Add to My Profile | More Videos
Marshall Herskovitz (producer, thirtysomething, My So-Called Life, etc.) wrote an op-ed in the L.A. Times last week decrying the consolidation of TV networks and TV-production studios, and its effects on the quality of TV. Those effects, he says: TV creators have fewer choices who to sell their work to, are bothered by more interference from networks (who now usually own a piece of the show) and get screwed out of financial stakes in their shows, which, he argues, results in less creative independence.
As a result–and this is the news hook–he says that he and partner Ed Zwick “have — for the time being at least — stopped producing television programs.” Instead, they’re making their twentysomething relationship drama quarterlife for MySpace (where it debuted yesterday) and the website quarterlife.com.
Is he right? I agree that more independent production companies would provide writers more options. And anyone who follows TV had myriad stories of brainless network interference. But I would point out that:
* However many quality shows Herskovitz and Zwick have had cancelled, there are more, better shows on TV in 2007 than there were in thirtysomething’s heyday–largely because of the proliferation of cable channels, even though most of them are owned by giant corporations, and
* The duo may have “stopped producing television programs,” but quarterlife was a project they tried to make as a series for ABC in 2005 and have reconceived for the Web.
But whatever. Disagree as I might about the particulars, I would love for producers to be able to sell their shows online directly to viewers and advertisers. If only Arrested Development, say, could have been sold straight from iTunes; and who knows how many un-sellable but brilliant ideas the Internet could make possible if someone figures out how to monetize it? Not because it would make producers more money–fine for them, but not my problem–but because it would give us better TV.
Which is why I wish I could tell you that the webisodes of quarterlife that I’ve seen are better than they are. Granted, the TV-like production values of this relatively big-budget show are easier on the eyes than most web video. But you can’t make bad dialogue good with fancy camera equipment.
The first webisode (embedded above) is awful, embodying the worst stereotypes of thirtysomething et al.–self-indulgent whining–without redeeming irony or originality. The premise: Dylan (Bitsie Tulloch) is a frustrated writer who works at a women’s magazine. Because she’s young, she has a blog. Because she’s young and pretty and this is a TV Internet show, it’s a video blog. What’s her blog about? Mainly, it seems, about being young and blogging. “What is blogging?” Dylan asks. “Why do we blog?” That’s when she’s not spilling her friends’ and roommates’ intimate secrets and acting shocked when they’re offended.
Actually, the navel-gazing and oversharing I can accept; even if they’re stereotypes of the blog world, they’re not exactly without basis. The problem with the opening episodes of quarterlife is that they try so hard to be hip that they come off square, dated and inauthentic. A flyer on Dylan’s bedroom wall screams, “Rave!” The characters seem to interject the word “blog”–as verb, noun, and possibly adjective–into every other sentence, when they’re not talking like characters from a 1995 Sandra Bullock thriller. “The Net is nasty slow today!” “You put my face all over the frickin’ Net!” And Dylan’s constant sweeping generational statements seem much more typical of Baby Boomers–say, the kind who’d make thirtysomething–than generalization-resistant Gen Y-ers.
And yet, and yet… I did watch all six webisodes I was sent. Because once you get past the heavyhanded Net-ness of quarterlife, it does have a few things going for it simply as a soap opera. Yes, the characters are gassy and precious and self-involved, but the beauty of Zwick-Herskovitz shows is that you don’t have to like the whiny characters to like the shows–in fact, it’s often just the opposite. As in many pseudo-literate soaps–say, the early years of Dawson’s Creek–picking apart the characters’ pretensions becomes part of the sport. And then suddenly, you’re a few episodes in, and you find yourself, in spite of yourself, actually caring who sleeps with whom. You been Hersko-Zwicked, sucka!
If nothing else, quarterlife has good timing. By coming out just after the strike, not only will it get attention from people looking for alternative entertainment, Herskovitz’s op-ed may just make it a cause celebre in Hollywood whether it’s any good or not. (Watch quarterlife and stick it to The Man at the studios!) And even I have to say–and this may be the first of many such endorsements I give if the strike lasts a while–that you might as well give it some time because, well, what the hell else are you going to watch? It’s not like the poor little Web needs the grown-ups of Serious Television to save it from terminal illiteracy, but still, it’s worth rooting for quarterlife to succeed, if only to encourage writers (and their moneymen) to create more shows online.
In the meantime, you may even get to watch this one on TV. According to The Hollywood Reporter, NBC was in talks last week to sign up quarterlife as a possible winter strike replacement. So would watching it there be sticking it to The Man or selling out to The Man? Ah, the complex ironies of life on “the Net”! Maybe somebody can make a “blog” about it.