🌃 So I Just Binged: MTV's Downtown 🌃

Disclaimer: This post contains spoilers for MTV's Downtown. 

"MTV presents Downtown, an animated look at the most animated part of town drawn from real life."  - Quote from the show's commercial promo.

Good afternoon lovelies! 💗 You won't believe it but I'm sick again! I went to receive medical attention from Urgent Care today and the doctors stated this is common when working with young children and my immune system just needs time to get used to it all. But I digress. Being homebound gave me enough time to watch all thirteen episodes of MTV's Downtown. 

MTV's Downtown is an animated series/sitcom that was broadcast during the tail end of 1999. The show follows a cast of young adults navigating urban life in the Lower East Side of NYC. I first learned about the show through a Twitter thread that elaborated on how the series was based on interviews with random people the production found on the streets. The most interesting of the bunch is the interview with the person who inspired Serena, a popular goth girl who's the main character's love interest. As someone "from the future", the show is an interesting time capsule of attitudes, fashion, and jargon used at the time. There are no high stakes, all conflicts the characters face are situations we've all encountered or will come across throughout the transition between teenagehood and young adulthood, making Downtown a comfort show for many.  

". . . instead of coming up with characters and stuff, you know, that [MTV] might not like I'll just go really broad and say we're going down the street - it's going to be like cinéma vérité shit and we're gonna go, like, record these kids off the street, record their audio and animate to that . . . [MTV's], like, 'well [the idea is] kind of crazy. We need scripts and characters and stuff' . . . We just basically mostly just put in either people we had met on the street or people we already knew . . .", Downtown's creator, Chris Prynoski, on how the show's concept came to fruition.

From left to right: The creator's self-insert, Alex Hensen, his best friend Jen, his younger sister Chaka, and Chaka's schoolfriends: Mecca, Fruity, and Matt. Alex's crush Serena and some dude named Goat. At the time of its premiere, the show was praised for the cast's diversity along with the believable dialogue and chemistry between them.

The series focuses on *~nice guy~* Alex Hensen, a twenty-four-year-old guy with an interest in comic books, Sci-fi, and D&D who recently moved out of his parent's house in hopes of having a space to lose his virginity - something he's really self-conscious about. His extrovert sister Chaka often pushes the plot forward with her shenanigans. She is a handful but considering how she's only in high school with seemingly no parental discipline, I was never mad at her antics but instead towards their parents. Chaka is often seen with her best friends Mecca, Fruity, and Matt who are given small spotlights throughout the narrative. Out of the three of them, Fruity was the most annoying as the self-proclaimed "ladies' man" when in reality he's a sex pest whose skirt-chasing often gets everyone, including himself, into trouble. I also found Alex's friends Jen and Goat deeply unlikeable as well. Jen is a social outcast, like Alex, she's interested in "geeky" hobbies while being deeply insecure and copes through deprecating humor towards herself and others. Jen carries a lot of bile and is cruel towards anyone and everyone, especially other women and girls. From whorephobic, misogynistic, and ableist rants to openly suggesting to Alex to physically abuse his sister when she's being a brat, she's too much for me. She doesn't treat those she's friendliest towards with much kindness either to the point where I was left wondering why Alex was even friends with her as we see him be uncomfortable with her intolerances before finally standing up for himself in a later episode. And finally, there's Goat. He's a creep and skeeze. There's a bit where he shows off to Alex the underage porn featuring girls with dwarfism he bought at a con. Electric chair.

Serena is my favorite. The writers describe her to be the most level-headed from the cast and it rings true. Unfortunately, we don't see much of her and because Alex has a crush on Serena, we sparingly see her in a manner or in situations that are not clouded by his infatuation. In the short instances where we are given insight into Serena's thoughts, we learn how she's tired of being singled out for being goth and how it's affected how others perceive her, especially potential friends or love interests. While also flawed, her shortfalls are what I would expect in someone in their early twenties, and because she's so young I would expect her to grow out of it. She corrects herself and holds herself accountable for misjudging Alex as an irredeemable nerd because of his clothes and gives him the opportunity to get to know him more intimately until he blows it. Serena is open-minded and somewhat PC. While the others are mocking the snails served at a Malaysian restaurant while speaking in a fake, racist "Asian accent", Serena calls them out while pointing out that the cuisine is no weirder than eating the processed pig guts in hot dogs.

Downtown uses its animated format, often creating psychedelic flashy images of each character's fantasies and fears. The soundtrack is great and it's a neat detail how little playlists have been curated for each character and the different settings. What's also cool is that the show took a moment to comment on major social issues like gentrification and how it negatively impacts locals to accommodate transplants, an ongoing problem, especially in NYC. While it is unfortunate that MTV pulled the plug prematurely, the show is great for what it is. If you want to check it out for yourself, the entirety of season one is currently available on YouTube.

Thanks again for taking the time to visit my blog! 💘 Please don't hesitate to share your own thoughts about the show!! Plus, if you have a playlist of the OST, please send it my way. I hope everyone has a beautiful rest of their day ⭐