After having its crowd funding campaigned watched and profiled by numerous websites (including right here at Adventures in Poor Taste), the first episode of Geek Cred premiered on June 18, 2014.
Since the episodes will be only 4-5 minutes long, these reviews won’t go as in depth to the plot as they would for an hour long television show. Instead, we’ll focus on what works, what doesn’t, and whether or not it’s worth a small bit of your time and bandwidth to tune in.
So… is it good?
The Good
The best way to describe this show so far would be The League for comic book geeks…and as a comic book geek, I can assure you that they are nailing all the archetypes so far like Waiting did with chain restaurants.
As far as the plot goes, it involves a situation we’ve all been on from one side of the counter or the other: Wednesday and the new books have not been put out yet. (I have totally been that guy who wandered up to the stacks of issues being sorted only to be thwarted by a store employee and admonished to come back later).
Add in a great conversation about “Bat-Cleavage’ along with a dreaded pull list error, and you’ve got a hilarious love letter to the comic shops everywhere.
The characters of Geek Cred never stray too far into caricature territory (ala The Big Bang Theory). Their conversations, reactions, and even some of their overreactions are pretty spot on. Michele Boyd (Callie) and Wes Robertson (Ben) have an incredibly easy, hilarious chemistry that makes me really wish the show was longer.
Damion Poitier (Jerome) plays it perfectly as a comedic (and intimidating) straight man. The only one who ever seems uncomfortable in front of the camera is Daniel Beals (Spencer), who is also the creator and director. By the end of the episode, however, he seemed to have settled in along with everyone else.
As far as camera work and editing, however, Beals does a fantastic job, never oversaturating us with a single gag the way many short comedy shows often can.
The Bad
There were plenty of laugh out loud moments, but not nearly as many as were included in the teaser for the entire season.
I also mentioned earlier that this show is like The League, but that comes with one exception: My wife, who does not enjoy fantasy football at all, could still watch The League and enjoy much of the comedy.
Geek Cred, however, is very much a niche product so far. That may change over time (after all, we’ve only seen 5 minutes of it), but for now, it will have trouble branching out beyond us geeky folks… but maybe that’s not much a bad thing.
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