefiting from it.

The fact that these guys remain so schlubby and bland, when current pop culture has glamorized vampires so much, is the show's best hook. Perry's still a bitter narcissist, Brian's still an awkward geek, and neither of them has any more luck with women than they did before, despite the fact that girls supposedly go nuts for vampires.

Bleed needs to exploit a fact that so far has been noted only in passing, that Brian works at a video store. It's potentially genius - a perfect contrast between a dying industry and the fact that Brian has suddenly been granted eternal life. Brian's job could go away any day, he can't maintain a lasting relationship, and he has no notable long-term aspirations. He's immortal, and yet he has no stability and no security. His life sucks. But, then, so does he.

2009-09-18T07:01:00.011-04:00

Adapted and updated from an earlier post.
Previously: I <3 Vampires (episodes 1-17)

I <3 Vampires revolves around Luci and Corbin, two besties who run the website iheartvampires.net, a site that covers vampires in pop culture but primarily focuses on their love of one book series, the "Confessions of a High School Vampire" novels. The "Confessions" series is, of course, a thinly veiled surrogate for the Twilight novels. Now, at this point, if you're familiar with the work of web studio Take180 beyond the previous series covered on this site (In2ition and My Alibi), then you know that they do a lot of spoofs and parodies of pop culture on the site. So you might assume that this would be a send-up of Twilight and Twilight fanatics. That's really not the case. While I <3 Vampires may poke a tiny little bit of fun at vampire obsessives, in general these fans are depicted as pretty cool.

Luci can go on at great length, in an impassioned but mature way, about the many reasons she loves the "Confessions" books. She's not just some airheaded fangirl, but rather a smart analytical mind who can explain to you in detail why she relates to all the characters and how the themes of the book matter in real life. Corbin, on the other hand, is a super-energetic cheerleader for the series who just wants to spread the word about "Confessions" to anyone she possibly can. Between the two of them, Luci and Corbin represent the ideal fans for any pop culture product - Corbin will do everything in her power to make sure you get the word about it, while the presence of Luci assures you that there's enough substance in it to make it worth your while. So, no, I <3 Vampires doesn't satirize Twilight fans. Quite the opposite. It says that these people are pretty awesome.

And still, even with all that, if you think that Twilight or Twilight obsessives are just silly, the third main character of I <3 Vampires is just for you. Wyatt, the neighbor of one of the girls, is your stand-in. He believes that the books are ridiculous and that the girls are ridiculous for being so obsessed with them. But then they make him start reading. And at that point, he can't stop. Apparently, there is no defense against such a pop culture juggernaut.

The dynamic between the serious Luci and the impulsive Corbin comes to a head in the first episode, when the girls are e-mailed the first several chapters of the next "Confessions" book, months ahead of the book's publication. Luci is excited but cautious, unsure if she wants to even read the chapters and spoil the thrill of devouring the book as a whole when it comes out. But Corbin has no such compunction, and she immediately uploads the chapters to their website.

When Corbin posts the advance chapters of the book, the author Siona McCabre announces that she feels violated and betrayed by the "Confessors" fanbase and declares that the remainder of the book will not be published at all. Corbin and Luci become targets of hate mail and possible legal trouble, and they go on the run, believing that they need to find Siona in person, apologize, and beg her to complete the rest of the novel.

The midpoint of the series evolves as a basic road trip show. The girls trick Wyatt into driving for them as they head out in search of the reclusive Siona, a journey that will lead to several unexpected turns as the destination proves to be ever-changing. During the trip, your standard road trip tropes emerge - tensions crackle between the two best friends and cause them to have a big fight, while Luci and Wyatt start to develop a mutual attraction toward one another. The trip is also aided by the appearance of a mysterious young man named Nick who keeps showing up over and over in far-flung places - including Corbin's dreams - leading Corbin to wonder if the stranger might just be "a you-know-what," as the line between fact and fiction blurs and Corbin starts to contemplate her own possible romance with a vampire.

As Corbin, Luci and Wyatt face obstacles ranging from the comedic to the truly terrifying, they find themselves needing to solicit help and advice from fans. I <3 Vampires really does a nice job integrating interaction with Take180 viewers. Since Corbin already did video blogs for the fansite, it's completely natural for her to turn to her camera and ask for help. Take180's storytelling model is built around encouraging viewers to shape the story and suggest what characters should do, and simply by having Corbin and the others directly ask for help, it makes for a smoother way of making that fit than was present in In2ition or My Alibi.

The comparisons to My Alibi are especially significant because there's some common ground between the shows in front of and behind the camera. My Alibi's writer Julie Restivo handles the script again here, and My Alibi director Oren Kaplan here is sharing directing duties, generally alternating weeks with fellow director Shaun Peterson.

I must also praise the behind-the-scenes crew at Take180 for doing great work with the peripherals. You can go to iheartvampires.net to see Corbin and Luci's fansite, and it's fully functional with a lot of content, including Corbin's video reviews of each of the "Confessions" books, backdated to the first book's release in 2005. The styling and makeup people deserve special credit for the neat way they transformed Cherilyn Wilson (Corbin) to look younger in the backdated videos - she does legitimately look older in each video as they progress from 2005 to 2008, covering the four previous books.

