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Arts and Culture
Video

Why I'm Glued to Net TV Shows

Love, laughs and (finally) some real Asian characters.

Doretta Lau 13 Feb 2008TheTyee.ca

Doretta Lau is a Vancouver-based writer and YouTube addict.
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72nd to Canal: for the post-strike wasteland.

Though the writer's strike is finally ending, it could be months before I get a fix of my latest guilty pleasure, Gossip Girl. In the meantime, there are new episodes of Lost, Project Runway, and Survivor, as well as last year's hit Korean drama Coffee Prince, to tide me over. There's also the Internet sensation of the moment: Sarah Silverman's video "I'm F*#%ing Matt Damon," which she shot as a joke for her boyfriend, Jimmy Kimmel, and which has been viewed over 5.1 million times on YouTube and Dailymotion since it was first posted on Jan. 31.

But I'm even more eagerly awaiting the next episode of the New York web sitcom 72nd to Canal.

The comedy follows the lives of a group of friends in their late 20s and early 30s who are trying to establish careers and find love in an expensive and unforgiving city -- a familiar premise to anyone who's seen That Girl, Friends or Sex and the City. Yet, 72nd to Canal is unlike anything currently on North American television because the majority of the cast and crew is Asian American, as is the writer and director. It's refreshing to see Asian American characters in ordinary situations, rather than in tired orientalist storylines or epic kung fu battles.

The pilot episode introduces several characters I'm already hooked on, including Ray, the underemployed but savvy everyman, and Lorin, the successful but slightly clueless guy that most people will love to hate.

The show is also interesting because it is crafted specifically for a web audience: the charismatic main character, Ray, narrates the show through a series of video blog entries. On Gossip Girl, the blog persona is mysterious and functions simply as a voiceover. On 72nd to Canal, the blog technique is used to further both plot and character. The effect is intimate -- the audience gets to know Ray as if they are reading his diary.

What also helps make the show good is the medium: only on the Internet can a television writer and producer retain complete creative control and develop a story with the sole intention of pleasing an audience, rather than a network executive or corporate sponsor. The 72nd to Canal website has nary a banner or Google ad in sight, which means that it won't jump the shark in the space of a season like Margaret Cho's network disaster, All-American Girl.

I'm hoping there will be a new episode of 72nd to Canal soon, to help me get through the post-writers-strike television wasteland.

Here are the remaining parts of the pilot episode:

Related Tyee stories:

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