BuzzSugar

Quarterlife Already Canned by NBC, Moving to Bravo

BuzzSugar — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:29:54 PST

Well, now we can put Quarterlife in the vault previously reserved for shows like Anchorwoman and Emily's Reasons Why Not. After just a single episode, NBC has yanked Quarterlife from the schedule after its premiere got the network its lowest ratings for a 10 p.m. time slot in 17 years. But Quarterlife apparently has at least three lives: It will get to show its remaining five episodes on Bravo.

We'll never know whether the premiere got such poor ratings was because the show, from My So-Called Life creators Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, had already aired on multiple online platforms and MTV, had a boatload of obnoxious and false-sounding technology references, just plain wasn't that compelling, or some combination of the above. Herskovitz, for his part, said he knew it was a failure the second he saw it on NBC, which seems to me like he's trying to duck the blame, but I do tend to give the guy who brought me Angela Chase a little slack. (He then issued a statement saying he was still trying to find the show a home on cable, and within hours, Bravo had picked it up.)

I've seen a later episode of Quaterlife and, while it was much better than the premiere, I'm not sure it was enough to keep people watching. But at this point, I'm curious to know how the show fares on Bravo – even though the backstory has now become more compelling than the show itself.

Meanwhile, at least one pretty excellent parody of the show, 2/8life, has sprung up online. The episodes I've watched are spot-on - and it's made better by using the original MSCL character names - so to check out the first installment, just

Photos courtesy of NBC

How Would You Handle Someone Stealing Your Idea at Work?

SavvySugar — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:27:15 PST

Last night Quarterlife made its TV premiere, and while several aspects of the show were sort of hard to swallow (the cheesy mayonnaise fight Debra had with her guy's best friend, Dylan's controversial video blogging, etc.) there was some great content relating to handling work life.

Dylan works as an editorial associate, and her awful boss, Britney, steals an idea of Dylan's and presents it as her own to the entire company. Dylan doesn't speak up at the time, but later she privately clues in Britney's boss, who tells Dylan that her idea is a good one. Dylan still doesn't let it go and takes it a step further at an all-company meeting, where she reveals in a not-so-professional speech that it was her idea. The reaction? Silence and darting eyes, suggesting that Dylan is out of line.

Quarterlife . . . May Not Have a Life

GeekSugar — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:10:14 PST

Look, I'm great at suspending my disbelief for TV shows - I am an avid Lost viewer, after all. But the portrayal of the Internet and blogging in new show Quarterlife is just too much.

I was so excited when I heard that this show (which I'd never watched on MySpaceTV before) would feature the main character as a blogger - a lot of people have personal blogs nowadays, and I was hoping the show could explore the impact of a female blogger who blogs about her friends and personal life. Sadly, the show opens with the terrible line "Why do we blog? We blog to exist." Really?! What does that even mean? Dylan Krieger - the main character and blogger - has a MacBook. Our similarities end there.

For what I think about Dylan and the hilarious Internet portrayal,

Dylan is a self-absorbed, insecure voyeur who watched one too many episodes of My So-Called Life as a teenager and now suffers from tortured artist syndrome. Not a starving artist, of course, because Dylan is obviously a college grad from a nice, rich suburb. Her problems are as annoying as she is: She's upset that, as a recent graduate who's landed an amazing job as an editorial associate at a magazine, one of the ideas she spouted off in a (very common) moment of self-righteousness has been stolen by another employee. Dylan also suffers from "I'm a writer" syndrome (you know, where she can't stop saying it aloud so everyone knows how much better than them she is) and the illness in which one is convinced other people are not worthwhile unless they're artists.

Now, let's discuss the blogging. Dylan uses a MySpace-like profile on the not-so-fictional Quarterlife social network (which they dismiss as being "in beta," like that matters anymore). From her profile, she takes a video of herself and makes a video blog. I hate the word "vlog," but was anyone else annoyed that they never brought the term up? It also killed me when they said things like, "Are you upset that I blogged you?" At one point, one character says "You have my face all over the frickin' net!" Since when is it called the 'net? Since that Sandra Bullock movie came out?