In front of the camera, there's a reappearance by Adam Chambers. Chambers was the standout comedic performer among a whole group of strong comedic performers in My Alibi, but here he carries most of the comedy load by himself. And he's definitely up for it. Chambers is a really funny guy, and Take180 is making good use of him, also having him do a series of behind-the-scenes videos during the making of I <3 Vampires. While Chambers is once again the standout actor, Cherilyn Wilson and Erin Way also put in good work as the BFFs - they're believable as addicted fans of the "Confessions" series, and just as believable as friends.

I <3 Vampires is not as laugh-out-loud funny as My Alibi was, as that show remains one of the funniest I've seen anywhere. But I <3 Vampires makes up the difference with its incredibly addictive story full of plot twists. You'll salivate for each new episode like a vampire at the Red Cross. It's suspenseful, fast-paced and fun.

And all that suspense, believe it or not, actually pays off in a really strong ending. The whole time that Luci and Corbin were on their chase to find Siona and apologize, neither character had ever really stopped to think about why this all started: who sent them the chapters in the first place, and why? There were hints at one point, from Corbin's mysterious new ally Nick, that maybe somebody didn't want the "Confessions" books to continue because they actually hit a little too close to home in terms of vampire secrets. Corbin didn't really think too much of that suggestion, or discuss it any further with Luci and Wyatt, but that bit of thread was properly laid down for viewers early on, and it gets picked up in the end of the series.

The answer of who sent Luci and Corbin the chapters, and why, is paid off with a twist ending that's both unexpected and completely reasonable in retrospect. But getting a satisfactory resolution is just one element of a really strong final few episodes. Luci and Wyatt get their long-awaited swoonworthy moment - you didn't really think a show pitched at Twilight fans would fail to pay off its primary romantic coupling, did you? And for those fans - really, for all of us who are so passionate about the pop culture we love - Corbin has a great speech to Siona in defense of fanhood, of how finding something that you love can really change your life and open you up to people you never would have known otherwise. The finale is so good that it even manages to shoehorn in a bit of Disney corporate synergy (an appearance by KSM, a band whose album just coincidentally happens to debut this month) and make it not only work, but work perfectly as a call-back to the beginning of the series.

But the very best thing about the end of I <3 Vampires season one is that it opens up some interesting new territory for season two. In the latter part of the season, Wyatt transforms from a driftless slacker to somebody suddenly granted a weighty responsibility when he is made into a vampire hunter. Meanwhile, yes, Nick was indeed a vampire all along, and as the season is ending he promises that he'll explain to Corbin just how much of "Confessions" is fact versus fiction. So Luci is starting up her romance with Wyatt, Corbin is on the verge of a possible romance with Nick, and then suddenly there's a crazy cliffhanger ending where Wyatt and Nick realize they're apparently supposed to kill one another. That's bound to be fairly awkward for Luci and Corbin. But it's also bound to be a real thrill for the rest of us.

(previous score, episodes 1-17):

Watch Now

http://www.take180.com/show/I_Heart_Vampires/h1a

Credits

Written by Julie Restivo
Directed by Shaun Peterson, Oren Kaplan
Starring: Cherilyn Wilson, Erin Way, Adam Chambers, Josh Nuncio, Martha Hackett
22 episodes, total run time approx. 67 minutes

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The Black Dawn

2009-09-11T07:39:00.012-04:00

With at least a half-dozen series and miniseries to their credit, the people behind independent web production studio WebSerials.com have been among the most prolific and successful entrants into the field of web entertainment. The Black Dawn, which aired earlier this spring, is their latest project and also perhaps their biggest.

In The Black Dawn, one morning the sky above Los Angeles suddenly turns pitch black, and people in the street immediately begin dropping dead. Thirteen college students find one another and realize that they're the only ones on campus still alive - maybe the only ones in the entire city still alive - and maybe the only ones anywhere still alive.

TBD continues a growing tradition of web series destroying Los Angeles. People who create web shows love to have the apocalypse rain down on LA. Vampire Killers has the city overrun by vampires, I Am Not Infected has zombies taking over, and there are surely plenty more shows that we haven't yet covered here, starting with Dirty Bomb Diaries. Even Valley Peaks, a comedy, seems intent on destroying LA in its future. At the very least, I will say this: in the movies, everybody always wants to destroy New York. So I suppose destroying LA makes web shows unique.

The biggest asset of The Black Dawn is in its directing. The show looks pretty gorgeous. Special effects are limited, largely to the very beginning and very end of the show, but the work done in episode one is extremely impressive. Midway through the first episode of the show, the main character Adam takes a look out the window and watches people keeling over in the street below as the sky gets darker and darker. It's one of the more haunting, lasting images you'll see in any medium this year.

