And So, the Circle of Quarterlife Is Complete
Source: agentbedhead.com

What a long, strange trip it’s been. Quarterlife began its quarter-existence four years ago as “1/4life,” a pilot Marshal Heskovitz and Ed Zwick created for ABC. Herskovitz and Zwick were the creative team behind shows like Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life, but their new project failed to generate much buzz. So the two men came up with a bold, new approach: a series that would play exclusively on the internet, with its own MySpace social network and various other bells and whistles. The internet incarnation debuted with much hooplah, and then—well, didn’t generate much buzz. Total internet viewership for each episode was in the 150,000 range, an audience almost as minuscule as the readership of this blog. Then the writers’ strike came along. With most shows in reruns or on hiatus, NBC picked up Quarterlife and returned it to the schedule last night. Herskovitz sounded absolutely thrilled:
I would say this has to be the most exciting moment in my career in many, many years…. There’s just an electricity that everyone feels about what we’re doing. I feel like we’ve just broken out of some mold into a new universe here.
Of course, that was before he or anyone else had seen the ratings. Now it looks like the show will be cancelled after a single airing, the same fate the pilot met back in 2004. The website is still up, and you can watch the complete run of Quarterlife there. It’s not a bad series, really. But apparently it just can’t hold its own against Primetime: What Would You Do? and reruns of The King of Queens.



















