Best Laid Plan – Tom’s Big Date

Tom finally gets his dream date, but his friends’ advice might be a recipe for disaster.

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4 Swirlies

“If you’re buying her dinner, then you’re grabbing her by the back of the head and kissing her deep. Now get out of here and make it happen!”

It’s a ball’s hair over ten minutes, which made me hesitate before hitting play. But seeing as it is from WebSerials.com,  I thought I’d give it a chance and I’m glad I did.

The first thing you see is a claim that this series is 100% improvised. There’s a lot of camera angles and editing, which makes me doubt that claim, but the video is funny either way!

There’s 6 characters in the first scene, which helps keep it high energy and the one-liners flying. It builds, there’s goals and stakes, there’s a sharp button on the resolution – very strong writing. (Or improvising?)

The second scene brings it down to 3 characters, but the brilliant addition of a very funny and dry waiter to interfere with Tom’s Big Date. I like that they didn’t make the character of the waiter more silly, but kept to very simple and very small but potent escalations that drove up the stakes for Tom.

The humour dips once Tom saves the date from ruin, and ventures into more emotional, drama territory. Which is nice but… really, that switching gears is very tough and I don’t feel like they made it work. I think, at the end of the day, the writing and the acting wasn’t up to the task.  I felt the emotional tones but once the basic tension of the scene was over, there was nothing left to keep me engaged. But kudos for the attempt!

I also noticed that the credits are pretty long, about a minute, which brings the total length to over 10 minutes. I think that on YouTube, there’s the same factor at play that makes prices always end in 99 cents. If this clip was 9:40 it would be much attractive to those who stumble on it than it is crossing into double digits.

Overall, a very funny episode that shows off the comedic talents of those involved very nicely.