From there, one of the series' obvious filming challenges is also a strength. Since the sun is considered blotted out, the show clearly had to be filmed at night. That would have to be a challenge, but it also makes the show look a lot cooler. Everybody looks cooler in the dark. The only way people look cooler than in the dark is in black-and-white. Everybody looks sexy in black-and-white.

But the biggest challenge facing The Black Dawn is that it's one of those shows where there's a major catastrophe, but nobody has any idea what happened, and the show needs to figure out the pace at which the answers are revealed. I'm not going to say the makers did a perfect job - if you watch the show on YouTube, there are commenters on every episode grumbling about not getting enough answers to that point - but in general I actually think they do an effective job with the pacing.

The 24 episodes of the show are broken into six "chapters" of four episodes each, and the chapters tend to have their own little mini-arcs and mini-cliffhangers at the end of each one. So you'll have a four-episode arc in which the characters find another random survivor in the streets of LA and then deals with the aftermath as the stranger starts to disrupt the group. Or you'll have a mini-cliffhanger in which the survivors find a list of their own names, compiled well before the disaster, and the characters must figure out what it means. The ability of the show to run through the course of a mini-arc or pay off the answers to a cliffhanger keep the show fresh and keep your interest even as the answers to the larger mystery are slow in coming.

The main two characters in The Black Dawn are two guys, Adam and Lee, who try to lead the group with very different styles. Adam is 100% sweet and innocent and trying to do the right thing despite the fact that he's completely terrified. On the other hand, Lee is the one who takes charge at the beginning, rounding everybody up and making sure they stick together. But what at first seems like a really helpful take-charge attitude quickly turns out to be a militaristic, really aggressive persona that causes friction in the group.

Lee keeps everything he knows close to the vest, and his secrecy starts to raise suspicions. When we learn that Lee had acquired access to a bunch of guns before the incident took place, people will start to wonder if Lee actually knew in advance what was going to happen. Whether he's actually a villain or an antihero just doing what's necessary to protect everyone else is up for debate. You'll maintain those suspicious sentiments all the way through to the end, as Lee's behavior in the finale is quite odd.

But there's a problem with having Adam and Lee represent the two distinct alternatives to every situation, and the problem is that it doesn't give any of the other characters much of a say in anything. The other eleven survivors rarely express an opinion, leaving all the decision-making to Adam and Lee. These other eleven survivors vary in their amount of character development, from just a little bit to absolutely nothing at all. You really won't have to bother to learn half their names. At best, the other guys are bodies that can help Adam or Lee complete a task. At worst, they're the women - by and large, the girls just sit back in the dorm and we ignore them as the guys head out off-campus to do reconaissance. I counted exactly two scenes in the entire series of the girls talking to one another, so you never really know what's going on in their heads. It's not a very female-empowering show when the females just hide away and let the guys do everything dangerous.

Throughout the whole show there's a hint of a possible romance between Adam and one girl, Julie, but when the series ends I still know absolutely nothing about Julie. Julie will recede into the background just as much as the other girls for several episodes in a row, just as much a part of the background as the other minor characters whose names you don't ever need to know.

Like any show or movie with a major disaster at the center, there's some sketchy science involved. I won't spoil the details of exactly what happened, but there's sure to be grumbling about the credibility of it. The best thing that the WebSerials.com folks do in regard to that is answer possible critics with a four-episode prequel series, The Black Dawn: Catalyst, which fills in a few gaps and attempts to justify the show's science. You may still scoff at the science even as the show attempts to justify it, but at least they're trying.

(Catalyst is but one of several online extensions of The Black Dawn. There's a series of comics, video blogs by multiple characters prior to the disaster including Lee's run for student body president, and even another prequel series, The Adam & Ben Show, a series of topical video blogs co-hosted by Adam. They'll all enrich your viewing of The Black Dawn, to be sure, but if you're short on time I'd say there are two mandatory pieces of viewing, episode 2 of Catalyst and episode 8 of Adam & Ben.)

Beyond the science questions, sure, there are some other possible plot holes. People can try to pick apart things like whether the power grid would still be active several weeks after the disaster, but I'll go with it. More troubling is the fact that the characters can be quite dumb. Nobody really bothers to ask for the first two thirds of the series what it is that allowed their group of 13 people to survive when everyone else died almost instantly, when in fact the answer is the most obvious explanation and the one that I figured from the beginning. And it's also troubling that at the end of both The Black Dawn and Catalyst, I still don't know why this all happened. I know who perpetrated it, and how, but their motives don't make any sense to me.

The final episode is half silly, half rather nice. There's a gunfight which is downright laughable, and spoils a lot of the satisfaction of the ending. Nevertheless, I was happy with the complete package. Intense directing, a legitimate mystery, and a fantastic hard-driving soundtrack will keep your adrenaline rushing the whole way through and keep you engrossed. And for those reasons, I definitely recommend that you see The Black Dawn.

