Bad
Crooks Webseries Review
How
does someone continue to pay their bills after losing their job during
tough economic times? The webseries medium has offered a variety of
approaches that are as original and creative as the narratives themselves.
In Saving Rent, for instance, advertising agent Mike decides
to rent out rooms in his plush Los Angeles home in order to pull in
some extra cash. In Odd Jobs, investment banker Nate Brooks
scrutinizes the listings on Craigslist for offbeat sources of income.
The former white collar employees of Bad
Crooks, meanwhile, go to even more
extremes when they turn to a life of crime. Although they do not find
success, their capers are filled with enough comic twists and turns
to keep even the most financially desperate amongst us entertained nonetheless.
“We’ve
been unemployed for two years,” it is explained in the opening
credits of each episode of Bad Crooks. “We could be criminals...
we’re fast learners... how hard could it be?” The group
of seven former office workers thus take on aliases and make numerous
attempts to embrace the dark side of the law but inevitably find it
more difficult than expected. Creator Gregory Jones portrays the Mastermind
of the gang but the ensemble cast also includes Rob Gorden as Fingers,
Tara Copeland as Eagle Eye, Eric Deskin as Crazy, Darin Guerrasio as
USB and Brian Hotaling as Vroom. Separately they were mail room workers,
HR assistants, data entry clerks and accountants but together they are
simply “bad crooks.”
In the
episode “Bank Robbery,” for instance, the gang attempts
to steal money from an ATM machine but run into difficulties when USB
has difficulty disabling the security camera and “hacker”
Fingers fails to show up at the crime scene. “I just need cash,
credit cards. And give me your information and I promise I’ll
reimburse you once I get back on my feet,” Vroom tells a woman
in the episode “Metro Mugging” before she sprays him with
mace. The intended target goes on to explain that the would-be thieves
should have worn masks and brought along a weapon before turning the
tables and robbing them instead.
In “Spam Scam,”
meanwhile, the gang takes turns sending out e-mails in which they claim
to be Nigerian royalty in need of assistance, operators of celebrity
porn websites, sellers of sexual organ enlargement medication and mothers
of illegitimate children. Lastly, “Taxi Takedown” features
an elaborate plot involving multiple teams of the crooks in an effort
to rob a taxi cab. “This is not what we used to do,” the
Mastermind tells the others. “This is not copying, this is not
Power Point. This is crime. This is not Excel, this is crime. And we
are going to excel at crime.” In the end, however, they fail in
this endeavor just like all of the others.
Actor Gregory
Jones crafted Bad Crooks as a vehicle to not only showcase
his thespian abilities but his improv skills as well. Thus while the
premise and initial dialogue for the episodes were crafted by Jones,
a large segment of each installment was left for the improvisational
talents of not only the creator but the other six actors as well. Bad
Crooks likewise does not feature any sort of overarching narrative
tying the episodes together. Although these two factors could easily
transform Bad Crooks into a handful of short skits rather than
a distinct show, in actuality the concept gels in much the same way
that Fourplay in LA and Anti-Matter utilized unrelated
episodes to form a coherent webseries.
Bad
Crooks is not the first entry into the medium to utilize improvisation
within its creation. The Bitter End, for instance, was crafted
from the improv theater performances of Dan Beirne, Etan Muskat and
Brent Skagford. Just as the Montreal-based production benefited from
the already built-in chemistry between its actors, the same holds true
for Bad Crooks. The seven actors who portray the wannabe criminals
originally appeared together in the even more improvisational Corporate
Knobs.
That webseries features Gregory Jones and the others as male chauvinist
corporate executives who utter detrimental gender-related remarks that
even Michael Scott from the NBC sitcom The Office would find
offensive.
“I
don’t know why the sexual harassment seminar has to be led by
someone so ugly,” the Jones character remarks in one episode,
only to have a colleague reply, “Couldn’t we get someone
harassable?”
The experience
of performing together on Corporate Knobs obviously benefited
the group of actors during the filming of Bad Crooks as the
mixture of scripted and improv are seamlessly integrated into each installment.
Filming the webseries through the lenses of security and web cameras
enhances the overall authenticity and originality of the narrative,
while the situations of the comedy likewise adds to the humor and enjoyment
of the episodes.
A lot of
good people have found themselves unemployed in recent years due to
the economic downturn facing both the nation and the world. While renting
out spare rooms in one’s home like Mike in Saving Rent
or finding untraditional means of employment like Nate in Odd Jobs
may indeed bring in extra cash, the lessons of Bad Crooks should
not be forgotten—going from salesman to criminal may seem easy
and fun but is actually a lot harder than it looks. The same also holds
true for creating a webseries, despite the ease that Gregory Jones and
his cohorts make it appear.
Anthony
Letizia (March 14, 2011)
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