And what about this weird importance they seem to place on blogging? All of Dylan's friends are very impressed that she has a blog on a social network site at a time when everyone and their mother has a personal blog. They are also very upset that she's saying personal things about them on her "blog" - what, do they think she's getting picked up on digg?

This show has tons of cred - as far as TV goes, Buzz reported that these are the producers of My So-Called Life (and the writing team includes Devon Gummersall, aka Brian Krakow), and as far as geekery goes (Macs and Final Cut Pro, oh my!), this show should have been a shoe-in to my TiVo schedule. Bitsie Tulloch, who plays Dylan, was even a cast member on Internet sensation lonelygirl15!

I'm really disappointed with this first episode, but I'm no quitter. I also remember the terrible pilots of some of my other favorite shows, so I'll give this a chance to find itself. And hopefully the writers will find themselves in front of a browser in 2008, figuring out "the 'net" for today's audience.

Do Tell: What Was the Cause of Your Quarterlife Crisis?

DearSugar — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 07:00:00 PST

The new NBC show Quarterlife debuted last night and I have a funny feeling people are going to be hooked. We've all heard of midlife crises, but lucky for us, we have to go through a quarterlife crisis first! It's that wavering period of uncertainty where you don't quite know who you are, what you want to do with your life, who your true friends are, or what your purpose is. I'm thankful I've already experienced mine, but what about you? If you're already past that bump in the road, do tell, what was the cause of your quarterlife crisis?

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Are You Sick of New Social Networking Sites Yet?

GeekSugar — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:27:38 PST

Buzz reported yesterday that Quarterlife is making its TV debut (it first premiered on MySpaceTV) on NBC. Quarterlife, whose own life started as an ABC pilot but was dropped and then run by its producers online, is a show about a group of struggling young people fronted by a twenty-something female blogger. To promote the new NBC show, a Quarterlife social networking site has launched.

This social network is set up like your FaceBook and MySpace pages, but it's designed to appeal to your twenty-something, misunderstood creative angst. Annoyed yet? I mean, I give it up to the producers trying to find a niche, but do we really need a new social networking site? Do you dislike that FaceBook and MySpace are so general and are you craving new social networking sites that appeal to different aspects of your life?
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Marshall Herskovitz and Bitsie Tulloch Talk Quarterlife

BuzzSugar — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:35:09 PST

Quarterlife, the drama about a 20-something magazine editor who seeks freedom by documenting her life online, came together through a series of unlikely coincidences. The show - which is from Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, the team behind My So-Called Life- started its life as a rejected pilot for ABC. Years after that attempt, it surfaced online with a new focus, a new lead character (Dylan) and actress (Bitsie Tulloch, whom Herskovitz met at random in jury duty), and a new social network to support it. And tonight, the series starts its new life on NBC.

Quarterlife - which debuts at 9 p.m. before moving to its regular Sunday time slot - will air like a traditional hour-long drama. But there's little else traditional about the show. NBC doesn't have control of the show; instead, it's being hailed as a new model for TV, one where the producers fully own their product. (Fun fact: Devon Gummersall, aka Brian Krakow, is one of the show's writers.)

The move to NBC was something Herskovitz "had mixed feelings about," as he said in a recent call with reporters - and I'm not sure about it, either. I found parts of the first episode insufferable; from the way Dylan acts much of the time, it's hard to believe Herskovitz and Zwick have ever seen a blog. But there's still something comforting in the rhythms of their language and the earnestness of their characters, and I know I'll be hooked for the whole six-episode run, no matter how much it occasionally makes me want to hurl pillows at my TV.

Herskovitz and Tulloch recently chatted with reporters about the series, and here are some of the highlights of the chat.

