How Long to Watch “Quarterlife”?

If nothing else, quarterlife represented an historical watershed between over-the-air television and the Internet: for the first time, a live-action network TV program was fashioned from an entertainment series originally produced for on-line consumption. Described as a "new internet series and social network", quarterlife debuted November 11, 2007 on MySpaceTV.com. Produced by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the same people responsible for the 1990s network hit thirtysomething (note the lower-case titles in both instances), the original Internet version--which had initially been shopped to ABC--consisted of 36 eight-minute serialized vignettes. These were offered in the form of a blog created by "twentysomething" magazine employee Dylan (Bitsie Tulloch, who also served as narrator). Allegedly, none of Dylan's friends or coworkers were aware that she was maintaining an on-line chronicle of their lives and adventures, allowing her to embellish and editorialize to her heart's content. Among those with whom Dylan networked were would-be filmmaker Danny (David Walton and his business partner Jed (Scott Michael Foster, the latter preferring to be identified by his e-mail moniker "jebberland"; Danny's girlfriend Debra (Michael Lombardo), for whom Jed harbored a hopeless yearning; and Lise (Maite Schwartz), a wannabe actress who worked as a bartender and canoodled with practically every guy she met. By MySpace.com standards, quarterlife was a slick and polished effort; less so was the 30-minute NBC network series of the same name, which was comprised of highlights from the on-line version and as such did not quite come up to the high production values of the network's other offerings. The NBC edition of quarterlife premiered February 26, 2008.