Indie Spotlight: Get Fired Up For Restaurant Comedy ’86’d’

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.

There are plenty of web series about struggling actors attempting to make their way in Hollywood, but as far as I can tell, 86’d is the only web series about actors working in restaurants to pay their bills that is also made by actors who work in restaurants to pay their bills. Got all that?

It’s actually a very basic setup for a comedy about what happens when you are poor and powerless and more important people step all over you. The title refers to a slang term for getting rid of someone; in this case, it refers to the employees at a swanky country club restaurant who will be canned if they screw up even once. This leads to some entertaining scenarios, with the wait staff bending over backwards to serve increasingly obnoxious patrons.

86’d is the creation of Charles Miller, who crafted the series around his own experience working in the food service industry. He told LA Weekly that his co-workers “are an amazingly diverse group of people who all want out.” Many of them are likely still stuck there, but at least they have a funny web series that understands their pain.

OTHER UNDER-THE-RADAR SERIES TO CHECK OUT:

• Jon And Jen Are Married. Clearly, marital ennui is best portrayed through a droll, witty web series such as this one.
• Marriage and Other Tragedies. The star of this web series was Batdad before Batdad was cool.
• My Gay Roommate. You can probably figure out what this one is about from the title. It’s now entering season three.
• The Waiting Room. A dramedy about the medical assistants at a private sleeping clinic.

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.