Media Maven Musings

As a young man in my twenties, a fan of NBC, and an avid blogger, I felt it only appropriate that I check out NBC’s newest drama, quarterlife.  The series, created by Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz  (the brains behind My So-Called Life and thirtysomething), is the first of its kind for a number of reasons, and is the epitome of the modern day series.  The show originally began as 30 8-minute webisodes, produced independently by Zwick and Herskovitz.  Needing only a few hours to fill their post-strike schedule, NBC bought the entire 240 minute series as a finished product and will air it in 6 40-min installments over the next 6 weeks.  Two big firsts here: quarterlife is the first ever series based on original webisodes, and its also the first time a network has bought a series that’s already been completely shot.

But based on last night’s pilot, I will not be among those who stick around to find out what happens 6 weeks from now, as the pilot was absolutely awful.  As a rule, I always give a show at least one more episode past the pilot (I discussed this rule extensively in some posts earlier this fall) before I pull the plug, but this show couldn’t look less promising.  Here’s why:

1. Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz are in their 50’s.  No matter how in touch they think they are with life as a twenty-something, they aren’t, at least not in this day and age.  The script for this pilot has been written 1000 times before– every word is about as cliched as you can possibly get, except they throw the words “blog,” “twenties” and “film school” into the mix.  There is no truth here, no revelations.  This is the same angsty bullshit we’ve been seeing on television for decades.  Plus, everyone knows that when you open a sleeping laptop, it takes a second to load.  You can’t just open it in a parking lot and be immediately connected to the internet and ready to watch an already loaded streaming vlog (yeah– its a video blog, not even an actual blog!  You’re giving bloggers like me a bad name, Zwick!  I don’t videotape myself talking about my stupid problems and share them with the world!)

2. The show is basically Dawson’s Creek, but the actors play people their own age instead of pretending they’re in high school, and they all live together in a giant house with an enormous basement and several large, nice bedrooms.  The dialogue irritatingly self-important, as if every conversation and occurrence is a life or death matter.  Maybe Dawson and his buddies acted that way, but I don’t know any 25-year-olds who are this lame and so, well, teenager-esque.

3 . The characters are boring.  It’d be one thing if the show was contrived and sappy, but you loved the characters, right?  Well, not the case here.  These characters couldn’t be more run-of-the-mill.  They look average, sound average–they’re straight up boring.  If you get a bunch of twenty-five year olds together for an hour, you’d think you might laugh or gasp or sigh at least once right?  Well, these are the most unfunny, uninteresting people you’ll ever meet.  The situations are unamusing, the chatter is unamusing, and the relationships are incredibly unamusing.

4. The plot is ridiculous.  In the pilot, we find out that, surprise!, everyone is in love with everyone else.  Sweet.  So now we get to watch as they all love/don’t love each other in a tangled web of trite romantic horse manure.  The only characters seemingly uninvolved in these love affairs are the weird dude in the glasses who I guess lives in basement (?) and Lisa, the actress who sucks at acting, is scared of performing in front of others, and doesn’t know why she wants to be an actress.  Wow.  What an interesting and believable character.  Do you know any twenty-somethings who are pursuing a job they a)stink at  b)are fundamentally afraid of  and c)don’t even have a passion for?  Maybe two of the three, but all three?

5. Who’s the target audience here?  You’re not going to fool anyone between 18-30– they will see right through this bullshit, as they always do.  And who above the age of 30 wants to watch a show about whiny twentysomethings?  The only people I can see watching this are 10-17 year olds who think this is what it must be like when you’re older.  But they’re probably all watching Family Guy on Sunday’s when this show is on anyways.

Here’s the bottom line: Just because you take a run-of-the-mill relationship-centric show about young singles and call it hip doesn’t make it hip.  This show adds absolutely nothing new to the television canon aside from the way in which the series was acquired and developed.   It’s an excellent first step towards a new television paradigm.  We’ve got a series about a blog, based on an internet series, with actors playing people their own age, but the voice of this show, its essence, is nothing new and has nothing new to say.  There is no point for this show to exist, as it contributes absolutely nothing that hasn’t already been said or done before in the exact same scenario, likely using the exact same choice of words.  Until an actual twentysomething writes a series about twentysomethings, we’ll be stuck with terrible Dawson Redux crap like quarterlife.

I’m going to watch the next episode, just in case the pilot is a fluke, but I already hate absolutely everything about this show, so I can’t myself lasting beyond this Sunday’s episode.

Grade: D