BAMF Girls Club

Today I present you with a web series that answers the age-old question - if all the bad-ass heroines from our favorite shows/movies lived in a reality-show style house, how long would it take for everyone to gang up and smother Bella in her sleep? Well, they've gotten to eight episodes so far. Fingers crossed!

Left to Right: Hermione, Katniss, Michonne, Buffy, Lisbeth and Bella

This series is brought to us by Comedivas, and so far it does not disappoint. Hermione is an insufferable know-it-all, Katniss and Michonne are battling PTSD, Buffy is a slightly ditsy 90's throw-back, Lisbeth is a complete misanthrope, and Bella is utterly useless. And there are plenty of homoerotic overtones... if you're into that kind of thing. *shifty eyes*

Buffy tries to set up Hermione with Willow... hijinks ensue!

It's difficult to integrate characters from such disparate fandoms while retaining each character's distinctive voice. Comedivas does this pretty flawlessly, though Twi-hards will be disappointed that Bella is such an overblown caricature. The rest of us will just find this hilarious. Check out the first 5-minute episode on the Comedivas YouTube channel: BAMF Girls Club Episode One.

The Horrible Aftermath: where are they now?

For those of you who have not seen Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog, do not speak to me until you have corrected this egregious error. For those of you who have, come sit by me and I will tell you what the stars of that seminal web series have been up to lately. Yes, I know that they were all famous before Horrible and basically went back to their "real" jobs after. Just... shh.

Felicia Day, aka Penny, in The Guild

Season 5 of Felicia Day's web series, The Guild, has been up and running for several weeks now. In this season, the guildies travel to "Megagame-O-Ramacon," a giant nerd-gasmic convention for all things sci-fi/fantasy. Sounds vaguely familiar... Like a similar national convention whose name escapes me at the moment, celebrities both large and small abound. Guest appearances featured Brent Spiner (squee!), Eliza Dushku (meh), Tom Lenk (adorbs!), and many, many, more. Including...

Captain Hammer! Or is it Captain Tightpants?

And this just highlights for me one of the best things about being a sci-fi/fantasy fan. The actors, in general, don't take themselves too seriously. They're open to doing things like signing autographs - at, I don't know, a convention for comic books - and appearing on a popular but low-budget web series, just to give their fans a thrill.

The name of that convention is on the tip of my tongue...

Next Up: NPH is totally the star of HIMYM. Deal with it.

Felicia, stop flirting with me!

Okay, Felicia Day. I know you can't comment on this blog, follow me back on Twitter, or respond to any of the dozens of anonymous letters I send you daily. But if you want to keep your love for me a secret (e.g. better than I've done), you've got to stop doing things like this:



And don't try that whole, "it was Sandeep's idea!" stuff again. Didn't work with your blatant come-ons via Legend of Neil (new eps FTW), ain't gonna work this time. The jig is up! (P.S. Call me!)

This made my Day (see what I did there?)

I admit it - I'm a Felicia Day fangirl. You know it, I know it. And thanks to an awkward encounter during Comic Con last year, Felicia Day knows it.


On the bright side, my well-known obsession leads Maggie Cats to send me links like this one: Felicia Day slays the Internet with 'The Guild.' Set aside for a moment that they should've titled this piece "Felicia Day wins the Internet." This is a great article about how Day and her web series, The Guild, is quietly subverting the basis of the entertainment industry as we know it - to wit, money.

"When I tell somebody, 'I don't know if the right move is to make this into a TV pilot,' or a movie or whatever, they look at me like I'm an alien," says Day. "I think a lot of people think the end-all, be-all is to be a part of that Hollywood machine. For me, I love what I do all day." And so do we, Felicia. So do we.

Check out Season 4, Episode 1, or start from the beginning at http://www.watchtheguild.com/.

Easy to Assemble

Illeana Douglas is a total "hey, it's that gal" - an actress you recognize but can't name, who's been in everything and nothing. She plays up her semi-(hemi-? quasi-?) celebrity in her web series, Easy to Assemble. Douglas stars (as herself) as a recovering actress, trying to make a new start as an employee at IKEA. The rest of the cast is filled out with some of the hardest working people in show business - Justine Bateman, Ed Begley Jr., Tim Meadows, etc etc.

"How many favors can I call in for this episode?"

Now, I know what you're thinking. Sri, isn't this just an excuse for a four-minute long IKEA commercial? Well... yes, actually. Easy to Assemble is what's called "branded entertainment." Think of it as the opposite of product placement. Instead of a show being used as a vehicle for a product (I'm looking at you, Lady Gaga and Virgin Mobile), a product is used as the vehicle for a show.

Here's why I think this works:

1. The writing is really funny. Beyond the main plot, several of the shows end with "training videos," each featuring the guest star of that episode.
2. As mentioned above, these are some great comedic actors. Jane Lynch plays a Swedish IKEA employee. Ed Proops pops in for a few episodes as Illeana's agent. I could go on.
   
3. IKEA is, in general, looked upon favorably by most and with slavish devotion by many. It's a company that doesn't make us go, "ick." Besides, the emphasis is truly on the entertainment part of "branded entertainment."

So if you love IKEA or B-list stars (sorry, Illeana), give Easy to Assemble a try. At the very least, you might find that duvet you've been looking for.

Sweet dreams...

For more analysis, and for links to Illeana's other web series: Illeanarama - Supermarket of the Stars, check out this article on IKEAfans.com (seriously).

