Back
on Topps Webseries Review
It took former CEO Michael Eisner a mere two years after
he left media giant Disney in 2003 to reposition himself in the industry
by launching an Internet-video production studio, Vuguru, and scoring
one of the webseries medium’s first major hit, Prom Queen.
That same year, 2007, Eisner also acquired the long-standing trading
card manufacturer, Topps. Amazingly enough he was quickly able to “synergize”
the two investments by encouraging Vuguru to produce a webseries about
Topps, created by twin-brother comedians Jason and Randy Sklar, the
former hosts of ESPN Cheap Seats.
“It
was like, ‘How do we take this company and bring it into the 20th
century?’” Randy Sklar told the St.
Louis News in July 2008 in regards to Topps. “Create
a webseries and give it a web presence. We pitched them this idea we
would play fictional brothers, Leyland and Leif Topps, heir to the Topps
fortune. (The actual owner) was going to give us the company but then
at the last minute, he decides to sell it to Michael Eisner. We like
the Meta aspect, like, ‘is this real or is it not real?’”
In Back
on Topps, the fictional brothers Leif and Leland
Topps do indeed lose what they consider their birthright when “Uncle
Marvin” suddenly—and without warning—sells the Topps
Trading Card Company to Michael Eisner. While the Eisner in the show
has a fondness for the siblings, the new manager in charge of Topps,
Gaylen Briggs (Brian Huskey), has a different opinion. Briggs sees Leif
and Leyland as both losers and slackers with nothing to offer the company.
The Topps Brothers mission during the webseries is thus two-fold: find
a way to retake control of the company they believe is rightfully theirs
(and thus be “Back on Topps”) while likewise proving their
worth so as not to get fired.
Many of
the episodes center on the latter, as Leif and Leyland brainstorm ideas
designed to make the company more profitable. Being a comedy, these
plans tend to be funny in concept and hilarious in execution. In the
episode “Avant Cards,” for instance, the brothers come up
with the idea of producing cards featuring pictures of major sports
athletes taken by avant-garde photographers like Ansel Adams and Diane
Arbus. Of course all of those artists are deceased, so they have to
rely on Leif’s wife’s cousin to shoot the photos.
Other plans
hatched during the series include hiring a black man named “Michael
Eisner” (nicknamed Bleisner) to star in a “behind the scenes
at Topps” webshow; specialty cards designed around a scandal involving
baseball players moussing their hair; and a sixty-second online interview
series that mirrors Sixty Minutes (which proves too short a
time period despite numerous edits).
During
the second half of the first season, Leif and Leyland are fired by Gaylen
Briggs when Michael Eisner leaves for Antarctica (he’s thinking
about buying the continent) and the Topps Brothers embark on a cross-country
vision quest that involves getting fifty-year-old former major leaguer
Julio Franco elected to the baseball All-Star Game. Their tactics include
stuffing the ballot box at Camden Yards in Baltimore, approaching actual
tourists in Washington D.C., and even embracing negative advertising.
“Albert
Pujols says he loves baseball,” one commercial begins. “But
where was he on April 28, 1982, when Julio Franco went three-for-five
with two RBIs to help the Phillies beat the Dodgers, 9-3? He was two-years-old,
in his crib, crying about a dropped pacifier. Experience—it counts.”
Leif and
Leyland Topps continually rely on references to sports figures to make
their points the series, including such lines as, “I said I was
sorry for calling you a racist. On a scale from one to John Rocker you’re
not even Jimmy the Greek,” and “Optimism doesn’t always
hinge on results; look at the Cubs.” This does not mean that one
has to be a sports maniac to enjoy the show—in the same way that
you do not have to be an online gamer to appreciate the webseries The
Guild, or be a high-IQ sci-fi geek to find the CBS comedy The
Big Bang Theory funny, one does not need to have an encyclopedic
knowledge of sports to be entertained by Back on Topps.
The webseries
also has similarities to the NBC comedy The Office in that
both feature a documentary film crew following the employees as they
go about their daily tasks. The Office-like setting likewise
provides Back on Topps the opportunity to deal with its fair
share of workplace-related storylines, including sexual harassment,
sensitivity training (“Can’t say this: I’d like to
slip my memo into your in-box”) and the stealing of food from
the community refrigerator.
Back
on Topps has advantages over other webseries, and not just because
it is produced by Michael Eisner. Both Skype and Dick’s Sporting
Goods signed on as sponsors of the show, and while they are both featured
prominently in various episodes—NBA center Greg Oden briefly appears
in one installment to hype the benefits of Skype—the product placement
is not any more intrusive than Subway sandwiches being shown on NBC’s
Chuck or when Dwight Schrute of the The Office left
Dunder Mifflin to work for Staples. Even the fact that the entire premise
of the webseries is to draw attention to both the real-life Topps company
specifically and the trading card industry in general actually adds
to the enjoyment of the show more than it detracts. Good comedy, after
all, is funny regardless of setting.
“It
just so happens that Topps is the backdrop,” Jason Sklar explained
to the St. Louis News. “The Office is set at
Dunder Mifflin, but The Office is not about the paper company.”
His brother, Randy, adds, “I don’t think that anyone would
argue that The Office is an advertisement for Dunder Mifflin.”
If anything,
Back on Topps is an advertisement for the potential of the
webseries medium, and a very entertaining one at that.
Anthony
Letizia (February 15, 2010)
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