I realize I'm a little late to the Felicia Day Will Save Us All With Her Internet Television bandwagon. But I finally got around to watching the first two seasons of The Guild during the snow yesterday (Which is, to be fair, easier than it sounds. Both seasons are streaming on Netflix, so I didn't have to venture outside. And because the episodes are micro-sized, each season runs about forty-five minutes.) and I have to say, I was reasonably impressed, and I hadn't expected to be.
Remember back in the first season of 30 Rock, those halcyon, bygone days, when Devon Banks first showed up? One of the reasons Jack fears Devon is because he scored a big hit with 30-second sitcoms. The Guild is not quite there, but the episodes are 3 to 8 minutes long. And yet, quite a bit happens, and when strung together, the episodes have surprising narrative coherence. That, to me, is the sign that with The Guild, Day has genuinely figured something out. The show is equally watchable in snack-like bites or in a spare hour, which means that it can, and will attract different, if sometimes overlapping audiences. I tend to think that media like that, and like Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog, the higher-budget product of Day mentor Joss Whedon's foray into viral movie-making, are part of what the future looks like. There are many ways to consume them, they can go viral, and it'll be possible to attract both advertising and sales revenue to them. Pop culture takes money. And I'm all in favor of, and pleasantly surprised by, the fact that eccentric, intelligent products are leading the way in figuring out how to make it.