IFC Spoofs The Viral Video Set With 'Get Hit'

“You can’t make a viral video with an 1800-page script!” – Garlyn Thornquist

Get Hit, from Franco & Billy debuts today on IFC.com, with six episodes all at once. Created by and starring Peter Blomquist and Jeff Wiens, Get Hit is IFC’s seventh original web series this summer, looking to join the ranks of standouts The Mary Van Note Show and Getting Away With Murder. The show follows Billy Lang (Wiens) and Garlyn Thornquist (Blomquist), two has-been hit viral video creators still desperately searching for a taste of the success they reaped with their viral hit, “The Ball Kicking Fight Club.”

After picking themselves up from the depression of lost stardom, Billy and Garlyn reinvent themselves as the statesmen of the video world aiming to pass their ‘tricks of the trade’ on to aspiring viral video makers. So with Get Hit, we are taken through their entire unorthodox process of writing, producing, directing, acting, editing and marketing their latest viral video. Episode one opens with the pair sitting nude facing each other in act of ultimately vulnerability as means to finding their next hit idea. Have they found the nexus of creative genius? Or will “Spud Gun War” end up another flop in their growing lineup of failed attempts?

Adding to the six episodes out so far are the two viral videos within the show, “Fight Club” and “Spud Gun War.” The videos probably should have been seeded as actual virals in an attempt to bring in an audience through that route. As they are now, they feel like canned teasers for the series, rather than genuine attempts at the rawness of the typical UGC viral set. Instead the IFC branding all over it just seems a little too marketed, even with the satire of them.

Also of note is the addition of web television regular Scott Sowers to the cast, who’s made the rounds last year appearing in web hits Wainy Days and Horrible People. More episodes are slated to come out this fall, though no date has been set yet.