Ashton Kutcher's 'Blah Girls' Debuts

As promised, Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg’s Katalyst Media launched its first foray into online video programming yesterday at the Techruch50 conference in San Francisco, California. 

Conceived by Kutcher and animated by Todd Goldman – of David and Goliath fame and misfortune – Blah Girls is a celebrity gossip series that draws on the perennial popularity of silly little school girls acting like silly little school girls.

In the first couple episodes, Britney, Krystle, Lili, Tiffany and Stewart (the only boy of the bunch who bears a striking resemblance to the king of Hollywood’s star-studded rumor mill) rag on celebrity adoption and celebrity ex-patriots with an innocence and pop-cultural awareness that only the fifth grade and too much People can provide:

The aesthetic screams South Park, but as Kutcher told Liz, that’s more a product of the breakneck pace of Blah Girls‘ production than a consciousness tactic to draw from the show’s success.  Celebrity gossip has a short shelf-life, and each installment of the series has a two day turnaround from conception to release.  That timeframe just doesn’t allow for intricate animations.

The simple style combined with sight gags reminiscent of Doogtoons and a script that teases the Superficial Friends-line of gratuitous vulgarity, but maintains its prepubescent naivete, has some potential.  If Blah Girls can stay current and avoid the labored jokes of bad celebrity gossip sites, it’s got a shot at success.  Kutcher’s Hollwyood ties shouldn’t hurt either.

In addition to its first lead sponsor (Vitamin Water – you can see shoutouts in the episodes), the series owes some thanks to Sissyfight 2000 and Homestar Runner’s Teen Girl Squad for turning the schoolgirl archetype into a fantastic comedic device.  

Some thanks are also owed to Tallulah Belle Willis – Bruce Willis and Demi Moore’s youngest daughter, whose teenage banter with friends in the back seat of Kutcher’s carpool sounded like a bunch of “Blah, blah, blahs,” to her step-dad. (Kutcher doesn’t say her by name, but I’m assuming that’s who he’s talking about in the interview below with Andrew Wallenstein from The Hollywood Reporter.)

New episodes of Blah Girls will air twice a week and are accompanied by a gossip blog updated multiple times a day with the cartoon girls photoshopped into the paparazzi’s celebrity shots.  In an attempt at being interactive, you can also ask the tweens questions, though I found their answers to be less than satisfying.

Blah Girls should be the first of many online ventures from Katalyst Media.  According to Wallenstien, Kutcher is also working on a web version of Punk’d and a project involving his passion for fantasy football.