Watch Now

http://www.webserials.com/blackdawn/

Credits

Written by Abraham Sherman, Brian Walton and William Hellmuth
Directed by William Hellmuth
Starring: Jordan Warren, Eamon Glennon, Misty Madden, Tristan Scott, Kevin Harland, Kerri Hellmuth, William Landsman
24 episodes, total run time approx. 119 minutes

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The 21 Conspiracy

The 21 Conspiracy

2009-09-11T07:22:00.017-04:00

"Internet" + "conspiracy" = rarely safe territory to venture into.

The 21 Conspiracy, an indie Australian web series, is indeed built on a premise that's just as nuts as most conspiracy theories tend to be. But it's a brisk and suspenseful drama that's well-enough plotted to patch over the fact that you're guaranteed to roll your eyes in response to at least some of the plot.

The ten-episode drama series follows Winston Blair, a young man in the final weeks leading up to his 21st birthday. The night after his friend Tay's 21st, Winston wakes up to find Tay acting strange. Instead of explaining to Winston what exactly is going on with him, a vacant-looking Tay instead just writes down an address for Winston, sending Winston off to join a group of young radicals out to find for themselves the secret of 21. This group of young people is convinced that there's a massive worldwide conspiracy afoot in which people across the world are told a life-altering secret on their 21st birthday, and they want to expose the truth that their elders are hiding from them.

Now, to be clear, you're going to have to jump over some massive plot holes with this show. I'm not going to give away the answer to the mystery, but without giving away the ending I can say that I understand why public policy makers would want to keep this a secret from young people. The rationale behind that makes total sense. But the feasibility that this secret could actually stay a secret in the real world? Zero. Actually, less than zero.

I never once buy the rationale of why Tay would send his good friend Winston off on this wild goose chase of joining an antiestablishment group hunting down the truth, as opposed to Tay just telling Winston directly. And it doesn't make any sense that Tay was previously a member of the group, and yet none of the members of the group attended Tay's 21st birthday party.

Although your head will be filled with questions about plot holes the entire way through the show, you'll also be intrigued to find out the answer to the mystery. So while the show has its obvious flaws, I do think you'll be curious enough that if you start with the first episode you'll want to go all the way through to the end in order to find out the answers. (But if you're only kinda-sorta interested, you could just skip to the final episode. There are hints scattered along the way that'll lead you to the general ballpark of the truth, but the specific answers are only contained in episode ten.)

Winston, the central character devoted to figuring out the global madness, is named in an obvious homage to the main character of George Orwell's 1984. Late in the series, The 21 Conspiracy openly acknowledges that as Winston sees a copy of the book and wonders if maybe Orwell's novel may actually be an allegory about the same conspiracy that he, modern-day Winston, is trying to understand.

Perhaps the biggest difference between Winston Smith's time and Winston Blair's time is globalization. To that end, 21's Winston develops a relationship with a Muslim immigrant, fellow 21 truth-seeker Ayaan. This burgeoning relationship, and the fact that Ayaan knows that her parents will not accept her being involved with a white boy, serves as the B plot of the show. It's a commendable goal to try to introduce this type of real-world drama to a show built on a sci-fi conspiracy. But it's also a case of the series biting off more than it can chew.

There's just not enough time, being merely the subplot on a limited-run show, to give the dynamics of the Winston-Ayaan relationship the attention they deserve. So when we meet Ayaan's parents, they're just thinly-drawn caricatures, since there isn't enough time to give them adequate character development without detracting from the main storyline. And the whole relationship feels dubious in the first place. Winston and Ayaan never exhibit any clear chemistry, so it feels like they're thrown together haphazardly. It's a completely unromantic romance. I will note that The 21 Conspiracy gets points simply for having a non-white actress in a major role - web series are super, super-white. But that's a discussion for another day.

As far as larger, more universal themes go, there's also an inkling of a notion that different generations are never going to be able to trust one another. The whole premise of the show is based on the idea that adults are not willing to trust young people with this major secret, while young people shouldn't trust adults because adults are obviously not truthful. It's an interesting start to a discussion, but the show doesn't carry it through all that much.

Writer-director Steve Anthopolous may have written a show with significant plot flaws, but his best friend here is himself, as his very effective directing helps smooth over the problems. Although the series lags in a few points, for the most part it keeps a brisk pace and rewards you episode-by-episode as you get closer and closer to the truth. An interesting, varied soundtrack helps to keep up the level of suspense. But the coolest thing Anthopolous does is to accumulate old newsreel footage that's thematically linked to the conspiracy, which is used at the beginning of the first episode and throughout the final episode. It's a really neat and unique element of the show, and I actually wish it could have been incorporated into every episode.

Without giving away the actual revelation of what the conspiracy is, I will note that once he finds out it gives Winston the perfect rationale to immediately go have sex with Ayaan. So, hey, it can't be all that bad. In fact, it seems like a perfect pickup line: 'I just found out the truth about a terrifying conspiracy that threatens us all. So I think we need to have sex right now, while we still can.' Go ahead and try that one the next time you go out, boys.

Furthermore, it turns out that strippers and prostitutes end up playing a major role in world affairs, which you have to love. The gang meets a stripper with a secret identity who confirms to them that strippers and prostitutes are often charged with the responsibility of breaking the news to young men on their 21st birthdays. So, there you go: strippers and prostitutes are responsible for keeping civilization in order. I knew it!

