The Internet Alternative to TV: Web Series Created With a 'Freer Hand'
By Joshua Zumbrun
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 13, 2008
It's the Internet's fault that the writers had to go on strike, so surely the Internet will come through in our moment of need and satisfy our hunger for pre-crafted dialogue. That's only fair, right?
Well, the Internet is trying.
On MySpaceTV, the video-sharing site attached to the popular social network, the show "Quarterlife" has generated a lot of buzz. Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the creators of "thirtysomething," about the angst of being in your 30s, and "My So-Called Life," about the angst of being a teenager, have now brought us a show about the angst of being in your 20s.
The lure of the Internet was too great to resist for the industry veterans.
"In general it's been harder and harder to do what we do on television," says Herskovitz. "Networks are much more branded than they used to be. They take a much stronger hand in what their programs should look like, sound like, feel like."
A show on MySpace gives its creator more artistic latitude. "I was definitely interested in being a freer hand and being independent," Herskovitz says.
Herskovitz's and Zwick's freer hands nevertheless caught the attention of NBC. So, starting in February, the show -- its title is a reference to the post-college quarter-life crisis -- will be repackaged from its current six-to-eight-minute episodes into an hour-long format on the network. Already written and produced, Season 1 will air regardless of the strike.
The status of a second season, online and on TV, is up in the air: A major point of contention between Writers Guild of America and the studios is the compensation writers should receive when their work appears on the Internet.
Though available on MySpace, it's best watched on its own site, http://www.quarterlife.com, where each episode is available on a large, almost-like-a-TV video player, instead of the small window and grainy quality of a YouTube video.
"Quarterlife" centers around Dylan (actress Bitsie Tulloch), a socially conscious wannabe writer, her roommates and the three guys next door. The show is prominently supported by Toyota: Several early episodes revolve around the three guys, aspiring filmmakers, struggling to suppress their artistic vision to produce a commercial for a Toyota dealership.
Another popular series on MySpaceTV follows a cast of recent college grads making their way in the world. "Roommates" follows eight friends, all highly attractive girls of questionable virtue. While "Quarterlife" is filmed by an omniscient cameraman, "Roommates" uses the conceit that the characters are filming their own lives to share them on MySpace.
The show is produced by Scott Zakarin, perhaps best known for E! Entertainment's "Kill Reality," a reality-TV show in which the stars of other reality-TV shows produced a real movie called "The Scorned."
The characters of "Roommates" are written to resemble the overblown, self-absorbed histrionics of many reality-TV participants. The characters in "Roommates" and "Quarterlife," which launched in October and November, respectively, have their own MySpace profiles.
"What's fascinating about 'Roommates' is the extent to which the users don't just sit back and watch the shows," says Jeff Berman, the general manager of MySpaceTV. In the first week, says Berman, "the show had 1.2 million views of episodes. . . . What's incredible is that one of the characters got 40,000 messages from MySpace users in that week."
"Roommates," currently on hiatus, begins its second season in early February.
"So when are ya'll starting season 2????????? I hope soon!!! Because there really isn't much to watch on TV these days," wrote fan Tiffany Harris, 25, on the "Roommates" MySpace page.
Harris, from Ellensburg, Wash., is a convert to Internet TV: "I don't have cable anymore, all I have is cable Internet," she says. "I can watch what I want online. Cable is a waste of money to me now."
Fortunately, there's more to Internet shows than youth dramas. In the realm of sci-fi, the computer-animated "Afterworld" has attracted a dedicated fan base. The series debuted on Bud.TV, an extremely low-traffic video-sharing site launched by Anheuser-Busch, but it has picked up fans this fall as it spread to YouTube and MySpace. Again, the best place to catch up on the show is at its dedicated Web site, http://www.afterworld.tv.
The series follows a man who wakes up one morning to find a world where people have disappeared. Alone, he makes his way across the ghost cities of the United States searching for his family.
If you're looking for reruns with a twist, Sony Pictures Television has repackaged classic episodes from its archives into five-minute versions -- famous punch lines and basic story arcs preserved -- that run on MySpaceTVs Minisode Network. It's quite the library of shows: "Charlie's Angels," "Diff'rent Strokes," "Starsky and Hutch," "The Jeffersons" and "Who's the Boss?" An hour of Ricki Lake can be a bit much to take, but how about the "I'm in Love With My Cousin" episode edited down to five minutes? A bite-size helping we all can appreciate.
But the Internet is most entertaining as a grab bag of quirky entertainment -- the sexy philologist of " Hot for Words," the juvenile slapstick of YouTube's most-subscribed channel; the comedy duo Smosh; "SNL's" Fred Armisen's homemade sketches at ThunderAnt.
And don't miss the outrageous David Blaine-mocking street magic videos of ThoseLilRabbits.
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