Candy
Girls Webseries Review
In
the fall of 2010, the FOX television network launched the drama Lone
Star to much critical acclaim. The narrative centered on a Texas
conman who was living two lives while struggling to keep them separate,
and was more the type of series that one would find on cable channel
AMC. Lone Star also attracted the same small batch of viewers
as AMC and was quickly cancelled after two episodes because of bad ratings,
becoming the first casualty of the 2010 television season. At approximately
the same time, meanwhile, writer/director John Freund debuted the webseries
Candy
Girls on the Internet, which follows an MBA graduate
operating a high-end prostitution ring while likewise struggling to
keep this “secret life” hidden and separate from his girlfriend.
Perhaps the World Wide Web is becoming a better vehicle for provocative
storytelling than television after all.
Candy
Girls has obvious shades of the 1980s Tom Cruise film Risky
Business, in which high school graduate Joel Goodson teams up with
lady-of-the-night Lana to organize an evening of sexual frolic for his
teenage friends, within its layers. While Joel is motivated by the need
to make some quick cash in order to repair his parent’s Porsche
before they return from vacation, Jason Bloom (Ben Kurland) of Candy
Girls is simply looking to earn a living during weak economic times.
His MBA degree and abundant people-skills makes him the perfect partner
for Eliza Heller (Eleni Symeonides), a former escort attempting to transform
herself into a Hollywood Madame. Although she books the engagements
and sends out homemade candygrams to potential clients in order to build
the business, it is Jason who handles the actual “selling,”
both in terms of the “product” itself as well as keeping
the girls working under his care motivated.
While the
majority of the scenes relating to the prostitution end of the narrative
are designed more for comic relief—replete with vibrators and
other forms of sexual humor—Jason Bloom’s “other life”
with girlfriend Katie (Rya Myers) is the true centerpiece of the webseries.
Like Joel Goodson of Risky Business and even Robert Allen from
Lone Star, Jason has a likeable charm despite his dubious nature
and choice of profession, which in turn adds to the believability of
the relationship. “The hardest part of my job is hiding it from
my girlfriend,” he continually remarks in what can be considered
a tag-line for the Candy Girls. Not only does he have to deal
with the mental guilt of his deception, however, but the sidetracks
his “second life” inevitably causes within his first.
“Everyone
I guess gets that feeling sometimes but it’s just a stupid feeling,”
Katie tell her friend Beth (Caitlin Biship) in regards to Jason being
continuously called away on business at all hours, including the evening
of her birthday, and what it potentially means to their relationship.
For Jason’s part, most of those quick departures relate to the
welfare of the girls under his employment. Whether having to rescue
Penelope (Tamara DeKauwe) from being left tied to a bed or comforting
Alex (Jenna Brighton) when she breaks up with her bisexual roommate,
it is obvious that Jason Bloom does not look at his “prostitutes”
as mere commodities but actual people he has come to genuinely care
about. He is in effect caught in a tug-of-war between providing the
emotional needs of his employees and those of his girlfriend while likewise
struggling to balance those competing demands.
“The
concept of Candy Girls came from two different sources of inspiration,”
creator John Freund explains in regards to the webseries’ origins.
“The first was when I was nearing the end of my MBA and some friends
and I were making a list of types of jobs we’d like to have where
an MBA might actually be useful. Somehow ‘White Collar Pimp’
ended up on the list and I remember thinking what a funny idea it would
be for someone to get their MBA only to then become a white collar pimp.
Some time later, I remember watching the Steven Soderbergh indie film
The Girlfriend Experience and thinking, ‘This is very
bleak. Can’t this world be portrayed in a much lighter tone?’
That is when the idea for Candy Girls was born. I remembered
my thoughts on an MBA becoming a ‘white collar pimp’ and
decided to tell the story from his perspective, which is not usually
where this story comes from. It is usually told from the perspective
of the girl or girls. So I believed I had stumbled upon a different
take on a world that is very popular to watch and read about.”
Freund
also “stumbled upon” a narrative that fits the classic definition
of dramedy. With dialogue along the likes of “I love making people
happy and I also enjoy fine dining, romantic movies and kinky sex with
strange men,” Candy Girls is too humorous to be considered
a drama; with its more serious focus on Jason Bloom’s relationship
with Katie and the toll his deceptions has on the couple, it is also
difficult to classify the webseries as a straight-forward comedy. By
separating the two competing lives of the main protagonist and combining
the drama within the comedy, Candy Girls instead shapes up
to be an entertaining amalgamation of an often told story that puts
a unique spin on the narrative as well.
And because
Candy Girls is a webseries, neither the show nor the audience
has to worry about cancellation like Lone Star.
Anthony
Letizia (November 12, 2010)
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