A.D. Miles' 'Hot Sluts' is Like a Striptease Except Funny on Purpose

Everyone remembers the opening scene from Guns N Roses’ Welcome to the Jungle video, right? Axl gets off the bus from Nowhereville, U.S.A., and is thrust onto seedy Hollywood Boulevard for the first time. Did you ever wonder what happened to innocent Axl between getting off the bus and becoming L.A. rocker Axl? Oh. Maybe only I did. Music videos were just a few minutes long and generally lacked sufficient plot development.

Anyway, if Axl was a chick, Welcome to the Jungle was a comedy, and there was time for a storyline, it would be Atom‘s Hot Sluts. (Also, this Hot Sluts chick would have slept with any of the guys from Poison instead of Axl. Axl was too hardcore for her – even fresh off the bus Axl. But I digress…)

Created by A.D. Miles (Head Writer of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, frequent performer in David Wain‘s films and web series, creator of My Damn Channel online original Horrible People, and comedy’s most adept portrayer of tragically unhip flame-haired Caucasian men), this series lampoons the age old story of a small town girl moving to L.A. to pursue her dreams.

If the Guns N Roses’ analogy doesn’t work for you, think Elizabeth Berkeley from Showgirls dropped into a Russ Meyer film with the writers from Entourage throwing in some jabs at Hollywood cliches and you’ll be on the right track.

What does it take to turn a wide eyed dreamer into a jaded Hollywood hopeful? Lots of booty shorts, dance sequences, hardened cocktail waitresses, catchy one-liners, and a team of mother and daughter club owners.

Mad Men‘s Alison Brie nimbly plays Amber, an innocent midwesterner with dreams of becoming a dancer, who winds up cocktail waitressing at a cheesy L.A. bar called Scenarios. Though she’s determined to become a dancer, it takes a bossy club owner to get her to show her body on the job, because she’s from the midwest, where dancers somehow aren’t used to showing their bodies, and she’s got to learn to be a Hot Slut.

Expertly intertwined with Meyer-esque cleavage shots and catfights are the night club regulars – overly eager male patrons, competitive waitresses, a terrible poet/cook, and a street smart female DJ. The production is glossy, the one liners plentiful, and the series gives equal service to Amber and the Scenarios’ crew.

This being Hollywood, there’s also a nasty Russian beeeeyatch with long hair and a bad attitude who takes our naive heroine under her wing. Alena, as played by Angela Sarafyan, is full of catchy advice because she’s Russian, and she also has a temper that flares violently and usually without warning, because she’s really Russian.

Though the small town girl in a big world story has been done and done a thousand times, Miles somehow managed to squeeze some fresh material out of the old script, the best element being not about Amber, but the club’s need for a huge disco ball. The running joke throughout the episodes provides the most esoteric and sketch-like feel to the project and ties the characters’ story lines together nicely.

To date, five episodes are up, and Amber’s well on her way to becoming an authentic Hot Slut. To live Amber’s Hollywood dream and see Hot Sluts in Scenarios, visit atom.com.