I hate TV, but 'The BC' isn't on TV and I'm hooked

I don't really watch that much TV. Usually just in the afternoons for PTI and then some Seinfeld reruns. With the exception of that, and the occasional trip to Big Kev's for some Lost, TV isn't a big thing for me.

However, "The BC" isn't on TV, it's on the web and I'm hooked. The BC is a spoof of Fox's "The OC" that was created by a group of Boston College students. They currently have four episodes available and I've watched all four over the past two days. That adds up to about four hours of what would be TV for me.

The first episode was a bit shoddy in the quality, but they realized that and warned viewers going in because it was their first shot a video production. But by the second episode they had the quality up and by the third and fourth episodes they were making it look pretty easy considering they are first timers.

The great thing about The BC is that they call out a lot of the cheesy things you notice about The OC. The brooding and the coincidental overhearing of conversations and many other things that we all think are so cheesy because it's about a far from real life as you can get. They also have a Jesuit priest that keeps up with the kids by going to most of the parties and playing some serious HALO. He also uses "peace out" a lot. He's keeping up with the kids. Word.

Well, as you can see The BC takes the cheese and bakes it to a golden brown with over the top music and one liners that have nothing to do with anything going on in the show. But what legitimizes The BC is that these guys also have straight up story lines woven into the occasional Jack Baur, booze and HALO references. There is also usually a party in every episode at the modular student housing at BC. Commonly known as the Mods. And sometimes when people are meeting in secret, if anyone needs the information they are talking about for evil, there are some strategically place ninjas to strategically overhear the conversation.

They also did a lot of stuff with the BC basketball team which is pretty funny. One of the characters is a 5-10 white boy that in the show is going to go pro because of his mad skillz. So every time he enters the scene it's usually through a door in slow motion, rap music starts up and he and his entourage are on their cell phones. And before the scene can go any further he must hold up his cell phone and flip it shut as if to announce everyone that he will now entertain dialogue.

The best thing about this whole thing is that not only is it funny, but the guys that have created it are actually getting a ton of press. They have something like 300,000 viewers of the show and that is a big deal in more ways than one. It's great because that means that people like it, but what's more is that these 300,000 people are downloading files that push 360 megabytes in some cases. It took me all day to get the first 3 episodes that were broken up into sometimes 50 meg bite-sized chunks, but episode 4 was 196 megs as a Quicktime movie and 360 megs as an iPod movie. I would hate to see their web hosting bill.

But what that means is that not only do people like it, but they'll go through the trouble of downloading giant files to watch it.

These guys are getting a ton of press, you can see on the website, and they are actually getting calls from Hollywood to do something with it or come up with new stuff. Movie deals and stuff like that from a goof ball show shot on a digital video camera and cut together with software that comes free on every Macintosh computer Apple sells.

So if they can keep their hands and feet inside the car at all times they could parlay this into something really lucrative and fun. Of course they could get sued too for using all of the copyrighted music. But I the dudes at Fox love it and it really promotes The OC some too with some references and an occasional T-shirt.

All I gotta say is if you have the internet connection fast enough to get the files, download all of the episodes and get hooked like I did. And the best part is that I think all of the episodes are actually 60 minutes long and not 42 like all 60 minute shows on TV.