Bwog is in slow motion this week due to Thanksgiving.
It's been a long time since Bwog last checked in with the kids of Exclusion Suite, this year's answer to the campy and wonderful Gates. Episode two was released mid-May, but Bwog, in our efforts to escape the offensively unfriendly heat, just got around to watching it.

Exclusion Suite episode two begins with an acoustic version of Phantom Planet's "California," a sly nod towards a certain other teen melodrama. (Those who closely follow ES will note that this is the show's second allusion to The OC, following last episode's painful "Welcome to the EC, bitch!") The plotlines for the episode are established within the first five minutes: Simon (Michael Galante), the one with the guitar and the chords to Phantom Planet overhears Brooke (Alice Hu) singing and asks her to join his band. Meanwhile, in 212, Natalie (S. Alex Kudroff) and Greg (Joe Cummings) have a realistically awkward and loud screaming match ("I lied when I said I liked that thing you did with your tongue!") about their previous liason. Natalie eventually storms off to Hamdel.

Brooke and Simon invite the gang to their gig at ADP. ES's attempt at capturing the incoherency and casualness of party/bar banter has historically been the show's weak point, and the concert scene is no exception. Luckily, the plot takes a genuinely welcome and unexpected turn as Rob (PJ Berg) and the cute bartender come to the conclusion that they were in the same Frontiers class and begin to flirt. "I hit my limit with calculus," the bartender tells Rob. But unlike most of the scene's dialogue, there's self-awareness during the delivery of the dorky and adorable pun, and instead of cringing at the script's self-seriousness, it becomes one of the truest moments in the show's two episode run.

The first off-putting parts of "Exclusion Suite," the new campus soap opera, are the silences. The opening dialogue aspires to that cute, pause-filled pace that was charmingly offbeat before Aaron Sorkin pounded it into every episode of every show he ever wrote. But the tentative, plucky background music falls out of rhythm with the lines — oh, and the lines are terrible.

This, for example, is the reunion of Natalie (Alex Kudroff) and Brooke (Alice Hu), roommates and best friends, on move-in day:

Natalie: Oh my god! I missed you!

Brooke: It seems like you were doing all right without me. