Quarterlife – the worst TV show ever? « The sound of my own voice

Quarterlife – the worst TV show ever?

02Mar08

Nah, probably not, but having watched the first episode, I can fully understand why NBC cancelled it after just that one episode.

It’s about a bunch of twentysomething media kids who seem to have no real excuse for existing and who spend their days sleeping around, having quarrels and discussing their relationships. The main character Dylan has a video blog in which she reveals personal stuff about her friends so that they all become upset and have something to talk about.

The characters are complete cardboard clichées – sensitive artist, nerd, slut, player and so on. Needless to say the show has the three familiar signs of poor quality, namely voice over, shaky-cam, and there are two scenes that suggests Dylan would have lezzed out with Lisa (the slut) eventually.

The reason why Quarterlife is so incredibly bad can be found on quarterlife.com. Appearantly creators Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick are recruiting desperate people who will work for free for a chance of making it in showbusiness. “Upload your videos and you could find yourself working with Marshall and Ed to create the next hit TV show!” it says on the website. Gee, how could that fail?

This way of working reminds me of a scene in which Danny (the shallow player) and Jed (the sensitive artist) are doing a commercial together and the Danny wants to cut the corners and just be done with it, but eventually realizes that Jeds more ambitious approach is better and apologizes. It’s a shame that didn’t happen when Quarterlife was made.