Hello and welcome for a third time to Lydia’s Channel 101 Reviews! I would say something like, ‘this one is going up later than usual’, but I think it’s a little premature to call anything I do here ‘usual’ – who knows, I could burn out on this project the very minute I post this! Anyway, let’s just say reviews are delayed because last week I was over in the UK attending a super gay wedding, and now I’m back.

How about that August screening, huh? Not much in the way of traditional comedy or drama-type shows this month, instead August was mostly a mix of reality and documentary-style shows, a few animated shows, and whatever you’d call The Credits. The vote distribution this month is worth looking at, too: aside from first place, every other show got between one third and two thirds of the audience’s vote – this means it was a very competitive month, and every show was within reach of earning a prime time spot.

Also… is there something weird with the vote totals? Please check me on this, but I think the total of all the votes for the August screening, according to the website, is 629. Normally this number should be divisible by 5, because each voter chooses 5 shows. In fact, I thought that only ballots with 5 shows selected were counted. So, did they accept one ballot with only four votes on it? Was there a counting error somewhere? Did someone write in a vote for Hallelujah Mountain Springs as their fifth selection? (Looking at you, Garland.) Is there a missing vote that could settle the ultimately meaningless tie for sixth place that happened this month?

Well, that’s enough ado for now, so without further ado, here are the reviews.

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10th place – Deposit Hunter [Created by Andrew Sleighter and Chris Walsh]

First up today we have a pilot about an inept (and possibly drunk?) handyman who hosts a parody reality program about helping renters get their security deposits back, possibly without their knowledge or consent. I liked a lot of details in this one: the soundtrack choices, the shots in the opening montage, the fonts, the sound effects. It gives the show a cohesiveness that would make Deposit Hunter fit perfectly between some low-budget knockoff shows about hunting for houses in Cleveland. (I grew up in Buffalo so it’s okay for me to make jokes about Cleveland.) I laughed quite a bit at this one: Andrew as the lead character is very funny, and the jokes, though sometimes predictable, were well-executed. I think it deserved better than last place – although it’s worth mentioning that this show performed a lot better with the audience than most 10th place shows have in the past. To the negative, maybe the Deposit Hunter concept was a little too narrow in scope. Although the low stakes of the show was part of the charm and humour of it, maybe it was hard to imagine what a second episode could offer that we didn’t already see here. File it next to Doin’ It With JD Ryznar under ‘home improvement shows that almost were’.

Grade: B

9th place – Blake & Blake, Ep. 3 [Created by Curt Neill and Chelsea Morgan]

For better or worse, because I live a good 41-hour drive away from the Channel 101 screenings, I watch these shows on the website already knowing how they finished with the audience. So I knew the first time I watched this episode that the audience had dumped the Blakes from first place last month down to ninth place this month, and I was ready to look for reasons why that might have happened. And Curt-Blake does act like a huge jerk for the first half of this episode, much more than his character was in the first two episodes – plus, some of what he says and does is a bit unrealistic given the established concerns for Chelsea-Blake’s mental health. The plot of this episode is fine, though it doesn’t really take us anywhere new, at least not until the end when the Blakes reconcile. Chelsea-Blake playing by the side of the pool was pretty dang cute, and reminded me of Morgan in the second episode of Spencer’s YouTube, another cancelled episode I liked a whole lot. Honestly, Blake & Blake episode 3 stands up pretty well to the first two episodes of the series, but August was a month full of pretty strong new pilots. Them’s the breaks, I guess.

Grade: B



8th place – Development Hell: Hollywood [Created by Ryan Raimann]

Development Hell is a documentary-style show about imaginary film and television projects that were never completed. This pilot episode is about a supposed movie based on the Funky Winkerbean comic strip that never made it out of the production phase. I remember being five years old and thinking the name ‘Funky Winkerbean’ was hilarious (creator Ryan Raimann clearly agrees), then wondering why the comic strip that bore its name wasn’t funny. I don’t know if I’ve even looked at a Funky Winkerbean strip since I was five, but anyway, that’s the core of the joke here in Development Hell – that a trivial subject is being treated with such a serious tone. The actor playing the film executive really sells his role and the reality of the project, but the pilot would have benefited from more interview scenes with different people – more characters, more variety. The 3D model of the office was a nice unexpected gag that broke up the show a bit and added an extra dimension to an otherwise simple joke. This one and Deposit Hunter both featured a segment that previewed the next episode, and now I’m wondering if that’s a Channel 101 curse: can you think of any shows with a next-episode preview that were voted back? I can’t off the top of my head, but, caveat: I am also super tired and ready to put this online like now so I’m doing zero research, but I do want to come back to this question eventually.

