Friday Playlist | Jan 16, 2011 – The Best of The Watch List from this week!

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=640BCDE5DDDB51D9

Welcome to our first Friday Night Playlist of 2011!

I know, I should start calling it the Sunday Afternoon Playlist, but Friday Night Playlist has such a nice ring to it!

We have 9 videos for you today, from 5 different series. There’s a lot of familiar faces on this list. j2 in particular can’t stop watching Little Cat Version of Me.

Up first is the Return of Heather! Old Timey readers know that Heather The Vampire is one of my all time favourite shows from back when I first started posted videos, before the Great Interruptim when I stopped posting for a while. I was disappointed when we started up again that Heather didn’t have any new episodes – but she’s back! And I couldn’t be happier.

Then there’s the latest Untitled Fiction Project episode. I’ll get into it more in a later post, but I’ll mention that there’s been a slew of nominations for web series from different blogs and podcasts, and as far as I know, these guys haven’t gotten a lot of love. If you don’t think this is the best web drama out there – well, I don’t think we can be friends anymore. You may have noticed it is one of the few straight out dramas that we even cover on The Watch List

Third… I have discovered Space Hospital! I know that science fiction comedy is a bit of a niche market – you either love it or hate it. It’s like there’s this idea you need to be extra geeky to think that science fiction can be funny. I dunno. I happen to be one of those who love it. And I love this series.

Bob and Andrew is another series I’m glad I stumbled upon. The set up, the characters, the banter and the chemistry are all genius. Sure, there’s a couple of things I think could be improved, but the stuff they do well they do really fucking well. And, again, no nomination love for them, as far as I know. I could be wrong, though.

We come to the now traditional Little Cat Version of Me marathon! If there’s anyone out there who doesn’t love it like we do here at The Watch List, you’ll be happy to know we have run out of episodes. We hope they make more – and soon. We’re starting to go into withdrawal.

Last up is the second episode of Space Hospital. You’ll probably be seeing a lot of Space Hospital over the coming weeks. This is their Christmas episode – sing along with the carols of the future!

Are you enjoying the Friday Night Playlists? How do you like to watch them? Let us know by leaving a comment!

With the Angels Ep.4 “Welcome Wagon”

I have a new neighbor!

4 Swirlies

“I’m gonna bake her some cookies.”

Taffy tries to meet her new neighbour, but has a hard time when her neighbour goes all new agey. “Have you heard about The Secret?”

What I think is interesting is that the commentators on YouTube really take this fictional character to task for her clinging to her Christian beliefs, not not being open minded to her neighbour’s ideas. I think that’s interesting for two reasons.

This is fiction. You can see in the way the actress plays the moment that she’s not entirely comfortable with the hard line she takes, but it is the only point of view that she knows. To me, that’s the point of the episode, that Taffy is having a hard time getting rid of her old self and learning to thrive in her new, more cosmopolitan environment. But angry people on YouTube just slam her for the surface of her dialogue without taking a moment to consider the subtext – the “author’s” intent. (In the case of scripted content, I like the think of the author as the collective collaboration of all involved, but especially the writer, director and actor.)

And second, this is fiction. Clearly, this series, while sticking close to a first person mockumentary style, is a fictional story. I don’t think all the commentators on YouTube miss that. So why are they addressing the fictional character with a sense of personal betrayal?

As script writers and content producers, we used to live in a bit of a glass bubble where the people we engaged with directly when creating all spoke the same language – all of them were behind the scenes in some fashion. (Unless you were doing plays, but even then how many audience members speak directly to the playwrite if they have never met them before?) There existed a sort of mutual understanding about certain stuff – like how characters were understood by the audience.

But now with the web, and more and more as series move from a TV base to a online video base, your audience can reach you more directly, and I think many of us won’t like what we find. I think we’ll find that creators and audiences – even successful creators and die hard fan audiences – don’t really speak the same language, and have very different expectations of how the other is engaged with the work. I think there will be some shocks on both sides.

What? Oh, right – the episode. Watch it for the subtitles that the actress brings to the last confessional piece. And read some of the comments and let me know if you agree with me.

Jake and Amir: Bathroom Break

Doors don’t keep other people out. They lock you in.

Watch more Jake and Amir at collegehumor.com/jake-and-amir or Subscribe to the Jake and Amir podcast (link opens in iTunes).

3 Swirlies

Aside from Amir pressing his ear against the door of the toilet stall where Jake’s trying to take a shit, this episode isn’t as funny as the other one. But it’s still funny.

Jake and Amir: Toilet Paper

I need T.P. for your friendship.

Watch more Jake and Amir at collegehumor.com/jake-and-amir or Subscribe to the Jake and Amir podcast (link opens in iTunes).

4 Swirlies

“Why tell the truth to someone who always thinks you’re lying?”

Jake arrives for work at the collegehumor HQ to find that his desk has been TP’ed. Why ???????

This show is funny. Amir is not annoying to watch, but would be REALLY annoying to be friends with. Jake just wants Amir to go away (GTFO) and sighs a lot. Watch it!!!!!!!!!

The Website is Down – Ep. 1: Sales Guy vs. Web Dude

Web Dude tries desperately to get his work done while assaulted on all sides by rampant incompetence. Will he survive???

5 Swirlies

Note: I realize many of you have probably already seen this video. In fact, it won a Webby in the viral video category. But if you haven’t it’s definitely worth checking out.

Most exciting use of Windows I’ve ever seen in a video.

Derrick, an IT person for PlasTrolTech Inc. gets a call from Chip in the sales department because he says the company’s website is down. Despite Derrick’s insistence that the site is up and running, Chip convinces him to reboot the web server and then all Hell breaks loose.

The entire episode is told from Derrick’s point-of-view. All of the visuals come from his computer screen. We see Derrick as he tries to troubleshoot the Internet problem, taking calls from various people after no one can get online – and most importantly, playing Halo, where he seems to gain the utmost enjoyment from shooting his comrade multiple times in the crotch.

The characters speak in a sort of South Park-esque style which adds to the absurdity of the situation. But what’s ingenious about it is that it speaks to anyone who has worked in an office setting and had to deal people that don’t understand how anything technical works. I’m not an IT person myself – but I’ve also been confounded by people’s ignorance when it comes to people not knowing how the Internet works even on the most basic level.

On the other side, I guess it also touches on how when people call tech support they often get the run-around or have more problems created, as is seen when Derrick reboots the web server “the wrong way” so the network needs to be rebooted on location.

But that might be pushing it a little because Chip is clearly an idiot, as we can see when Derrick uses Remote Desktop to access Chip’s computer and finds it with six million programs open and desktop icons arranged in a comical, insulting manner. Someone played a prank on Chip years earlier and he never knew how to rearrange them.

But simply put, the video is funny. Much funnier than most videos on the web. And although it’s the first in a series, it’s wonderfully self-contained. It tells a full story and doesn’t rely on you having to watch 20 episodes of it to figure out what’s going on. (Actually, that would be pretty annoying considering there’s only four episodes so far.)

And the show’s site has fun features to play around with too, such as a fake UNIX terminal and a Sales Guy Simulator (though that more relates to the second episode).

Finally, as it did win a Webby, I’ll just throw up a funny little promo video the creators made to announce this show was a nominee. I’m not reviewing it as it’s not really a separate episode. It’s more of a DVD extra, if the Internet was available on DVD:

Sales Guy vs. Web Dude vs. The Webbys