Reel Pop

My review of Prom Queen is live at the Hollywood Reporter. I've reproduced it below:

Teens, you may have heard, speak the ling. That's ling as in lingo and lingo as in abbreviations: Whatev for whatever, ridic for ridiculous, obv for obvious (duh). The words are glib but the shorthand, meant to convey maximum meaning in minimal time, is useful. Teens are efficient that way. They come pre-edited for time, if not for content.

The same goes for Prom Queen, the new teen murder mystery serialized on MySpace, financed by Michael Eisner's Tornante Co, and produced by Big Fantastic. Made for generation ADD, the show unfolds in 90-second segments. That's 90 seconds, as in half the time of a typical commercial break on television. Doled out over eighty days -- "OMG, prom is sooo close! Getting closer! LOL!" -- the segments combine to form two hours of teenage scheming, dreaming, and hooking up. Light fare, lightly sprinkled. The phrase "death by croutons" comes to mind.

So here's the set-up: Danica, a British exchange student, is filming a video yearbook. The series opens when she wakes up, Donnie Darko style, in her host's backyard -- scantily clad and with perfect hair, natch -- stumbles into her room, and finds her minicam is still filming. "Oh no," she says. Cut. That's episode one. Episode two: We're introduced to the dramatis personae as Danica uses that minicam to interview her schoolmates about "this American obsession called Prom."

The characters are caricatures: There's blonde-haired Nikki, who hearts Chad; blue-eyed Chad, who hearts Nikki; and mousy Sadie, who hearts Morissey (but makes eyes at Chad). Then: Slutty Lauren (who has daddy issues), surly Curtis (who has anger issues), and rich boy Nolan (who's just an ass). Sophisticated Courtney is a brunette foil to Nikki, and the enigmatic Josh is the requisite troubled teen. Rounding out the cast is Ben who plays sports, excels in school, and receives an anonymous text message at the end of episode two that says "U R going 2 kill the prom queen." Bum bum bum!

Given all these characters (there's actually about 15 in all) and so little contiguous time to develop them, Prom Queen relies on visual shorthand. Instead of dialogue, monologue. Instead of scenes, scene changes. It's almost as if the show is a trailer for itself. This isn't entirely a bad thing. For one, you literally have no time to get bored. And the only challenge is remembering the names of so many good-looking white people. Help comes in the form of the characters' MySpace profiles, which are constantly updated with new friends, new comments and even personal videos.

And then there's the sex. Prom Queen, like the real-life MySpace, is honeycombed with sexual subplots. In the first few episodes Curtis talks about getting laid, Lauren tries to jump Josh in her car, Lauren's mom comes on to Ben, and Chad gets an off-camera blowjob in the boy's locker room. Typical Degrassi-style titillation, but somehow the MySpace tie-in makes it feel more transgressive.

That's why the show compels: This could be your high school (if you were only so lucky). Or your kid's high school (if you were only so cursed). Each segment feels like a synopsis of daily drama, a Max Headroom blipvert for an oversexed cohort. It is the first mainstream online video drama, and it demands your attention. On that very important level, Prom Queen succeeds.