Okay, so this review is supposed to be about a web series called Scene Kid LOVE. The series is in a world I know very little about, EMO scenesters, but after seeing the eight eps out there, I think I get it: spoiled kid apathy meets the piercing pagoda. Cue hilarity. Or at least, web series addiction…oh, yeah, addiction might be another characteristic of these kids.
It’s about the famewhore teen-something/twenty-somethings and the drama that though played for laughs, seems like it’s ripped from life: pierced and inked-up kids with monickers like Hilton Suicide, Sceney Sceneable, and Sceney’s mom, Sceney Momable (who is a cross-dressed Courtney Love lookalike); all of whom are pair-bonded with sex, drugs, accidental pregnancy, violence and a fashionable apathy that’s a little scary when you realize, this is kind of real, and yet, you’re laughing at it. It’s scenester soap opera played for laughs. And it’s good.
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Unfortunately, it also has the internet trappings of some average editing, production value and shooting. Not horrible per se, but with such clever writing, some really spot-on perfs, great creative casting and an actual point-of-view, the form could rise a little to meet the content. Someone give them twenty-grand an episode and we’ll have something really amazing here, I think.
So, back to my intro sentence, yes, this is supposed to be about Scene Kid LOVE, a show that needs a little production love to get it over the edge. A show with a writer that clearly understands how to keep it simple, but keep it turning, and like a true soap, jumping the shark at every chance. Which brings me to what I really want to talk about: Stevie Ryan.
There are no credits on these shows, which has bummed me out before and does so again this time, because everyone here deserves a shoutout for a job well-done. That said, I do know one person because the YouTube link for the creator, TheRealParis, takes me to Stevie Ryan’s personal YouTube page. From that page you can glean a few things: she’s pretty hot, she’s a comedian, she likes to skewer pop culture in the form of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, she’s smart and she’s really, really talented, oh, and f*cking prolific.
Just look at The Islands, where she plays Ally and Adam (Scott Franklin) Paranoia plays Nicky Bones, two twenty-something, “classy” Staten Islanders just trying to make love happen. It’s funny as hell and you WOULD NOT know that she was the same person who plays Sceney in Scene Kid LOVE. Totally different characters and both just as funny and realized as the other. Stevie has the style of the Suicide Girls without all the ink, or at least I haven’t seen any. But she plays it clean, like a non-nude Suicide Girl, if that even makes sense. She’s obviously got a keen eye, she’s a solid observer, and maybe it’s her look, but I think maybe too her intelligence but for some reason I want to say she’s like a jack-in-the-box version of Diablo Cody, in your face, funny and always surprising.
So, in conclusion, do I recommend Scene Kid LOVE? Yes. Do I recommend, The Islands? Yes. But more than anything, I recommend Stevie Ryan, writer, actress, producer, and I’m assuming, director (again, no credits). This girl should probably have a show on Comedy Central or something because she’s a star. And I don’t say that lightly.
[Editor’s Note: Ahh…we missed Jonathan. We’re so glad to have him back.]
