Foodies Ep.1 “First Course” | A Web Series on The Watch List

Check out the first episode of FOODIES! Porter gets a first taste of his fiancee’s closest friends at their regular dinner club, not knowing that he’s the guest of honor. New episodes every Wednesday. Watch the show on your phone, find recipes and share your comments by clicking the button below.

3 Swirlies

“Starchy. But, uh, the parmesan foam gives it, uh… a bite?”

I was forwarded this new web series, and the first thing I noticed was how incredibly mean and angry the comments about it were, both on the blog that brought my source’s attention to it, and the show’s home site. (And then there’s the fact that, for me, I couldn’t click anything on the episode’s page in the their site.)

Here’s one straight from the Foodies web site: “the acting & mostly the writing is wooden–the camera angles & editing is lousy. It’s a gr8 focus as subject matter goes and I would def tune into c if it evolves to successfully mocking status-but truly the camera angles, the edits, everything technically is so poorly done and needs to have a real cast & crew. sneeriously, I wish this idea of foodies to rise well but perhaps it kneads to ferment in the cave b4 serving.”

And here’s one from Serious Eats: “Wow, that was quite possibly the worst thing I’ve seen on the internet, and I’ve trolled /b/ for years…”

Sneeriously.

I know, I come on here and I tell people what I don’t like about their shows, like I know what the eff I’m talking about. And I’m not the first one to winge about how there’s mean people on the internet. But come on, guys. Play nice. Even when I write stuff that’s not positive, and occasionally yes unkind, about a web series, I feel bad about it. Cause I know how much it sucks to put your life and soul into something and have people say something nasty about (after watching it for free) and then go back to stealing a Hollywood movie that cost 100 millions dollars to make and they’ve been told by a giant advertising campaign that they’re supposed to like it.

And what really stuns me is that this web series is not that bad. I’ve seen way way worse web series in my time writing The Watch List. WAY worse. Sure, technically there’s some rough spots, and there’s some weirdness about the characters and stuff (getting to that after this rant) but it’s not like the early episodes of The Guild had any better production. And there’s still some not Oscar worthy acting on the Guild, even now.

I think maybe it partly comes down to different communities. The Guild impacted gamers, and Foodies is going after… well, Foodies. Maybe different communities have different expectations about online content? After all, actual eating will be the last thing to be digitized, even though I think recipes for things that shouldn’t be attempted outside of a full scale industrialized, professional kitchen are about to eclipse porn in terms of web traffic.

Okay, I’ve run out of steam. On to the show.

Like I mentioned, there’s some weirdness about how the concept is executed. The Foodies are the bad guys, and our fish out of water is presented as the only one that actually likes food. The jerky foodie guy actually says, “You’re not supposed to like it!” In fact, all the foodies get quite upset when the new guy, Porter, seems to enjoy what he’s being offered – they laugh at him. I guess maybe we’re supposed to be watching gleefully as Porter gives them his rousing speech about how he likes how food tastes.

I guess that when you’re calling your show “Foodies” you probably shouldn’t make your foodie characters be The Other. I wanted to get to know these Foodies, and I figured it would be for, by and about foodies. Instead, it seems to be trying to make a series that laughs at foodies. And I guess that’s where they lost me. I don’t generally like stuff where we’re laughing at people.

But, like I said, the show isn’t terrible, just a little wonky. The next dinner party is at Porter’s place, and I’m intrigued to see just how the second episode of this web series rolls out.