Finally, the era of (semi) high-profile web series is upon us, an era of more shows with smaller budgets and smaller audiences. The first entry: MySpace TV's Roommates.
One way to critique it would be as a reality-based show. We could evaluate how contrived or realistic the relationships and dialog are. After debating the level of reality of various reality-based shows, I've sworn off trying to determine how "real" any show is, and I think that ultimately what matters is not whether the show's producers claim it is real but whether or not the show "rings true." That is: can viewers identify with the situations and characters? Even if the characters are being as real as they possibly can be, it might not appear to be real from someone outside of their subculture. In this respect (and many others), Roommates plays like a cheap knock-off of Laguna Beach and The Hills. Producers understand that attractive females are probably the best way to get young viewers (young straight males like looking at them, young females can, perhaps, identify with them), so you can't really blame them for focusing on the same demographic as producers of LB and The Hills.
The characters in LB and The Hills tend to talk more about other characters who aren't there on camera with them at that moment, and this, to me, feels more realistic than the characters in Roommates who, like inhabitants of The Real World or Big Brother, force conflicts on people in their immediate vicinity. That's a key difference between reality and many reality-based shows: real social lives tend to sprawl, which makes them hard to film, and certainly hard to film and edit in a compelling way on short notice. The Real World made filming everyday melodrama more feasible by concentrating it in one physical space, but they sacrificed some crucial elements of the way people talk, fight, and hook up. There's also a woeful lack of passive aggressiveness in Roommates, another thing that I think makes LB/The Hills more realistic. Its part of that need to make as many dramatic things happen as quickly as possible.
We could judge it as a scripted drama, in which case it plays like a WB show with worse acting and worse writing. We could judge it as a sexy "romp," but if you're going for the male demo, why wouldn't they just watch free porn (which doesn't seem like its ever going to irritate its fanbase with interstitial ads, like MySpace is likely to do) instead?
One big problem seems to be the fact that they have to crank out one episode every day. Most vloggers don't even produce that much content. Really, I don't think its possible for any group of writers and editors to produce that much quality content. Most reality-based shows have the luxury of an extended period to edit the footage into something resembling a story. Also, if the action takes place over a long period or time, the producers might be able to get a sense of where things are going and intervene so as to create a compelling narrative. The "quantity, not quality" schedule of Roommates seem like it would lead to a shapeless, meandering story with endless make-ups, break-ups, and make-outs, not unlike the most enduring once-a-day narrative, the soap opera.
The only compelling aspect of the show so far is the acknowledgment of the cameraman as a male friend/possible pervert/possible audience proxy. It would be cool if he changed from fly-on-the-wall to active participant, shifting the show from 3rd person to 1st person. But i doubt that will happen. In the meantime, we have to put up with the lazy producer's way of conveying plot and background info: the direct address confessional.
Can't producers have more faith in audience's voyeurism and just shoot a year's worth of someone's, anyone's life, edit it down to 20-30 eps, put some decent music to it, and show it online? They should've copied the form of Laguna Beach and not the characters/setting/content.
No comments:
Post a Comment