I concede I don’t make video sites a priority because, unlike television, it’s pretty easy to catch up on missed episodes. Also, most of the Internet stuff – even that which is put out by the studios – pretty much stinks.
So when I finally got around to looking at the Take 180 site, it was with great trepidation. And I will say, there’s actually some watchable stuff here, such as I <3 Vampires (I Heart Vampires) and My Date.
Take 180 is owned by Disney, and perhaps not surprisingly, it’s pretty much aimed at the tween crowd, although My Date is for more mature audiences. In general, parents are going to want to watch out for language issues, but it’s mostly words like ass, fart and crap – pretty mild stuff.
The idea behind the site is that the videos are all three minutes or less (as in 180 seconds), and most of the episodes rely on viewer interaction to determine the next episode. Now, Disney has been doing this kind of thing on its Disney Channel site for years, but I have to admit, I’m impressed by the fast turnaround on the episodes, especially since they post weekly.
The best of the series is, hands down, I <3 Vampires – a take-off on the whole Twilight phenomenom, in which two girls, Corbin and Luci, get into major trouble when Corbin leaks some chapters from the next book due out. And it isn’t just that the author and the cops are out to get them for a federal violation. There’s something odd about that hot guy in episode 5.
But My Date is pretty cute, too. Viewers submit their dating horror stories and depending on whose gets picked, they appear as vignettes in a bar called Crush.
Disney may be touting the site’s nine million-plus page views, but the number of fans posted for each show does not seem to reflect that – most (if not all) of the series have less than 2,000 fans. Except for Electric Spoofaloo, which deserves the low fan count. The show takes viewer ideas for spoofs of popular culture, except that the spoofs are simply not funny.
Whether this will become the Next Big Thing or simply the straight to video of the TV world remains to be seen. But at least there’s some there there.
Anne Louise Bannon
Your Family Viewer