On being worried about the stereotypes of "an Internet series":
Bitsie Tulloch: When Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick say 'Will you play the lead in my series?' it doesn’t matter what platform they’re doing it on. You don’t say no. . . . The other reason I really wasn’t nervous about it is that I, myself, tend to watch TV shows that I have missed on TV on my laptop. So if I was doing it, and I have friends who do it all the time, then I had no misgivings about thinking that it would be successful at all."

Lots more from Tulloch and Herskovitz, so

On how blogging has affected a generation:
Bitsie Tulloch: "First of all, we seem to really define ourselves by our creativity in a way that other generations maybe didn’t - not because they couldn’t, but because they didn’t have access to this incredible, far-reaching platform. . . . It’s the first generation that grew up on the Internet, when you think about it. I mean, I was a freshman in high school when I had my first email account. . . . There’s this strange, sort of ambiguous thing that goes on a lot with the blogs, you know, particularly with my character, where Dylan is sort of simultaneously inviting people in while at the same time keeping them at a distance because at the end of the day, she’s still talking to a computer screen. She’s not talking to a living, breathing human being."
On what makes Quarterlife different from a normal series:
Marshall Herskovitz: "We love television. The problem we’ve had with television is that the business has changed so much and that the networks exert too much control over the producers. And the fact that we’re coming to NBC with complete creative control of our product and that we are delivering them completed episodes - they haven’t even seen the scripts. They don’t even know what the stories are about until they get the episodes. That’s never happened literally in the history of television."

On how the show changed from the original, rejected ABC pilot:
Marshall Herskovitz: "Honestly, we really picked the wrong characters to write about for the ABC pilot. We talked about seven people who all lived in a house together who were all lost and confused and didn’t know what to do with their lives. And I think we missed something because . . . if you talk about people in their 20s today, one thing you do see is that a lot of these people do know what they want to do and are very passionate about it. . . . There are a lot of different aspects of this generation that we kind of missed in that pilot. And the sum total was that even though I loved the cast and it had a nice feel to it, you didn’t have any emotion at the end of it. And so we realized that we had to start all over again and that’s when this character, Dylan, sort of just appeared full-blown in my mind one day - this sort of semi-difficult, amazing, intelligent, slightly feral, vulnerable, contradictory person."
On becoming the self-conscious, insecure Dylan:
Bitsie Tulloch: "Initially Marshall was sort of like, 'I don’t know. You might be too cute to play Dylan. She’s supposed to sort of fade into the background.' And my attitude was, you know, I can do this. I desperately want to give this character integrity but it did come down to really layering it, down to coming up with a walk, a very childish, kind of almost boyish walk for Dylan based on - you know, I had seen the movie French Kiss. And I always remembered that there was a scene where Kevin Klein said to Meg Ryan, 'You know, you walk like a little girl.' And she said, 'No I don't,' and of course saunters off childishly. I always remembered that and I tried to sort of do something similar with Dylan. She’s very fidgety, and the walk is just kind of all over the place. And she can't sit still."

Buzz News Roundup, 12/17

BuzzSugar — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 13:30:59 PST

Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien will return to the air Jan. 2. The Futon Critic has Conan's full statement along with Jay's take.
Meanwhile, David Letterman is working on a plan to bring his show back - writers and all, writes The Hollywood Reporter.
The release date for the Bryan Singer/Tom Cruise film Valkyrie has been pushed back from July 4 to October 2, Variety reports.
Jon Favreau and country music stars Tim McGraw and Dwight Yoakam are joining the cast of Four Christmases, which stars Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon, writes ComingSoon.
Billboard has new details on Alanis Morissette's new album, which will bring together folk, world, and experimental pop music.
The American Film Institute has named its top movies and TV shows of 2007, USA Today reports, including No Country for Old Men and Friday Night Lights.
NBC has set a February premiere date for Quarterlife, the online series it's re-purposing for TV, Zap2it reports.
According to Variety, Emmy Rossum will star in Dragonball, the movie based on the Japanese manga.

