Squaresville – Season 1
Written by: Michelle Gajewski
Welcome to Squaresville, a monotonous suburb in which we are introduced to best friends and central characters to the series: Esther and Zelda. Early on, we see Zelda as a bored, wannabe-rebellious teen always looking for an adventure in her dull town that she can’t wait to get out of. Esther, on the other hand, tends to be a cynical voice of reason. Along with their nerdy friend Percy, the group confronts some typical issues associated with growing up, high school, and competitive games of Mallscapade. It’s no Degrassi though, so no teen pregnancies, drug abuse, school shootings, or other intense issues –yet. However, the show does heavily deal with friendship dynamics, sexuality, and romantic relationships.
The first time I watched this series was about a year ago after constantly seeing tweets about it. To be frank, I didn’t like it because there was really no overarching story-line, no real conflict, and no real end-goal to reach for the majority of the first season. I did, however, appreciate the acting, the directing, and the writing, and many people continued raving about this web-series. It even won 3 International Academy of Web Television Awards (for Best Comedy Web Series, Best Ensemble Performance, and Best Comedy writing for the creator Matt Enlow). I visited all of their social media channels in hopes of finally being enlightened on what exactly it was that I was watching but with no luck. The second season then premiered a few months ago and again my Twitter was buzzing about how great the show was, so I gave it another chance. Finally, I understood it. It’s just teens, hanging out, doing teen things to pass the time (which sometimes makes the show too slow-paced), until they can be grown-ups and have more opportunities to do other things. I haven’t been a teen for a while (though I still pretend to be one), and have forgotten what it was like to be too young, too inexperienced, and too uncertain of myself to really do anything. With this epiphany, I was able to thoroughly enjoy Squaresville.
Before I understood the core of the show, I loved the indie—yet realistic—Ghost World type aesthetic thatSquaresville achieved. It especially enhanced Episode 6 as being extremely surreal. The episode completely strayed away from the rest of the series by focusing on two background characters: the Queen Bee and her Preppy Boyfriend in a soap opera-like predicament they find themselves in when their single parents want to marry each other. Everything from their Stepford clothes, dramatic dialogue, and cheesy background music made me laugh at the ridiculousness of their plot. Even Percy chimed in to observe that “it’s like they’re from another planet.” Although this episode was different, it was still in-universe and so I can understand why Esther, Zelda and Percy don’t talk to the ‘popular kids.’ They’re just too much to handle.
Squaresville is a very niche show that embraces its online community though their “Q & Hey” videos, initiating dialogue through YouTube comments, and various other methods that target the fans. I think this is fantastic for people who can really relate to the show and may need to further develop a fun type of support system. The second season is slowly rolling out with some great episodes (Episode 21 stands out the most) but again I’m falling into the, “What? I don’t get it” mentality. I’ll just have to re-watch it when all the episodes are out.
Watch it here and “stay square.”