quarterlife

I want it to be great. Because I love media that deals with the internet generation, and super-high-budget, well-produced web content is so rarely done and so edgy, and I crave free, portable, high-quality audio or video content (especially when I'm getting ready for bed and my apartment's silent since my roommate's sleeping).
It looks and feels like a good show. The characters seem interesting with their smoky, serious attractiveness and their subtle subculture outfits (though they're all so white - I thought this was problematic when I assumed it was set in LA but since the show is ostensibly set in Chicago, maybe the absence of any interracial interaction is normal?). Everyone's gloomy introspectiveness plays the same nostalgic My So-Called Life chords, and they deal with all the right issues.
Maybe the problem is inherent in the 8-minute episode. When you try to pack in that many short cuts and that much plot into that short of an episode, it's bound to feel like it's all a preview, the way watching MTV reality TV shorts cut to music can make you actually wonder whether you're seeing the real show, or just previews of it (until you realize the whole show is a preview for real life as conceived of and sold by MTV). Even though they're flirting with having almost serious conversations, you never catch anyone hanging out or talking before the scene starts - it's never implied that you're missing interactions or parts of conversations - it's as if you're expected to believe everything of any importance that's happening in these people's lives since the first 8-minute episode has all been on camera. And their conversations wrap up so fast and neat. It's hard enough to pull off full characters that feel genuine in an hour-long show.
It's like an episode of the Hills, only acted out by poorly-dressed college graduates who are supposed to be smart and creative, and occasionally say clever things they never bother following through.
Then there's the fact that you can't buy it - this supposedly timid, thoughtful girl doing a video blog and spilling all of her friends' darkest secrets. Real blog - yes. Video blog? If the girl thinks she's a writer, why would she carelessly talk to the camera and never write? Her roommate dates her next door neighbor and his roommate is in love with her and she's in love with him? And their roommate is a bartender taking community acting classes who thinks she's going to make it as an actress?
The real problem though, is in lines like, "I hate not knowing and waiting and finding it so hard to figure out what we're all supposed to be. But what's my choice anyway? I certainly wouldn't want to be anywhere other than where I am now." This is obnoxious not just in that life is what you're doing when you're making other plans cliche. It's the convenient summing up of issues facing twentysomethings without actually engaging with them. Do I need to be hit over the head with the fact that twentysomethings are in a life transition that can suck but can also be great? At least on My So-Called Life everyone was sad and nihilistic because adolescence is such a depressing trap there is no real way to go through neatly, but the twentysomethings on Quarterlife actually think their lives are going to make sense when they become magazine writers and actors and filmmakers and married and adults.