Indie Spotlight: ‘Passive Aggressive Friends’ Is A-Grade Cringe Comedy

We receive a ton of tips every day from independent creators, unaffiliated with any major motion picture studios, television networks, new media studios, or other well-funded online video entities. The Indie Spotlight is where we’ll write about and shout out to a select few of them and bring you up to speed on the great (and sometimes not-so-great) attention-grabbing series you probably haven’t heard about until now.  Read previous installments here.

Most of us have figured out how to properly balance our friends’ feelings with our desire to criticize them, but some people just don’t have the tact. Passive Aggressive Friends Talking About Their Ambitions, one of YouTube’s most directly-titled web series, takes a closer look at two friends who have a lot to say and a very evasive way of saying it.

Each Passive Aggressive Friends episode takes on a different subject, with creators Max Azulay and Alex Mullen taking turns backhandedly complementing one another on their career aspirations, personal lives, and political leanings. Each line is oozing with self-satisfaction and poorly-contained contempt, and the cringe factor is ramped up to 11.

This idea came from Alex and me about what it’s like to be around ambitious, but ultimately pretty insecure people all trying to do the same thing,” Azulay told Splitsider. “There’s a lot of building each other up, but there’s a lot of subtle competing with each other, so we tried to heighten that. The idea was always trying to have them do the same thing and ultimately they would always abandon it by the end of the episode.”

The best part of Passive Aggressive Friends is the way it critiques each episode’s topic. The main joke gets played out pretty quickly, but Azulay and Mullen keep their series fresh by providing occasionally profound and always witty insights on the dangers of rushing into a serious relationship, the necessary self-interest that comes with artistic pursuits, and the phony nature of political campaigns. Hey, maybe rampant passive-aggressiveness isn’t a universally worthless character trait after all.

OTHER UNDER-THE-RADAR SERIES TO CHECK OUT:

• Redemption’s End. A rare treat of a web drama about three friends who attempt to sell a dead body on the black market as a way of solving their respective financial problems.
• Breaking & Entering. A comedy about the miserable work lives of production assistants.
• Martini Mom and Devil Spawn. A political satire about a heavy-drinking single lady who suddenly gives birth to the spawn of satan.
• It Came From The VCR. A loving celebration to the schlocky, homemade thriller and comedy films of the 1980s

Got a series you’d like to see featured in the Indie Spotlight? Be sure to contact us here. For best coverage, please include a full episode in your e-mail.