Sing It!

We spot good series right away, this one is brilliant. We were really surprised about its rating, does not make any sense at all. Strong 7.5 and give it a try folks.

I watched the free episode when it came out. Or at least I tried to. Couldn't bear to watch more than 5 minutes before realizing that YouTube made a huge mistake in banking on them to be one of their launch titles for their paid service. They need to remember that they got on YouTube in the first place because they failed miserably at actually writing. They found their niche on YouTube by not having to write, but not they are screwing that up by alienating their fans by forcing ads for this garbage down their throats before every video.

And seriously...an American Idol spoof in 2016? Oooh! So timely! That'll show 'em! I half expected to hear characters greet each other with "Wassssuppp!" because the last time an American Idol parody might have been appropriate, those beer commercials were still going on. And then there is the cast. Full of washed up has-beens. People who haven't worked in years. And I hope Debbie Ryan realizes the irony of her appearing on a show that is mocking bad singers. There is a reason why she hasn't done anything since her little Disney show. The only thing worse than her singing voice is her speaking voice.

Can't wait for YouTube to pull the plug on this. Or for the Fine Bros. to take a look at their upload history and see that EVERY one of their scripted videos gets like a quarter of the views of their React ones. Maybe then they will realize that writing is not there thing.

The best credit I can give this show is that it's probably the most competent and professional of the Youtube Red lineup so far. That's not saying much, though.

The basic premise of this show is that it's a behind the scenes comedy set around a fictional singing competition. This is immediately reminiscent of the show UnReal, which has a similar premise of following a Producer for a Bachelor-style reality show. However, UnReal had some fantastic character design, and some legitimate and palpable drama. The same cannot be said for Sing It! Sing It! is full of deliberately unlikable characters. You are meant to sympathize with the main character who was screwed out of a job she thought was guaranteed to her, but it falls flat when nobody else is sympathetic to her position. That tired cliché of complaining to someone, and the person deliberately misinterprets what is said to make it a compliment.

While I didn't like it that much, at least the Fine Bros. other show MyMusic had interesting characters that had direct commentary on stereotypes associated with fans of different genres of music. That's pretty clever. So far, there isn't as much of that sort of cleverness in here, even though the production design is much better.