Instead of a straight review, this series of posts looks at what can be learned from watching with a critical, writing-focused perspective. First up, the fantastic web series, HIGH MAINTENANCE, created by Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld. In my estimation, this is the best web series being produced right now. And you should probably watch the episode below. It’s free! And, ya know, that’ll make the rest of this more coherent.
The episode with the Assholes. And they are assholes. Insufferable, asshole-y boors. That’s established repeatedly and humorously before and beyond the title. Variations on a theme. A dozen ways of painting the same still-life. It’s entertaining, but I want to take a closer looks at the cut that comes at 1:41 in the episode. The juxtaposing cut. The Assholes are doing asshole things and then, boom, we cut to The Guy playing with a giggling toddler.
There’s a loose bridge between the shots with the Male Asshole saying, “Just use your face to cover my face,” and The Guy pushing on the toddler’s face which makes the kid laugh (almost everything’s novel when you’re 2.5 years old). “Face” to face. Is it a stretch to apply a little Eisenstein-sauce and say that the idea that these juxtaposing shots elicits is that the Assholes are really children? Nah. I like it. The idea stays.
The juxtaposition also creates a contrast that cleanly divides the Assholes into the bad-guy camp and The Guy into the good-guy camp. The casual pettiness and ill-will of the Assholes is doubled when it collides with the euphoric laughter of a toddler. We also know immediately who the “Assholes” that pop up on The Guy’s cell phone caller ID are.
The use of the toddler to contrast with the Assholes and set The Guy up as a white hat would feel a bit cheap if The Guy didn’t then admit that he was upset about the kid screwing up his income stream because, ya know, he can’t sell pot to the parents anymore. With that, we’re off into another slice-of-life HIGH MAINTENANCE dialogue exchange.
Which brings us to the third thing this cut does: keeping a speedy pace. One of the things this series does best is keep up a heady pace. It covers a lot of character-building ground quickly and pretty much blazes through the slight plots. I could talk about in media res and how HIGH MAINTENANCE illuminates this concept like a goddamn lighthouse every episode. With this cut, we’re jumping into the middle of conversation in a new location with new characters. Bang.
For those keeping score, that’s 1) equating the Assholes to children; 2) using contrast to express the gulf between the “good” guys and the “bad” guys; and 3) pushing the pace by dropping us in media res into a new scene. That’s a lot of work for a single edit. That edit gets a gold star. Stuff like that is why the series is so good.
FADE OUT 