Back in 1994, producers Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz defined the teenage years of a generation of suburban outcasts with My So-Called Life, the short-lived ABC drama about 15-year-old Angela Chase and her incredibly awkward coming of age. Just a few years earlier, Zwick and Herskovitz had defined an earlier generation with their show Thirtysomething, an angst-ridden look at the lives of married couples in their 30s. Since the end of those two shows, the pair have attempted to tap into the zeitgeist with dramatic takes on blended families (Once and Again) and young-adult relationships (Relativity), with mixed success. It’s been a while since they’ve had a show on the air.
Now comes Quarterlife, retooled from a pilot that was rejected by ABC in 2005. It’s notable not just as Zwick and Herskovitz’s return to episodic storytelling; rather, it’s far more interesting as the first major online show from producers of their caliber, made with the same attention to quality as any of the pair’s TV fare. In partnership with MySpace, Quarterlife will debut its individual installments (each around nine minutes) on Thursdays and Sundays starting November 11 at the social-networking site; they’ll then be disseminated the following week on other online video sites such as YouTube, as well as the show’s own home page (quarterlife.com).
It’s a milestone of sorts in the development of online TV, sure, but is it any good? Unfortunately, despite the talent involved, the answer is, not really. Zwick and Herskovitz’s target this time around is, as the title implies, people in their early 20s, a few years out of college and still trying to find direction in their lives. The show focuses on six such young people, three men and three women, who have more than their share of romantic entanglements and existential angst. While the producers’ past shows have often seemed painfully real, Quarterlife has the problem of seeming painfully unreal almost all of the time; painful because it’s clear how hard the show is trying for something true and honest.
The first problem is that the producers have decided that since this is a show on the Internet, it should be a show about the Internet. Thus main character Dylan (Bitsie Tulloch) has her very own video blog (hosted, of course, at quarterlife.com), which she uses to comment on the issues that she and her friends face. She opens the first episode musing, “Why do we blog?” Suffice to say, if you’re wondering that aloud to your webcam, you’re probably not an actual 20-something blogger.
Dylan’s job as an editorial assistant at a women’s magazine is no more realistic, nor are her two male neighbors’ efforts to become filmmakers by shooting a commercial for a local car dealership. The characters’ conversations about the conflict between life and art, or between pursuing your dreams and making a living, strain for meaning, but more often than not come off as false. There’s a certain loose charm to the production, which is about at the level of a low-budget movie, and the actors occasionally successfully sell their slacker-philosopher characters (or at least their clothes do).
Zwick and Herskovitz also haven’t quite yet gotten the hang of producing episodes that only last a few minutes; the first six installments play less like stand-alone segments than parts of one big whole that’s just been chopped up. Their initial deal is for 36 episodes, so one hopes that with more time, they’ll figure out the rhythms of both the format and the storytelling. For now, Quarterlife’s existence is far more revolutionary than its execution.
Quarterlife **1/2