Watch Now

http://21.spaceboy.com.au

Credits

Written and directed by Steve Anthopoulos
Starring: Liam Andrew Miller, Chanika Desilva
10 episodes, total run time approx. 49 minutes

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Wage Slaves (season 1)

2009-09-07T07:28:00.012-04:00

It's Labor Day, so let's do a holiday special. Of course, you could probably guess based on title alone that Wage Slaves doesn't exactly honor labor the way the holiday is theoretically supposed to. Wage Slaves is pretty bleak, a show about a group of coffeehouse employees stuck in a dead-end situation and desperately hoping that their lives will turn around. Bleak, but also terrific - there's nothing laborious about having to sit through this show. It's really, really good.

Wage Slaves employs a perfectly executed blend of comedy and drama. You'll empathize with all of these characters, while also getting to laugh both with and at them. But the most important reason that I'd recommend this show to people who care about the web video medium is the fact that it does such a good job of balancing out all of the characters and giving them all meaningful character development and plotlines. Given the fact that web series can have short episodes and short total running times, series producers often take that as an excuse to only develop a main character or two - focus on one character and have the supporting players just be there to further the main character's story as opposed to getting meaningful arcs of their own. Wage Slaves, on the other hand, proves that you can indeed have a single central character (here, the character of Mitch) while also properly servicing every other character with multidimensional personalities and meaty storylines.

The whole premise of the show is that these characters are running in place, stuck in dead-end jobs and dead-end lives, but within that framework there's still enough room for characters to grow over the course of the show. So even though most of them are going to end the series still stuck in the coffee shop, they all come to meaningful realizations about who they are and what they want.

Part of the reason that the show is able to have this impressive level of character development is that the episodes are way over the average length of a typical web series. There are only six episodes, but they average over fifteen minutes each. That may feel abnormal and challenging to some viewers, but the show is worth investing your time. The extended run time especially helps with the authenticity of scenes at the coffee shop, where much of these employees' time is spent staring off into space or having mindless conversations to pass the time. Wage Slaves pulls off something sneakily impressive - it makes tedium fun to watch. Not easy.

It's fun because the bleakness of these characters' situations is coupled with some really strong humor. Service industry jobs are a goldmine of comedic potential, and the show succeeds with awkward and hilarious scenes of the employees interacting with customers. The character of Dirk, especially, offers great scene after great scene, as Dirk never once conceals his loathing of every customer who comes in to the shop. Dirk's contempt for his fellow man - coworkers as well as customers - is tremendous as he constantly manages to outdo himself in how acerbic he can be. (And yet, as with all the characters, there remains a real person inside there, somebody whom you root for even as he curses out everyone in his path.)

Dirk and Mitch make a notable contrast as Dirk's antagonism to everyone is balanced by Mitch's sweet optimism. The difference is somewhat a function of their age - Mitch is in his mid-20s, Dirk approaching 40 - and the decision to have this range of ages is a smart decision by the show. If you were to conceptualize people working in go-nowhere service industry jobs, your mind probably first lead you to younger people, so having a diversity in ages among the characters does offer up unique perspectives on the situation. Although everyone here is stuck in the same position, they all have different personalities - Mitch's innocence, Dirk's sadism, Alicia's cheerfulness, and Stacy's self-destructiveness.

Although Dirk and Alicia have a suicide pact for if they get to age 40 and still haven't reached their goals, they're not actually the saddest story here. For that, I would have to go with the character of Stacy. The others have dreams, even if the light of those dreams is flickering away. Mitch is an aspiring writer, Dirk an aspiring musician, Alicia an aspiring actress. It's only Stacy who's stuck here without even a light at the end of the tunnel. She seems to have completely abandoned the idea of reaching any personal goals - she now lists her life's dream as having somebody write a song about her, which wouldn't even really be her doing - and has become resigned to the fact that she's only going to make bad choices.

So the broad approach of the show is people who can't catch a break and who have had to endure a loss of confidence, optimism and dignity. But as the end of the series arrives, not everybody is going to be dealt a completely losing hand. Somebody does get a win, because that's real life - most people face mostly disappointment, but a small minority have to make it through the cracks and find a little success. So one character does get a chance to chase his/her dream - although there could certainly be some debate as to whether or not it's a good thing or whether he/she really deserves it. And in any case, most of the cast ends up right where they were at the beginning, still running in place.

Wage Slaves is set in Portland, and that city's liberal aesthetic certainly shines through. There are people walking around for Greenpeace, and unironic references to people eating hummus. Still, there is a universality to the plight of these characters - young-ish people across the country face similar circumstances. Everyone's in the same boat. I'll let Dirk explain, in his signature style: "What do you think, you're the only one whose dreams don't come true? Yeah, when I was twelve, I said, 'Dear God, please, let me grow up to be Mayor McShit of Sucktown, USA!' I don't get what I want. You don't get what you -- nobody gets what they want."

... Ah, such a festive attitude on this holiday.

