Let’s talk about the best sitcom of this decade that you probably haven’t heard of.
Back in 2012, Google spent $100 million to fund the “YouTube Original Channel Initiative.” Almost a full year before Netflix got into the production game with House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black, Google spent more money than any of us will ever see to try to make YouTube the king of the yet-to-exist streaming wars.
Google’s attempts to legitimize YouTube as a production platform mostly failed. The Original Channel Initiative was shelved by the end of 2013. By 2015, YouTube Red (now YouTube Premium) proved to be more logical for YouTube. The subscription model favored by ad-based sites like Spotify and Pandora made more sense for YouTube anyway.
Unfortunately, one of the casualties of this logic was MyMusic. A surreal and bizarre fever dream of a sitcom created by YouTube’s own Fine Bros, MyMusic should’ve been the future of television. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. MyMusic took futurist risks that, if presented in the correct forum, could’ve revolutionized the way we consume and interact with media in the rapidly-revolutionizing future present.
But that didn’t happen. The show only lasted two seasons before it got the axe, and it’s unlikely to ever return in the full form it existed in from 2012-14.
So what made MyMusic so different from everything else? Allow me to stop preambling and start advocating for a piece of comedy that was every bit as good as its paradigm-shifting delivery format.
It Begins Again
MyMusic was the most immersive show of the decade. The best term to describe the show is “transmedia,” meaning it was entertainment presented across multiple platforms. There was a way to passively watch the show through its primary format, but there was also a way to actively consume the show through its full scope.
Let’s start with the primary format. On Sunday nights, MyMusic released new episodes of its main show on its YouTube channel. Episodes, which were filmed and scripted in mockumentary format as The Office, Parks and Recreation or Modern Family but set at a music news blog, usually ranged between seven and 12 minutes in length. Every six episodes or so, a series of plots and subplots would resolve themselves and be packaged into “sitcom episodes,” usually running for 30-35 minutes.
The first season lasted 34 episodes with six sitcom episodes. The second season was 24 episodes long with six sitcom episodes. If you’d like to binge the show the way you’d binge a Netflix or Hulu original, you can knock out the 12 sitcom episodes in one rainy afternoon.
But MyMusic was much deeper than just its narrative. In addition to the main show, which was filmed months in advance, obviously, MyMusic also consisted of a laundry listed of sub-series within the universe of the show. There was The Mosh, a weekly Q&A show with the characters of the show, who would answer questions about the preceding week’s episode and respond to fan mail in character. There was MyMusic News, a weekly news show where characters from the show would analyze and react to the hottest music trends of the week. There was a live variety show, hosted in character by the actors for about an hour every week. There were interviews with musicians. There were full-length podcasts performed and improvised in character. There was a gaming show and a Tumblr reactions show.
And that’s only scratching the surface of how this show existed outside of itself. There was a real MyMusic blog with updates about what was happening in the world of music written in the voices of the characters who would’ve written them. Each character had a Twitter account that was updated frequently in the characters’ voices and would interact with viewers during episodes and during the week between episodes. The characters also had Facebook pages and presences on Tumblr and I’m pretty sure they did Yelp reviews at one point.
If you so chose, you could suspend reality and believe these characters were really people. Sure, you were watching them in a scripted series on Sunday nights. But Monday-Saturday, you could ask them about the scripted series. And in shows like The Mosh and MyMusic News, you could see them react in real-time to the feedback and questions from the fans about the main show. Because in their reality, the show wasn’t pretaped. Everything was live. Even the scripted stuff.
The comparison I always used during my obsession with MyMusic (which came a little after the show had already ended, unfortunately) was that watching MyMusic was like what it would be like if you had a question to ask Sheldon Cooper after an episode of The Big Bang Theory. In the world of MyMusic, not only would you be able to ask Sheldon that question, but he’d be able to respond to you in character and, in doing so, continue the emotional narrative of the show you’re watching. It was like a virtual reality experience in a sense, in that once you’d immersed yourself in the world of MyMusic, you never had to actually leave. You could continue interacting with the show for days and days between episodes and, in effect, become a character in the world you’re watching.
Finally Reunited
Of course, none of this would’ve mattered if MyMusic was boring. But that’s the one word I wouldn’t use to describe the show. Despite its massive overexposure in the form of inundating and invading every sphere of social media imaginable, MyMusic had a sense of humor all its own and used it to create a surrealistic fantasyland.
