So I’m obviously not as plugged in as I thought I was because until last night I had never heard of the Emmy-winning web series Satacracy 88. Twenty-four episodes were done in ’06 and ’07 and they are all viewable on hulu. Now the pluses are complex, interesting Woman of Color protagonist, plenty of People of Color, passes the Bechdel Test, gotta support indie art and the plot is pretty interesting and grabby.
I stayed up late last night watching the whole thing, each episode is only 3 -5 minutes and I was loving it until I reached the end. Now I’m not gonna ruin it for anyone who is going to head over and watch it but I found it anti-climactic and boring and just plain annoying.
This time though I can’t really blame the creators or the showrunners for the badness. See, Satacracy 88 comes to us via ItsAllInYourHands.Com where at the end of each episode the protagonist is left torn between two possibilities and the audience vote decides which way they go. It’s like a group census Choose You Own Adventure Book!
They have two other shows on their webpage and on hulu.com but I’m too burned on how Satacracy 88 ended to put myself willingly into mob rule television again anytime soon. I would recommend people go watch it if only so I can have someone to discuss some of the possibly problematic elements I recognized. One of which was Satacracy 88’s origin story which I put under a cut so as not to spoil:
Words From The Center, Words From The Edge 