BET’s Buppies A Sex and the City Heir?

Shows about people trying to break into Hollywood, as I’ve said many times before, is one of the web video industry’s most tired genres. Fortunately, the BET-distributed web series Buppies isn’t about trying to break into Hollywood — it’s about living in it, specifically living in “black Hollywood,” depicted by the media as one big long hip-hop video. Just because life looks like a party, though, doesn’t mean that Quinci (Tatyana Ali) and her friends aren’t dealing with real drama, including unplanned pregnancies, secret gayness, interracial relationships and broken hearts.

The series, which launched November 24, 2009 and earned Ali a Streamys nomination for Best Actress last month, tracks one day in the life of Quinci, the daughter of Hollywood royalty who’s just trying to recover after Derek (Brooklyn McLinn) broke off their engagement. The end of “the worst day of my life,” as teased in the first episode, comes at the beginning of episode 5, with the rest of the series devoted to dealing with the repercussions — as well as the tangled relationships of her friends.

Episode length varies pretty wildly, from two minutes to six minutes, but it’s pretty clear the reason for this is to make sure every episode ends on a fairly compelling cliffhanger. I knew prior to watching that the series was adapted from a script for a TV pilot, but it probably would have been obvious anyway. No episode could be considered standalone, instead smoothly continuing the narrative forward, which makes watching all the episodes at once a pretty compelling experience (though not very dissimilar from watching a full-length episode of television, which is always a bit of a let-down in the web series world).

Buppies is another show that could be considered an abuser of voiceover, though the writing invokes the better days of Sex and the City‘s narration, albeit without the conceit that we’re listening to a dating columnist read out her latest column. It also darts between fiction and documentary-style storytelling initially, making the comparison to early Sex and the City even more compelling — really it wouldn’t be too hard at all to consider Buppies the HBO series’ online African-American heir, given the way it concludes on a relatively positive “hos before bros” note.

With solid production values, interesting characters and some quality performances, especially from Ali, Buppies is definitely one I’d like to see a second season of — though what path future installments might take is currently unclear. A poll currently running on the Buppies website asks visitors “What is the future of Buppies?”, with the winning option currently being: “Loved it! BET.com held it down!” Does that mean BET’s considering a TV adaptation? Could be. Though saying that BET.com “held it down” seems kind of harsh. Being a web series didn’t hold Buppies back. Being a web series brought it to life.

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