Photos courtesy of NBC

Soapbox: Is Quarterlife a Synonym for Selling Out?

BuzzSugar — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:15:00 PST

For most of my TV-watching life, I've defined myself as a fan of Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the producing team behind Relativity, Once and Again, and, of course, My So-Called Life. I remember reading about their latest project, Quarterlife, several years ago, back when it was still an ABC pilot awkwardly titled 1/4life. I was bummed when it didn't make the network's schedule, and I was happy to hear the show was finally surfacing online.

So the news that NBC has picked up Quarterlife should thrill me. Instead, I'm confused and a little annoyed.

My problems have little to do with Quarterlife itself. I don't think the show is great - some of the stilted dialogue makes it clear that the show is written by folks who don't spend much time around twentysomethings - but it's good enough to keep me watching. What bugs me is Herskovitz and Zwick's attitude about the whole thing: promoting themselves as revolutionary and anti-TV, then running back as soon as TV called. There's more to my thinking - including a potentially good side to this arrangement - so just

I believed Herskovitz's recent Los Angeles Times op-ed, where he wrote that television was a poisoned environment that stifled all creativity. I was excited to see how two respected producers could shake things up by working outside the system. And then, the system beckoned, and they fell into its arms. The most cynical part of me thinks it seems like suspiciously convenient timing, what with the writers' strike knocking so much other programming and limiting the networks' store of original, quality series.

But there's another side, though it's harder for me to believe it right now. It's the one Herskovitz pointed out recently: They're still doing something unprecedented. NBC shouldn't have anything to do with editing Quarterlife; the network is supposedly buying it to air as-is, leaving Herskovitz and Zwick - who are continuing to work as producers during the strike - in complete creative control.

Really? I guess we'll see when the TV version of Quarterlife starts to air, which could be as soon as this spring if the strike continues. Maybe this really will be a new era where shows stay in the hands of the people who make them. Or maybe I'll look back and think these two producers just sold out.

Source

Buzz News Roundup, 11/19

BuzzSugar — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:39:06 PST

Whenever the TV season picks up again, Dirty Sexy Money will be around for all of it, writes Zap2it.
Hollywood Reporter has news that Kathy Bates will join Ashton Kutcher and Michelle Pfeiffer in the dramatic love story Personal Effects.
Couldn't get tickets for this weekend's Saturday Night Live show? The New York Times writes about the event.
ComingSoon reports that production on the sequel to The Da Vinci Code will be pushed back due to the writers strike.
Olympians and Omarosa are among the contestants for Celebrity Apprentice, which will premiere in January; details are at The Futon Critic.
NBC is bringing the Web series Quarterlife to TV, Broadcasting & Cable reports.
According to Reuters, Gus Van Sant's biopic about gay San Francisco city councilman Harvey Milk (which will star Sean Penn) will be made before Bryan Singer's version.
Hey, you 10 people who watched On the Lot: Variety has a story about what winner Will Bigham is up to.

Link Time! 11/13

BuzzSugar — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 13:31:01 PST

Funny man Michael Showalter is guest blogging on Popwatch as we speak. Er, as we type/read.

Glowy Box explains why many TV blogs went on strike today in solidarity with striking Hollywood writers.

Speaking of which, Deadline Hollywood Daily points us to a mixtape for the picket lines.

According to Frank Darabont's interview with the MTV Movies Blog, Tom Hanks wants to star in Fahrenheit 451.

FabSugar tells me that Marc Jacobs wants his own reality show.

Cinematical is saying there has now been a new Bond girl cast for Bond 22 and she's um, you know, mildly good-looking.

Give Me My Remote has some thoughts on the transformation of Jim Halpert.

Stereogum has the new video for Duran Duran's song "Falling Down," featuring a mental institute for... models and starlets, I think.

TV Squad really, really hated the new Web series Quarterlife.

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