Grade: B-

6th place (tie) – Treefeelers, Ep. 2 [Created by Robbie Bruens]

This is definitely the most I’ve been upset that a 101 show was cancelled since I started this blog. Treefeelers, arguably the only traditional serial comedy/drama of the whole screening, was cut down in its prime after a beautiful and dramatic second episode. Picking up where the first episode left off, the two main Treefeeler dudes have gone on a date and shared a kiss (under a very appreciative tree), but now there are questions about where they stand with each other. At the same time, the Treefeelers are summoned to address a crisis caused by wildfires (“Their friends, family, and loved ones are on fire! These trees need to be felt!”) There are so many great moments of dialogue from the trees, I don’t know what more the audience could have asked for here. Names for the characters, maybe. Other than that, I don’t know.

Grade: A-



6th place (tie) – Story Hole [Created by Erin Pearce and Adam Garland]

So here I am watching Story Hole, thinking to myself, ‘Oh, they made their own Aesop’s Fables sort of thing,’ and then at the end credits I see the words: ‘Based on Aesop’s Fables’. Oh, so was there actually a ‘The Eagle and The Fox’ fable, and Pearce and Garland just made their own twisted version of it? Well, yes, ‘The Eagle and The Fox’ is really one of Aesop’s Fables, but the Story Hole version is actually a very faithful recreation of the original, with little to no twisting involved! Ditto for the good things/bad things one! I don’t remember learning ‘You will never avoid the vengeance of heaven’ in my childhood fables storybook, but it turns out Aesop was a little nuttier than I remember, and that seems to be exactly what Story Hole wants to teach us. Watching this the first time, I felt like the script was a bit scattered and lacking the concise and direct storytelling of Aesop’s best, and now I know why: this was not Aesop’s best material. Pearce and Garland do their best nonetheless, creating adorable cardboard sets and puppets – I admit I’ve been a sucker for some good cardboard production design ever since Mike McCafferty and Mike Manasewitch’s Skyfall. The more times I watched it, the more I liked Story Hole, and the more I felt that this is exactly the kind of weirdness I hope to see when I watch Channel 101. I appreciate it more knowing that these are actual Aesop stories, and I wonder if the audience might have felt the same way! Sadly or fortunately, (depending on taste,) we will never get to see Story Hole take on this actual Aesop fable I found about why homosexuals have no shame.

Grade: B+

5th place – Wednesday Morning Cartoons, Ep. 2 [Created by Tyler March and Eric Paperth]

So last month I ranked this one last, not so much because I didn’t like it, but more because there’s no way to make a continuous serialized show out of it. While I stand by what I said, I also admit that episode 2 of Wednesday Morning Cartoons is pretty damn funny, and if non-serialized shows like this are going to stick around Prime Time, that’s all I can ask for. I found that this one doesn’t stand up as well over repeated viewings, but I got quite a few laughs out of it the first time around, which is all the show needed to do to be voted back a second time by a live audience that only sees each episode once. March and Paperth have created a consistent comedic style, and I hope that instead of getting too comfortable, they use this format and this opportunity to push their own boundaries and show us something new every month. Thanks for introducing me to my second-favourite anthropomorphic stove, after the one in Puppet Apartment.

Grade: B-

4th place – Alex Kavutskiy’s Guide to Filmmaking, Ep. 4 [Created by Alex Kavutskiy]

Well, now we’ve gone meta: my name appeared in a Channel 101 show. I was already wondering if this was going to happen in this show, after Alex Kavutskiy’s episode 2 kept prodding the audience about why the first episode only made third place. I’ll do my best not to let the name-drop influence my review, although – full disclosure – my Channel 101-viewing date really heated up after my name appeared on screen. Thanks, Alex. Okay, so episode 4 of the Guide is nominally about how to make jokes, but to focus on that would bury that lead that we have the first Channel 101 musical episode since 2017’s To Live and Die In Disney. I don’t want to give anything away, but this episode makes some very specific references, and how you feel about those references is definitely going to colour how you feel about this one. For example, my date audibly groaned at the lines of dialogue that set up the songs, whereas I was not very familiar with the source material Kavutskiy borrowed from, and I loved every moment of the musical numbers. Episode 4 is a circus: in between the singing and the dancing and the lip-syncing done to varying degrees of success, Kavutskiy is throwing jokes at us a mile a minute just to see what sticks – jokes about jokes, jokes about bros, cynical jokes, political jokes that will probably feel awfully dated by this time next year, and even an unnecessary shot at Monty Python. The rare misses hardly matter because the Guide to Filmmaking never stops rolling forward, and we’re having too much fun.

