The Guild Season Two Review
After a successful first season of the award-winning webseries, The Guild—the screwball-like comedy that follows a group of World of Warcraft-style online gamers who have difficulty adjusting to the real world—creator Felicia Day has fashioned a sophomore effort that both builds upon that initial outing while likewise expanding the series’ scope and range.
While season one revolved around fellow gamer Zaboo’s (Sandeep Parikh) stalking crush on Codex (Day), season two is more fully developed in ways that better utilizes its ensemble cast, with a centralized theme of men-vs.-women and honesty/dishonesty in relationships. Codex, for instance, lies to Zaboo when she explains that the only way he could ever win her love would be to go out into the world on his own and develop as a human being. She even uses gaming parallels to illustrate her point: “In life, you are a starting character. If we were ever to be together—as unlikely as that ever, ever would be—you would have to do some major leveling.”
Tinkerballa (Amy Okuda), meanwhile, uses Bladezz’s (Vincent Caso) sexual come-ons as a means to extract both favors and gifts, with no intentions of ever forging a physical relationship with him. Clara (Robin Thorsen), in turn, lies to her husband about not attending her sister’s wedding in order to have a weekend alone in front of the computer (with loads of snacks and alcohol on the side).
Between Zaboo’s continuing obsession with Codex, Tinkerballa’s toying with Bladezz’s interest in her, and Codex meeting an attractive stuntman (Fernando Chien) in her new apartment complex, there is plenty of fodder for gender interpretations of men, women and relationships. Guild master Vork (Jeff Lewis) even gets into the act, explaining to his fellow male gamers at one point that “women, in general, only yield short-term returns. They are not a suitable vehicle for long-term investments.”
“Men are meant to be used for their skill sets,” Tinkerballa later offers in contrast. “Need to pass a biology test? Date a biologist. Or your biology T.A. They don’t even need names, as far as I’m concerned. Fred, Joe and Ryan might as well be called Moving Van, Pharmacist and Oil Change. You just have to pick the right tool for the right job.”
When the server that drives the Guild’s game goes down for a few hours, the differences between men and women is explored even further as the three males gather at Vork’s house and the three female’s at Codex’s apartment. The season concludes its ever-building screwball antics when Clara decides to turn the female gathering into a full-fledged keg party, which the males eventually crash when Zaboo learns about the stuntman and Codex.
Each episode of The Guild opens with a short video blog by Codex which provides some of the best dialogue and humor, as well as gives Felicia Day ample room to showcase her comedic skills. With a style reminiscent of the finest social commentary vloggers on the Internet, the quick-cut facial expressions and speech tones of Day demonstrate her mastery of the medium.
And Felicia Day has indeed proven herself to be an expert on all-things Internet, especially the webseries genre. Her writing style is tailor made for the World Wide Web—each episode follows a short, three-to-eight-minute format that encompasses enough action to move the plot forward while likewise finding cliff-hanging moments to end each installment.
More significantly, the creator/writer/actress/producer has shown an inept grasp on the business end of the budding webseries industry. While season one of The Guild was primarily funded via fan donations, Day was able to work out a deal with Microsoft that not only paid for season two, but gave the show greater visibility on Xbox Live Marketplace, added Sprint as a sponsor and allowed her to retain creative control as well as the rights to the series.
“We had a different model (for season two) because we got so many offers,” Felicia Day explained to Paste in April, 2009. “Dozens of networking producers and venture capitalists (offered) to produce the show, but the rebellious inner spirit I have made me not want to sell the rights to my show. Then, Xbox and Microsoft came in and were like, ‘We love the show, we want you to do what you do with it, we just want to help you produce it and make it and roll it out really fast.’ They created a revolutionary business model.”
The Guild may not have been the first webseries created for the Internet, but its award-winning season one demonstrated what the medium could become as much as any other. Season two continues that trend, not only with refreshing storytelling but as a groundbreaking insurgent against Old Media as well.
“It’s sort of the Sundance of our time,” Felicia Day said of the Internet in a December, 2008, interview with IGN. “This is where people are going to be discovered and be making new content. I know that there are a lot of frustrated people in Hollywood, who aren’t allowed to tell their stories because they’re either not telling them in the way the studios or networks want them to, or it’s not appealing to as many people. The cool thing about the Internet is I can make a show about gamers that would never get made by traditional means, and I can find an audience for it. I think that it’s kind of the democratization of media in a sense.”
Felicia Day and The Guild stand as true testaments to that democratization.
Anthony Letizia (September 14, 2009)
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