Wonderful World of Webseries

The thing I love about web series (at least the ones I watch) is that, by virtue of being relatively cheap to make and publish, they can afford to be targeted directly to niche markets. But Sri, you might be saying, some regular shows and even entire channels are targeted to niche markets! Fine, smart ass. Let me put it another way - web series are to broadcast TV what blogs are to print magazines.

And for every magazine like Cat Fancy,

there are 1,000 sites like icanhascheezburger.com.

Both blogs and web series are great for the digital generation because they're (a) easily accessible online, (b) published in bite-sized pieces, and (c) tailored to our personal interests. However, there is a wide range in quality of both. The best way to navigate the world of web series is the same as for blogs - links and recommendations. And because I am a selfless person, I volunteer myself to watch minutes upon minutes of web series, in order to bring you the cream of the crop. You're welcome.

I've already blogged about The Guild, featuring my idol Felicia Day and my homeboy Sandeep Parikh. Both are involved in the next web series I'm going to recommend - The Legend of Neil. No bias at all, I swear.

Sandeep writes, directs and produces the show.

As you can imagine, his genius shines throughout.

The story concerns a modern sad-sack (fired, dumped, and evicted all in the same day) named Neil, who tries to drown his woes in a game of Legend of Zelda. And beer. In a rather unmentionable way, he is magically transported into the game. There he staggers through the fantasy realm, focusing a cynical (albeit bleary) eye on all the game conventions that just don't make sense. For example, when the body of his first kill disappears he finds a Heart Cookie (that restores his health) in its place. His deranged mentor Old Man tells him, "Eat up! You deserve it... for committing murder." Fair warning - the humor ranges from other such clever reinterpretations of game logic to cheap toilet humor... but it works. Trust me.

If you like old-school NES games, you'll enjoy The Legend of Neil on an almost spiritual level. But even if you don't have an intimate knowledge of 8-bit, there's a lot in this show to love. Felicia Day as the nymphomaniac fairy - who can heal you with a kiss... and more - is a great combination of good girl image and dirty girl language. The special effects are purposefully bad in some places and pretty decent in others. There's even a musical episode! And even if you watch the entire series in one go, it will take less than three hours. So go ahead - give Neil a chance!

Not that he stands much of one, anyway...

Streamys 2010

Sunday night saw the 2nd annual Streamy Awards, an awards show "devoted to honoring excellence in original web television programming." My girl Felicia Day was nominated for Best Actress, and her web series The Guild was nominated for eight awards total. As a special bonus the organizers planned to showcase the cause of net neutrality, especially in light of the recent Comcast/FCC ruling (turns out the ISPs do have the right to restrict/slow access to certain websites - wait, what?).

So I'm scratching my head as to why Sunday's show was, apparently, a total disaster. This LA Weekly blog post does a great job of explaining the total cluster that was the 2010 Streamys: "technical difficulties, crude humor, a run time of more than three hours, a poorly executed script, etc." Apologies have been issued by the executive producers and the board of directors.

Personally, I was puzzled about the complaints of 'crude humor.' I mean ... how crude do you have to be to shock a room full of internet denizens? Technical difficulties make records sketchy - and mostly based on Twitter accounts from people backstage. Apparently, not only were the jokes in extremely poor taste (think necrophilia, infanticide and 9/11) - they were flatly insulting to the web TV industry. Here's what Chance McClain of Horrible Turn (an unauthorized homage to Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog) had to say:

It was deliberate, crafted, written by pros, and terrible... it was almost like some brass from TV and movie land decided to pay off some local scrub actors. “Here’s 10 grand. What I need you to do is make the whole notion of web television into a joke. They want credibility? We’ll give them vulgarity! Remind 'em that the internet is for porn and amateurs."

As a result, lots of people didn't even stay until the end. Felicia Day probably booked it immediately after she was assaulted by a man wearing a thong. Yeah, I wouldn't advise clicking that link.

Maybe we'll never know what the heck caused the 2010 Streamys disaster. The real question is - will this hurt the cause of net neutrality, or help it? On one hand, the fact that its major awards show was so terrible and offensive can't make the industry, and any of its associated causes, look very good. On the other hand ... any publicity is good publicity, right? If the web TV peeps can spin this right in their blogs, they can keep the moral high ground and shine a bigger spotlight on the cause of net neutrality than a well-mannered Streamys alone ever could.

Just trying to make lemonade out of lemons here, people.

+2 Intelligence, -3 Charisma

You may know her as Penny from Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog, Vi from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that ballet snob from Bring It On Again, or even as that girl from the Sears commercial. But Felicia Day is actually a formidable script-writer and producer, as evidenced by her delightful web series, The Guild. Which is why that you should love her as much as I do.

Of course, I have a well-documented weakness for redheads.

The Guild will make you crack up, but it will also make you cringe. The show concerns itself with the lives of six painfully awkward role-playing gamers who finally meet each other IRL ("in real life"). Each of them is hilariously inept and uncomfortably real. My favorite is Zaboo (played by my homeboy, Sandeep Parikh). He's a "HinJew" - Hindu mother, Jewish father - with a stalker-ish crush on Day's character, Codex. Parikh steals the show - his comedic timing is second to none.

Damn, but these geeks are hot.

You don't have to be a gamer to enjoy The Guild. You just need a couple hours to watch the entire series (a total of 22 episodes, each 3-9 minutes long), and a l33t dictionary. Some key phrases...

QQ moar, n00b
Keep crying/whining, newbie. It amuses me.

AFK
Away From Keyboard (this happens very rarely).

Pwned
I just made you my bitch!

The latest news is that Microsoft has signed on for a third season of The Guild. Bonus: there will be a sneak peak at Comic Con in July! Meanwhile, catch up and support the show online.