Grade: A

3rd place – Ken & Renee, Ep. 1 [Created by Alex Opdam]

So I’m aware that, up to this point in the third month of this blog’s existence, it may look like I just don’t like animated shows very much, and I swear that isn’t true. I love the odd classic Brian Wysolmierski show as much as anyone (I always thought Answer Man never got a fair shake). I just don’t get this one. The show works insofar as it clearly establishes the characters and the situation: a couple disagrees over a psychic, domestic troubles ensue. But it’s paced very slowly – totally not a fair comparison, but in 4th place we had a show that put 20 jokes in 5 minutes, and counted them – and I just didn’t find Ken & Renee particularly funny or interesting. What was the 56.4% of the audience that voted for this one seeing that I didn’t? Did they just really love the bad Australian accents (which I admit are kinda funny)? For me this is definitely the returning show with the most to prove next month.

Grade: C-

2nd place – Cera’s Acting Lessons, Ep. 1 [Created by Candace Carrizales]

The current prime time lineup now includes an acting course in addition to a guide to filmmaking, which means Channel 101 is now basically offering its audience the tools necessary to succeed at Channel 101. How generous! Unlike Alex Kavutskiy’s show, Cera’s Acting Lessons is a parody of the modern self-produced online video channel, complete with all the editing quirks common to the genre. In the first minute of the show, Cera introduces herself and her acting experience, and we become acquainted with her particular flavour of awkward. The rest of the episode is a lesson on how to act like you are crying. It’s a simple concept, but creator Carrizales as Cera is a captivating teacher in her own weird way, and gosh does she make the most of that washing machine in the basement she’s filming in.

Grade: B

1st place – The Credits, Ep. 2 [Created by Paul Isakson and Brad Gage]

This creatively-framed episode takes us into fragments of a 90s high school romantic comedy. The cinematography is meticulous in emulating the style of those movies that I’m aware of peripherally, but never really watched. (I don’t watch movies, I watch Channel 101.) But in contrast to the first episode of The Credits, episode 2 gives us a lot more movie, and a lot less credits. Perhaps, too much movie and not enough credits? Instead of bloopers and behind-the-scenes looks at the actors making this fictitious movie, this episode delivers much more genre parody-homage, in the form of cliched dialogue, inside jokes and references (tethered to parts of the movie we’ve skipped over), and my personal favourite: Kate Freund as a teacher bopping her star student in the head with a piece of paper. Viewers who have fond memories of watching movies like this in high school almost certainly got more out of this episode than I did. To me it seemed like one of those things that goes so deep undercover into satire that it’s indistinguishable from what it’s parodying. There’s a name for this, and I wanted to say ‘Godwin’s Law’, but apparently that’s the one about Hitler. Poe’s Law, maybe? Anyway. In this episode, Isakson and Gage got to explore and bump against the limitations of this unique form, and I eagerly await seeing whatever it is they think up next.

Grade: B

My ranking:

1st: Alex Kavutskiy’s Guide to Filmmaking, Ep. 4 (A)

2nd: Treefeelers, Ep. 2 (A-)

3rd: Story Hole (B+)

4th: Blake & Blake, Ep. 3 (B)

5th: Deposit Hunter (B)

6th: The Credits, Ep. 2 (B)

7th: Cera’s Acting Lessons, Ep. 1 (B)

8th: Wednesday Morning Cartoons, Ep. 2 (B-)

9th: Development Hell: Hollywood (B-)

10th: Ken & Renee, Ep. 1 (C-)

Closing remarks:

So one thing you may notice is that I give out a lot of B’s. I stand by it. Sue me. Call a beekeeper. As in most schools, grades are mostly nonsense and shouldn’t be taken seriously. But to share some of my nonsense grading philosophy, from the start I’ve decided to be generous with B’s and stingy with A’s, giving B-level grades to any solid and respectable show that meets the high quality standard I’ve come to expect from Channel 101, and leaving A-level grades for the episodes that really stand out for me in some way or another. The August screening had a lot of episodes that were very good B-level efforts, which made it harder than usual for me to rank them – and given how close the voting was, I think the audience agreed. Ultimately, this month my top 5 looks very different from the top 5 that will actually move on to the next screening, but unlike the live audience, I had several days to think about this – my top 5 might well have been different if I had to make an immediate decision on a ballot. As always, thank you to anyone who bothered to read all these words I decided to write about these five-minute shows I love so very much.

Screening date: 25 August 2018

This review published: 9 September 2018