“quarterlife” may have started off as a digital, online-only series, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good. In fact, the show is surprisingly smart and insightful for a handful of “webisodes” that played out on MySpace.
On the surface, “quarterlife” is about a group of 20-something friends struggling to find themselves in the world. But on a deeper level, the show is about the struggle for identity and meaning in the digital world and the gaping divide between this generation and the one before it.
It’s an ambitious topic, yes, but “quarterlife” addresses it with ease and in a way that many of today’s youth can relate to.
It centers around Dylan, a young woman who blogs about her life on the social networking site quarterlife (which, by the way, is now a real site).
“We blog to exist,” she muses in the show’s pilot, and that is precisely the case with Dylan. She feels unnoticed in the world, both by her co-workers and the guy she likes, and blogging is her way of existing. Dylan looks awkward at work around her co-workers, but lying on her bed in front of her webcam she looks entirely natural. For Dylan, the digital world is the one place where everything makes sense.

Her friends also find themselves in identity crises. Dylan’s roommate Lisa has spent her life hiding behind her sexuality, and now she drinks too much to hide from that sexuality. Jed, Dylan’s unrequited love, seems to identify more as an artist than a human, yet he spends his time yearning for Dylan’s other roommate, Debra. Debra, in turn, is dating a guy named Danny but might have feelings for Jed.
Even while Dylan is hiding behind her webcam, her life and the lives of her friends are still front and center. Dylan may post videos of herself and her friends online, but the drama unfolds in the real world, away from the computer screen; they confront each other, love each other and lie to each other in real time. The technology on the show is not a crutch, but rather a way for the characters – Dylan in particular – to deal with the intensity of face-to-face interaction.
Sadly, NBC seems to have missed the point of an online TV show. In importing “quarterlife” to TV, the network has combined eight-minute digestible webisodes into an hour-long drama that runs about a half-hour too long. The webisodes, in their shorter original form, speak to the nature of today’s Millennials – a generation used to YouTube’s bite-sized entertainment. But as a full-blown network drama, “quarterlife” feels unnatural, as if it is conforming to the dated format it is trying to challenge.
Despite its translation flaws, “quarterlife” is still more of a refreshing and honest look at 21st-century youth than anything else currently on TV. “quarterlife” reminds us that even in today’s digital world, people still matter more than anything else.
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