Dorm Life

From Zanecorpwiki

A fun little short form serial. TODO: hulu link

Summary

"Dorm Life" is mostly a straightforward comedy about kids living in a dorm. At one level, it's a bunch of stereotype characters and predictable plots. It does a good job at it though, and while it never really transcends the stereotypes, it does at least add something to them. Each character has their moment when they break away, and there are a few deft touches throughout. All in all, highly enjoyable and well done.

Details and Notes

While watching the series, I thought a number of times, "This would be an easy series to do." Once the more or less standard set of characters is established, the dialog and general plot sketch is pretty much a given. Crazy theater kid, crazy drunks, slutty but sweet sorority girl, etc. You have to give credit for not letting it spin out of control, but I kept thinking, "Oh, that's more or less the script I expected."

Not that making a show is hard, I'm just saying that this was relatively unchallenging material, but done very well. The show really benefits from the short form serial format as you can have your one-joke episode, but since you're only going 10-15 minutes, it doesn't get tired.

Another big plus: the story wraps up nicely. Not with a bow, but you really feel that the story has taken you from one place to another, and by the end I found myself really relating to the scene where they all say goodbye for the summer. I had a very concrete feel--from my own experience--that in some cases, this would be the last good bye. But that's okay. It's not overplayed, that's just how life is. Real bitter sweet stuff.