“Our reality show will follow five or six incoming freshmen through their first year at Georgetown—from budding relationships, roommate problems, to finding a place for themselves in an entirely new environment.” co-producer Alison Doyle (SFS ’13) wrote in an email.
Doyle will produce the show with Joe Mancino, a Voice contributor.
As of last Wednesday, Doyle told us that 12 incoming freshman shown interest in the show. This week, she and Mancino will hold video interviews to whittle applicants down to the final cast.
“After discussing what we wanted to get out of producing our show together, we realized that a reality show would be a perfect opportunity to learn more about all the aspects of television production and yet would still be manageable as we are both full-time students,” she wrote.
Between Darnall: The Sitcom and this untitled show, which Doyle hopes to air in the Spring, GUTV seems to be saturating the college television market with programs about freshmen. But we can’t blame them—where else can we watch the Amish sabotage elevators?
Remember when the first Lord of the Rings came out, and the end made you wonder why Peter Jackson would be so cruel as to make you wait a whole freaking year before you could see The Two Towers? I know we’ve all been sharing in that achy, anticipating feeling for the past two months, but now we can finally rejoice.GUTV has finally releasedDarnall: The Sitcom, episode 2!
I guess because of the lengthy delay between the two episodes, Episode 2 opens with a “previously on Darnall!” montage. But its scenes of awkward freshmen sharing uninteresting small-talk (and then getting stuck in a basement without a single functioning GoCard to swipe the door open), made me super duper excited to spend the next fourteen minutes of my life watching some awkward freshmen live their boring, day-to-day lives.
This week’s episode finds the gang doing—wait, what was the gang doing? Looking back on the episode, all I remember are short, inconsequential conversations (which I can hear a lot better now. Thanks for listening, GUTV!) about which boy is cuter and the toils of eating Grab n’ Go salads. Where’s the plot? The adventure? The romance? Did I really need to watch three minutes of “Previously on Darnall!” to understand that freshmen have incredibly uninteresting lives, which get even less interesting when you try and get people to watch them on television?
The gang eventually wound up at an awkward Henle party with about as many people in attendance as you can fit inside a Darnall closet, complete with a soundtrack of thirty-second-or-so clips of standard party songs, blended together as well as any drunk kid who grabs the iPod off the speakers would do. The party’s host passes out, and Beatrice (one of the Darnall-ers) gets rejected by Christian, who says that he doesn’t have enough time for her because he’s a basketball player. To top the heart-wrenching scene off, “Such Great Heights” by the Postal Service provides the aural backdrop.
I haven’t cried that hard since middle school.
But the best part of this month’s installation of Darnall? Awkward sexual innuendos. When two guys shoot some hoops together at the beginning of the episode, a girl comes up to them and asks if they’re “scared of a little two-on-one.” One of the dudes chuckles, and she gets confused. Now that’s high comedy.
“Well, at least we don’t live in Darnall.” It’s the mantra of every Harbin resident with a leaky ceiling, every New South-er with a filthy public shower, and every Village C kid with a toilet-hating gunman on the loose.
But talk to anyone who actually lives in that hellhole, and they’ll tell you the sense of camaraderie among floormates makes it the best thing that’s ever happened to them. And now, thanks to GUTV, it’s a sitcom! That makes it campy-cool, right?
Well, if you were one of the tens of viewers who tuned into the premiere of Darnall: The Sitcom on GUTV last night, you saw that kids in this infamous residence hall live a life shockingly similar to that of any other Georgetown freshman. It’s filled with awkward floor-cestuous flirtation, irritating RAs, and slow-moving elevators. Aren’t you on crippled with laughter just thinking about it?
The premise of the show is a Friends-style living arrangement with Gilligan’s Island’s isolation. The cast is your standard, not-so-special freshmen, along with two freshman basketball players and an RA who won’t let the kids play by themselves. The episode’s climax involves a broken elevator door that leaves the gang trapped, feeble and Facebook-less in the dorm’s basement.
Behold, the confusingly goofy trailer for Darnall: The Sitcom, a new GUTV show that’s premiering on February 16. Bland but enticing, the trailer is a puzzling string of clips in which students allude to roommate troubles, killer elevators, and how awful it is to be in the basement of Darnall.
Luckily, GUTV’s Programming Director Richard Rinaldi (MSB ’12), who is also the show’s executive producer, enlightened Vox about the show. His e-mail description is pretty delightful, so we’ll just let it speak for itself:
“Darnall: The Sitcom is a story about seven friends who are stuck living in the worst dorm on campus and their adventures that follow. Along the way, they encounter everything from being locked in Darnall’s basement by their diabolical RA to attending their first party in Henle. Fabian Fondriest plays Christian, a basketball player who just wants to be normal—even though Mitch, a team member played by Daniel Lima, wants him to spend more time with the team.
“Best friends Norah (Zoe Lillian) and Hillary (Angela Morabito) are actually polar opposites, as they’re slowly finding out. Supporting cast members include Petar Georgiev as Greg, Hillary’s awkward love interest, Yuko Shimada as Yuko, a sharp-tongued floormate, and Kate Newman as Andrea, a typically quiet but very intelligent friend.”
We’re nowhere near as excited we are for the reality show in production about Georgetown Cupcake, but nonetheless, we’re intrigued. The show is co-produced by Dunja Panic and sophomore Chris Cronbaugh. Megan Acheampong, a Darnall resident, is the creator and head writer, and Rinaldi and freshman Bobby Kaminski are also on the writing team.
“Darnall will premiere at 8 pm on February 16, 2010 in Sellinger Lounge and air on GUTV (RCN channel 60),” Rinaldi wrote, having said, “We at GUTV are really excited about it.”
Vox Populi is the staff blog of the Georgetown Voice, Georgetown University's weekly newsmagazine. Opinions expressed in posts are those of their author alone unless otherwise stated.