Reel Pop

By Alex Woodson

"Imaginary Bitches" stars former "All My Children" actress Eden Riegel as a single girl who conjures imaginary friends because all her real-life pals are in serious relationships. It's pitched as "fresh, randy and pee-your-pants funny," but I find it a little bit disturbing.

I might be over-thinking it and I'm definitely not in the target audience, but isn't she having a delusional breakdown over and over? And, as the title implies, these imaginary friends are not exactly kind to her, meaning she has no control over the tricks that her mind is playing.

Anyway, despite these reservations, the show, created by Riegel's husband Andrew Miller, is surprisingly watchable. Riegel has a kind of wide-eyed charm and the dialogue is professionally done and keeps the story moving. The theme song, I could do without.

The shows also seems to have found a pretty decent audience. The first episode had around 600,000 views and, seven episodes in, the count has settled at around 300,000.  Not exactly lonelygirl15-good, but definitely not Foreign Body-bad. Even more telling, the comments section is refreshingly devoid of sexism, obscenity and outright hostility. Most of the commenters are actually complimenting the shows.

Strangely though, there's no overlay ads anywhere in sight. I would think the "Bitches" crew would definitely meet YouTube's standards for content partner membership status. And with well over a million views, the team could have netted at least 20 bucks by now.

A new run will debut on July 11, so we'll see if this series has staying power. But winning over hundreds of thousands of YouTubers for even just seven episodes over a six-week span is no easy feat. Well done . . . "Bitches."