‘Cupid and Eros’: A Workplace Rom-Com for Mingle Media

A few years ago one of the biggest web series clichés was the three-episode debut. Creators would cut three videos and trust the quality of their writing and acting would build momentum for the rest of the season.

Most of those series never made it over the hump.

Avi Glijansky did not want to be one of those people. It took him a year but his comedy series, The Further Adventures of Cupid and Eros, whose fourth episode debuted on Mingle Media’s web series portal Monday, has completed a full season.

Cupid and Eros, a buddy comedy and workplace drama about the gods of romance, started as an idea Glijansky had while in NYU film school. After graduating and doing line producing for shorts and music videos, as well as working for The Apprentice, he decided to put thought to action. The economy had gone south, and he and core group of friends had some time on their hands.

“I’m not married. I don’t have kids… This is the universe saying I’ve got to pay attention to this,” he thought at the time.

About a year ago NYU held a web series competition, his got selected, and Glijansky made three episodes. But he knew it wasn’t enough. “Everything getting picked up had a first season on its own,” Glijansky said.

Cupid and Eros focuses on the relationship between the lovelorn Cupid, still reeling from his break-up with Psyche, and his saucier, more confident partner Eros. New episodes will delve deeper into their relationship and introduce viewers to new gods, including Apollo.

Even though new episodes debut this week, Cupid and Eros‘ team have been releasing content for several months. While working to get the rest of the series made, Glijansky distributed a number of video diaries from the two main characters, Josh Heine

(Cupid) and Jo Bozarth (Eros). Both webisodes feature the two gods answering questions, but Cupid’s vlogs are fittingly more nervous and personal than Eros’ knowing and confident advice series.

To maximize production value, Glijansky wrote the series in three, three-episode story arcs. The episodes keep viewers in a limited number of locations but make up for it with comedic hijinks – like when Cupid enlists Eros to help him compete with a mortal for the attention of a girl at a bar.

Distribution on Mingle Media TV Network gave Cupid and Eros a web location with a curatorial voice and the potential for ad revenue. “A lot of online TV networks are not curated well,” he said. “They are a trying hard to have a very clear focus about what the brand is.”

A web series allowed Glijansky to retain creative control without forcing his series into a format it wasn’t suited for. “There’s too much fun stuff to just do a short with this,” he and his producing partners had decided. “And it wasn’t going to be the easiest pitch as a low-budget indie. We started talking about it, and they’re enthusiasm fueled mine.”

“We all sort were like, ‘well, this web thing, what about that?’ And so I started thinking about it, and the more I thought about it the more appealing it was. It felt like a manageable way to balance high production value with having complete creative control.”

New episodes of Cupid and Eros debut each Monday for the next six weeks.