LonelyGirl15 The Resistance Review

I can't say that I was a fan of Lonelygirl15 since the beginning. I only got into after I saw a few news stories about how it was fake, and saw the hilarious recap of the show on WhatTheBuckShow.

Side note: If you have yet to see What The Buck yet, you should do so he his hilarious.


LonelyGirl15 was the first big web series. It brilliantly utilized the short length and accessibility of youtube to tell a story. From the beginning it was never a very well acted show, the scripts were far from perfect, and the production values were very low. All the same the show had this charm that just kept you watching.

The had a lot of fun conspiracy theories mixed into the story. New characters were brought in by commenting on videos. You never quite knew who was on Bree's side or not. There were puzzles to be solved and shadowy figures lurking in the background, all purposefully done so the audience could really feel like they were participating. It was almost like a more grown up version of Blues Clues, and it was a lot of fun. In fact the problem solving aspect is a big part of the shows addictive quality, everyone wanted to be the first to post the answer to a riddle on the forums.

After the big(and rather disappointing) finale of the first season, a lot of people were left wondering what direction the show would be going in. The second season still managed to keep things interesting as it followed Jonas's long lost trait positive "sister" Emma.

The third season is where things began to fall apart. Sure there were still puzzles to be solved and conspiracies to unravel, but the characters were becoming less and less engaging. Instead of series three being about guarding a trait positive girl, it was about a death threat issued to the meddling kids which kept interfering with the Hymn of One. It just wasn't as believable. It is established that The Hymn of One is a powerful cult with ties in every branch of the government. This explains why the kids never went to the cops for help. In the first and second season it is still believable that a group so powerful is unable to get the trait positive girls because the girls must not be harmed in any way until the ceremony. In season three it's pretty unbelievable that a group so powerful couldn't simply kill them. I understand that LG15 is a low budget production, but whenever the Hymn of One attempt to do kill the group they did so in lame drive by shootings that would have made any untrained street thug ashamed. I mean the watchers are supposed to be highly trained, there was a significant bounty put on their heads couldn't they have at least hired someone capable of killing these kids.

All the same I hung on and kept watching. I kept hoping that the series would start moving at a fun and exciting pace again, but it simply did not. LG15TheResistance is really where I had to draw the line and stop watching. It was like the fun alternate reality game had suddenly shifted into a bunch of angsty teens arguing. At first the survailance video style HymnOfNone videos were kind of interesting, but they really didn't lead anywhere. We saw a girl kept in captivity, drained of her blood on a routine basis, and otherwise miserable. Well we also know this girl escaped, in a highly implausible way. Had they changed the story a bit and made things about rescuing this girl, it might have been more interesting. Now we are just stuck with Maggie an annoying character who has a very flat and kind of annoying personality. I know I know, if you were locked up and drained of your blood every day you probably wouldn't be the nicest person on the block. There is a way to properly act in the role of a character who is very damaged and in many ways emotionally dead, the actress who plays Maggie isn't anywhere close to accomplishing that type of performance.

This season it's been more of a chore to watch the series then anything. Today when I went to my youtube page I saw new things from the HymnOfNone and I just did not want to watch them. So far there haven't been too many puzzles and there hasn't been much actual excitement. For the most part it's just four people standing around bitching about how dangerous things are, and getting jealous of one anthers romantic relationships. I mean maybe things can still turn around, but honestly when you get to a point that a show becomes painful to watch there is little hope it can return to it's previous glory.

I guess this is me throwing in the towel. So long LonelyGirl15 it was fun while it lasted, but I'm done with you.