Be warned going in that Wage Slaves is super, super-low budget. The "coffee shop," the series' primary set, is quite obviously just somebody's kitchen. The low budget nature of the series may actually help, though, as it fits the tone of the show - that these characters are barely scraping by.

I should note that the low budget does factor into the series' one obvious flaw, which is some wonky editing. Writer-director Chris A. Bolton does a terrific job with the series as a whole, but as an editor he clearly was backed up against the wall a few times - which I'm sure will just make him a better director going forward as the series films a second season. There are some oddly patched-together scenes of the same shot from only slightly different camera angles, the cuts are too fast and jumpy at times, characters wear the same wardrobe through an episode even if the episode takes place over two days, and there's a scene in episode two in which the boom mic keeps repeatedly dropping into the shot.

No big deal. I think your reaction to minor imperfections like those is probably predicated on how you already feel about a show or a movie. If a movie sucks, then technical misfires and continuity issues just reinforce how much it sucks. But if you're already won over by something, then little imperfections may just make it feel quaint and charming. I found Wage Slaves completely charming, and so those little imperfections just make it feel like a nice home-cooked meal, where the love that went into it is part of the appeal. How much did I like it? This much: the rare 10 out of 10.

Watch Now

http://www.wageslaveseries.com

Credits

Written and directed by Chris A. Bolton
Starring: Morgan Lee, Lara Kobrin, Leif Norby, Melissa Kaiser, Ehren Ebbage
6 episodes, total run time approx. 98 minutes

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2009-07-10T10:27:00.010-04:00

Before it ever aired a single episode, Harper's Globe was cool. The ambition of having a daily web series air simultaneously with a complementary TV series on CBS - CBS, of all networks! - was groundbreaking. A number of TV shows by this point have created their own webisodes, but none has had near the development of what Harper's Globe promised. Globe would parallel the story of CBS's Harper's Island every week for the duration of the series. Something that ambitious deserves praise - whether the show was actually going to be any good or not.

Strictly speaking, the experiment didn't work. Harper's Island airs its final episode tomorrow; the series was announced as canceled long ago and is just now burning off the last of its episodes since the whole season was filmed in advance. If the goal of Harper's Globe was to get viewers more hooked into Harper's Island, then by definition it didn't work, since Island tanked in the ratings. Unfortunately, as a result, CBS probably isn't going to try any similar experiments anytime soon. Even if the existence of Globe enabled hardcore fans to become more passionate about Island, the major broadcast networks like CBS are still in the business of drawing the broadest group of viewers, rather than a smaller group no matter how passionate that smaller group is.

So forget the big-picture stuff. Harper's Globe didn't succeed as a CBS experiment. But purely on its own merits, how good of a web series is Globe? The answer: it's a mixed bag. While there are some elements of the show that were very well-done, primarily on the technical and visual sides, there are some deep flaws in the show - and they're emblematic of the struggles of many web shows.

In retrospect it's amazing to know that Harper's Globe was designed in conjunction with a TV series and was written with the support of the TV production staff. It's amazing because the biggest mistake the show makes is something that television writers are supposed to have drilled into them from the beginning of their careers. Harper's Globe suffers from a major, major pacing problem, and it's a flaw that pops up again and again in web shows. You cannot backload all of your payoff, all of the answers to the questions the show poses, into the very end of the show. It's something I've said on this site before, but it's a point that needs to be banged home: you cannot dither around for the bulk of the series and then only get around to interesting revelations at the very end.

TV writers are supposed to know this. You need to parcel out some answers over time in order to reward viewers for sticking with you every week. If weeks and weeks go by without any questions being answered, you're only going to lose the faith of your audience and have viewership start dropping off. In the world of television, the most popular example of this phenomenon would be Lost. Lost is a hugely popular show with boatloads of unanswered questions. If the writers don't answer any of those questions, then viewers get really ticked off, as in the case of season two of that show. When the writers realize they need to provide some answers - even if those answers bring new questions - viewers become happier. When Lost's writers started trying to do a better job of tying up at least a few plot threads, viewers renewed their faith in the show. This is something that every TV writer is told - you need to give viewers confidence that their faith will be rewarded, and you do that by parceling out little treats on a regular basis.

Now consider the case of Harper's Globe. No, you're not supposed to answer the main question, the identity of the Harper's Island killer(s), until the end of the series. But you do need to do a much better job of parceling out explanations to the other storylines. A big chunk of the premise of HG is that the show's heroine, Robin, is sent a constant series of video messages from an anonymous entity billing himself as Dangerous Wreck. The Dangerous Wreck videos comprise almost half the screen time of the entire series. But for far too much time, you're not going to have any idea why. There is no explanation at all of Dangerous Wreck's connection to the goings-on at Harper's Island for much too long. You don't see that Robin has any connection to the DW videos until week 6, and you don't see that Robin has a meaningful connection to the videos until week 12. Now, let's do the math. Harper's Globe runs for 16 weeks. So for 75% of the series, you're going to have no earthly idea what half the show means (because, again, half the show screentime-wise is comprised of the DW videos). So for the entire period leading up to then, you'll be asking, well, why does this matter? But you won't be asking in an intrigued way, you'll be asking in a frustrated and annoyed way.