Here’s the general premise of the show: MyMusic is a music news blog and production company owned by Indie. Indie has a rule that every employee at the company be identified by the genre of music they identify with. So Indie was Indie. The head of social media was Idol, who adored all things popular and mainstream. Metal ran production. Hip Hop ran marketing. The team of Techno and Dubstep (the latter of whom only spoke in wub-wub noises) handled booking. And the interns are the pop-punk obsessed Scene and the kinda-likes-everything Jim Halpert clone of the series, unaffectionately named Intern 2.
If the show had a theme, it was that “everyone is a poser sometimes.” Characters grew by proving they were more than their one-note characterizations. Indie softened his iconoclastic ways. Idol proved to be witty and savvy and more than her vapid persona. Metal was a family man with a domestic wife and a bratty teenage daughter. And Hip Hop outed himself as a huge nerd who loved cosplay. Nobody is defined by their taste, no matter how easy it is to define someone that way.
Of course, this show thrived by stereotyping its minor characters into the one-note roles it thematically crusaded against. Included in the best minor characters were: News Newsman (a news anchor), Relay Runner (a relay runner), Satan (the devil himself), Scarfman (a pile of scarves), the Rat Protector (a protector of rats), Viking (a viking), Shaman (a shaman who married Viking), The Guess Guy (a guy who always tell people to guess what he’s thinking), Bigfoot (a literal bigfoot who roamed the office), Vampire Temp (a vampire who temped at MyMusic), Murray Spub (a guy who is not a bar) and The Guy Who Pulls Intern 2’s Chair (he’s the guy who pulls Intern 2’s chair).
The jokes in this show were almost too specific to be understood without a deep understanding of every genre of popular music and culture. The show was just as comfortable referencing Thom Yorke’s spastic dance moves as it was mocking Garth Brooks’ Chris Gaines phase. It was a show just as likely to have characters pray to a pre-fame Avicii as it was to have a character model her office after the 1988 TV special Totally Minnie. It had entire story arcs built around The Patty Duke Show and My Name Is Earl and named characters after members of the band Coal Chamber.
It also involved inexplicable inside jokes. Like a character who is sexually attracted to flow charts having a best friend who is a squirrel. Or how every character in the show had an absurdly-specific superpower they could only use once every 10 years. Or, well, a season-long series of potshots at Chris Daughtry comparing his music to auditory torture.
Stylistically, the show bore resemblance to its brethren in the mockumentary format like The Office and Parks and Rec. But sense of humor wise, MyMusic was more similar to shows like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or Happy Endings in its joke delivery speed. And it also had remnants of cartoons like The Simpsons and Family Guy in it in the way it relied on one-note side characters and cutaway gags to make the universe feel more lived-in and real.
Saying Goodbye
I think the main reason MyMusic speaks to me so much is how it served as an introduction to so much I love in this world. Many of the actors on the show were YouTube creators or actors who I’d never seen before, and MyMusic exposed me to their creative outputs. Because of MyMusic, I know creators like Jack Douglass and Grace Helbig and Lee Newton and Jarrett Sleeper and so many more creators who dropped in for a cameo or two.
The show also introduced me to the music of Driftless Pony Club, which I love, and to that band’s lead singer Craig Benzine, who later became my favorite creator on YouTube. And it reintroduced me to the likes of Adam Busch, who I loved on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and Felicia Day, who starred in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, my favorite piece of media ever made. As well as, you know, keying me in to how The Fine Bros were more than just the REACT kings of YouTube. They were brilliantly clever and absurdist filmmakers willing to push envelopes and take risks with content.
More than that, I think MyMusic can teach you how to create. Anyone can come up with an idea that fits an existing format. But Benny and Rafi Fine synthesized a lot of preexisting formats into a new format entirely. And I believe that had this show been produced on a cable network or a streaming service or on YouTube circa 2017 instead of YouTube circa 2012, it would’ve had the potential to launch a horde of copycats and lookalikes taking advantage of the seductive brilliance of the transmedia format.
It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that I come up with a new idea for a sitcom at least once a month. Sometimes I write them down. Sometimes I flesh out full scripts. Other times, I’ll map out a massive transmedia experience that could exist within a similar framework to MyMusic. Because it really is a great idea if you think about it: If your show never stops creating content, it’s never really off the air. Even while you’re editing and writing new episodes, your characters continue to exist. The less downtime you give your fans, the less likely they are to forget about you and the more likely they are to build bonds with your characters.
Selling someone on MyMusic isn’t just selling someone on a show. It’s selling someone on a concept, and selling someone on the evolving concept of fandom.
Hopefully I’ve sold you.
The Sitcomologist 