I have one of the worst track records ever regarding long term success for television shows I enjoy. As soon as I proclaim my affinity toward them, they are canceled. I’m pretty sure that says something about me. October Road only made it two seasons. Love Monkey was canceled after three episodes.
Surely, it couldn’t get any worse than that, could it?
Of course it could.
Over the weekend I found a show called Quarterlife. It’s about seven artistic-types in their mid-twenties who are trying to find their way. They’re close to one another, and they’re vulnerable, and maybe best of all, they all seem to be trying to improve—even though their chosen course of action is often the long way around.
Oh and they struggle with the age-old question about compromise: How does an artist of any bent find a balance between doing what he or she is commissioned to do versus what he or she wants to do? Just seeing them work their way through that dilemma makes the show worth watching.
One episode opens with Dylan—a 27-year-old associate editor for a woman’s magazine who wants to be a writer of substance but she feels feels trapped into writing about things that things that don’t matter to her—speaking into the camera for her video blog as she wrestles with the subject of compromise:
“So what if I didn’t compromise? What if I just did exactly what I wanted to do? I mean it’s weird because in some ways I think I would be immediately fired, and abandoned and have everybody hate me, but in some ways, I think that would be the perfect way to succeed—what ever succeed means.”
I identify with these characters. I’m sure others would too if they’d seen the show, but NBC took it off the air after one episode because it drew the “worst in-season performance in the 10 p.m. hour by an NBC show in the last 17 years.”
To be fair, the show was intended to be a webcast to be shown in small clips. In fact, every “part” can still be seen online in seven to ten minute clips on the Quarterlife website. It did quite well online before NBC picked it up. Now, best I can tell, the series died after season one and that bums me out because I’m working my way through the series knowing that I won’t get to see a season two.
I’m just hoping I’m not left hanging with incomplete story lines at the end of season one like I was with October Road at the end of season two. Although, I just heard that the producers of October Road shot a 15-minute ending for that series and it’ll be included on the season two DVD release tomorrow. I’m so buying it.