So even if the season finale of HG is great, and answers the mystery in an unexpected and brilliant way (a 16th and final week of HG will air after the HI finale), it won't be enough payoff. A big payoff at the end preceded by insufficient payoff up until that point is, ultimately, still insufficient payoff.

This kind of storytelling just wouldn't fly on a TV series. TV audiences require short-term rewards on their viewing investment in addition to the long-term rewards you promise at the end of the run. You need to pepper the show with frequent answers to reward viewers. Compare HG to the TV side, Harper's Island. HI asks you a question of whether Sheriff Mills is a good guy or a villain, then answers the question. HI asks what will happen to the bag of cash found by the guys, then answers it. HI has you wonder what happened to Madison, then answers the question. HI asks why Abby hasn't returned to the island in seven years, then explains it. So as the final episodes of the season approach there are still major questions to be answered, but there nonetheless has been important payoff on a week-by-week basis. A viewer's investment in the show is continually rewarded. That's something that many web series have a real problem with.

Here's the other problem facing Harper's Globe. HG is a social show that solicits viewer participation to help Robin figure out answers to the mysteries she faces. But in the process of soliciting viewer interaction, Robin is totally neutered as a proactive character. Robin doesn't really do much of anything on her own. Robin doesn't proactively try to determine who Dangerous Wreck is. She doesn't try to figure out who the killer is once she realizes that people are being murdered. She doesn't try to warn anyone else on the island of what's going on. The one area in which Robin actually is proactive is in determining Cheshire Cat's identity, but that just serves to make you wonder why Robin can't be so fervent in investigating anything else.

This is the paradox of a social show in which you ask viewers - "the Community," as they're titled in EQAL shows - to help out. At some point you reach a threshold where you may be asking the viewers to do so much that the central character is just a cipher. As Harper's Globe approaches its end, I find that I don't really care about Robin. If you remove the social show element, then you're just left with a central character who isn't intelligent enough, aggressive enough, passionate enough to hold my interest. Let this be a lesson to other web series creators: you absolutely want to solicit viewer interaction if you can, but you can't do it so much that the main character in your show no longer seems to be capable of doing anything on her own.

All of the above would seem to indicate that I didn't love HG, but there are nonetheless some elements of the show that should be singled out for praise. The action scenes are suspenseful and well-shot. They're just as frightening and disorienting as the scenes on Harper's Island, and considering the web series undoubtedly had only a tiny fraction of the TV show's budget, that's saying a lot. Director Tony Valenzuela gets serious props for that.

Additionally, the peripheral web elements beyond HarpersGlobe.com show some excellent effort. There's a blog that Robin did when she was at college before the events of the series, Robin has a Twitter account that was used to good measure in having Robin interact with viewers, and there's an odd little blog composed by Cheshire Cat that only starts posting after that character has died (don't ask). The people at EQAL - Lonelygirl15's production company - are really good at incorporating multiple web platforms to enhance a story, and here is no exception.

So if you take away Harper's Island, is Harper's Globe a good web series? That's actually a more straightforward question than it should be. Since neither Dangerous Wreck nor anyone else on HG has actually been linked to the Harper's Island killer through 15 episodes, HG does end up feeling like it's on its own anyway. Ironically, that could benefit HG after the fact in terms of replay value - you could watch Globe now, even if you've never seen Island, without having any trouble following the Globe plot. But if you strip Harper's Globe of its TV connection, then ultimately it's just another damsel-in-distress web series. And there are tons of those already out there, some better, some worse. So we'll give it a charitable 3 out of 5. There are enough things here that are interesting, and the experiment is so groundbreaking, that I'll look the other way when it comes to the really average storyline.

Written by Jennifer Yale
Directed by Tony Valenzuela
Based on the TV series Harper's Island, created by Ari Schlossberg and executive produced by Jeffrey Bell
Executive Producers: Miles Beckett, Greg Goodfried
Starring: Melanie Merkosky
16 episodes total, run time approx. 76 minutes
Available at harpersglobe.com

My Pal Satan

2009-07-06T10:21:00.016-04:00

Timing, they say, is everything. But whether or not that's really true of web video is not entirely clear. After all, the very nature of web video is that it's stored on a server somewhere ready for you to call up at any point, day or night, today, tomorrow, or, provided the website doesn't go out of business, years from now. A small minority of web series are successful enough to get real-time viewer interaction that makes watching the show the day new episodes arrive beneficial, but that's only a small percentage of what's out there. The vast majority of series covered on this site are going to be shows that you can watch at any time, and the filmmakers will be glad that you got around to it whenever you get around to it.

