The best part about My Generation? The iPad App

In case you haven't yet, check out my latest rambling column/post/blog item up at Huffington Post - "The Horrifying Return of Fall TV." Or just read the comments because there are lots of trolls blowing up my shit and it is seriously entertaining.

Now, on a related note I want to talk about My Generation, a pilot I've followed sort of since it was first picked up by ABC.  First of all, this subject matter (the show was previously titled "Generation Y") is of interest to me simply as a former trend-forecaster who still occasionally is a freelance trend-forecaster and likes to stay abridged of trends generally (yeah that was superfluous but whatever) and happens to be a member of Generation Y. So I like, know this shit.

So I read the pilot and I thought... meh. Which was accompanied by a shrug. Then I watched the pilot, which was certainly better than I expected, but still didn't have me jumping out of my seat with joy at discovering the MUST-WATCH BREAKOUT HIT OF THE NEW SEASON!

And then came the marketing... that horrible, HORRIBLE marketing campaign that makes little to no sense and happens to just annoy the shit out of me.  You've seen it - those weird billboards that have pictures of Jaime King with the miserable tagline "You know this ring comes off, right?" or something equally indecipherable.

So then I started thinking about the premise of My Generation a little more - it's about a group of kids who graduated from high school during the height of the Enron scandal - so these kids are about a year or two older than me (I guess two? They graduated in 2000... so yeah, two years older than me) - and then are reunited ten years later and discover they are interconnected in all sorts of crazy soapy ways like baby-daddy drama and unrequited love etc etc etc. And it's all just such a SHOCK to their little lives.

Now, pause for a moment. These people - have they heard of FACEBOOK? Because I can tell you right now, I am Facebook friends with a lot of my high school graduating class even if I haven't talked to them in about seven years, and even if I wasn't great friends with them in the first place. So I have some sense of what these people have been up to the past few years.  Apparently this does not apply to the characters My Generation is based on, so okay, yeah, that's a believable premise and what not... you know, considering that EVERYONE IS ON FACEBOOK. And what not... but whatever... I can attempt to get past this.

But iffy premise and annoying camera-in-the-face-a-la-Real-World narrative tricks aside, My Generation is totally fucked. It's in probably the toughest time-slot of the TV season - Thursdays at 8pm, up against such stalwarts as Bones and The Big Bang Theory.  Frankly, I think the show is going to tank, with the time-slot issue being a major contributing factor. And I don't want to get attached to a show that's probably going to get canceled in the first place... so why watch?

At this point the only redeeming quality about My Generation is its kickass iPad app. Seriously. Check out the app - it's AWESOME. Not only does it make me want an iPad, but it miraculously increases my interest in the show, and actually hones on my initial curiosity - a sense of accelerated nostalgia, reminiscing about high school, the confusing life-stage of the twenty-something, etc. If I actually got sucked into this show, that is, assuming the second episode is a significant improvement upon the first, then I could see myself obsessing over this app, and having a good time with the transmedia interaction. But unless people are raving about the second episode, there's a good chance I won't be watching.  So yeah. Bummer.

I still would like an iPad though.