Nonetheless, just go with me for now and assume that the old trope is true: timing is everything. In that case, My Pal Satan, a new web series which premiered this June, is sunk by really terrible timing. It aims to parody cheesy sitcoms about mismatched roommates, only those kinds of shows really aren't even around anymore in 2009. But an even bigger case of bad timing is that we're just a month removed from the final episode of Ray Wise's amazing, brilliant performance as the Devil in TV's Reaper. Any attempt to have somebody else portray Satan while Wise's iconic performance is so fresh in our minds is bound to fail. And so if you try to build a show around the character of Satan, only your Satan pales in comparison to another Satan we just saw, your show is bound to fail too.

My Pal Satan is structured to be like a parody of cheesy TV sitcoms centered around mismatched roommates, one of them straight-laced and one of them wacky and unpredictable. Here, the straight-laced one is Donna, a young professional who put up an online ad looking for a roommate, only to have that new roommate turn out to be Satan himself. So the premise of each episode is simple: Satan causes trouble, Donna gets annoyed, hilarity ensues. And like any other cheesy sitcom, everything gets reconciled at the end of the episode as the pair learns to appreciate each other and learns a lesson about friendship, and they share a happy smile at the end.

The show comes complete with opening credits and a theme song straight out of the 1980s. Alan Thicke didn't write this theme song, but it's in that vein.* The opening credits include shots of Satan being wacky and Donna looking exasperated. Again, standard 80s/90s sitcom fare. Unfortunately, the show loses the vibe after that. If you're going to parody those kinds of sitcoms, you have to go all the way. There's no laugh track here, and there should be. And the series is shot in single-camera, when, if you want to be a true parody of old sitcoms, it has to be multicam. Note that these are the kinds of things that contemporary comedies have moved away from - but, then, that's the point of why My Pal Satan should have them.

Of course, the real problem is that it's not 1987 and Perfect Strangers is not a top 10 Nielsen show. Doing a parody of goofy sitcom clichés now, in 2009 when sitcoms are already a dying breed, is both unnecessary and twenty years too late.

All of these other problems could have been solved if the depiction of Satan was just so wonderful, so fabulous, that the show would be worth watching even if the execution of everything else didn't always click. That was, after all, the case with TV's Reaper, a wildly inconsistent show that nonetheless had Ray Wise's great performance as the Devil to keep the show afloat even when the writers seemed to be totally lost with every other part of the series.

Jefferson Brown, the actor playing Satan here, never had a shot. There was absolutely nothing he could have done to make his Satan stand out, given how fresh in my mind Wise's Devil is. Maybe after a grace period of a couple of years, but not now. Brown doesn't have anywhere near the charm and charisma of Wise, but then, who does?

The humor of My Pal Satan is crude and childish, because this version of Satan is crude and childish. This Satan has the mindset of an eleven year old boy - Satan seems to have a particular joy for vomit and excrement. Instead of Ray Wise's dapper businessman Devil, we instead get a Satan who's best classified as Classic American Douchebag. (The species Douchebagus Americanus apparently also resides in Canada, since this is a Canadian show.) Think Spencer Pratt, with black hair. Instead of a Satan to be feared, this is a Satan who deserves to be mocked. But is a Satan who's just a tool really a good idea?

I'm just not sure that I'm willing or able to accept a Satan who is, quite frankly, a loser. Satan pines over Donna for the entire series, only to be constantly rebuffed. By the end of the show he is reduced to alternately looking like a sad puppy dog and acting out like a tantrum-throwing four year old. He's pathetic. And if he can't even convince Donna to like him, you can extrapolate from there that he's probably not a very good Satan. Satan should be smooth, charming and unflappable. It's hard to imagine this Satan, a Satan who is constantly flustered by Donna, being any good at winning people's souls. This Satan is a loser. Where's the fun in that?

Adding fuel to the no-pun-intended fire, the My Pal Satan website includes the script of an unproduced seventh episode of the series in which Satan notes that he doesn't really pay attention to the day-to-day events going on in Hell. He implies that his underlings pretty much do whatever they want - the upshot of which is that it's clear that even Satan's minions don't fear or respect him. The same is true on earth, where nobody apparently fears or respects him either. Satan has no friends or colleagues, nobody but Donna to regale with stories of his dastardly deeds. It's ultimately just not a version of Satan that's very entertaining. If you're going to do a comedy show about Satan, I want to see a gleeful, indomitable Satan constantly flashing his evil grin. I've got enough other shows about slackers and losers.

It's too bad that My Pal Satan doesn't work. I sure wanted to like the show. The series was created by TV scribe Dennis Heaton, who has worked on a couple of my favorite Canadian imports of recent years, jPod and Blood Ties. (*One of the stars of jPod? Alan Thicke. So conceivably, Heaton should have been able to get him to do the theme song for My Pal Satan, but didn't. So disappointing.) Any connection to those wonderful Canadian TV products qualifies as an instant endorsement for me, so I had high expectations for MPS. They just didn't pan out. If you want to watch a show about roommates causing hell for one another, go watch Roommating instead.

Watch Now

http://www.mypalsatan.com

Credits

Written by Dennis Heaton
Directed by Vivieno Caldinelli
Starring: Jefferson Brown, Rachel Wilson
6 episodes, total run time approx. 23 minutes

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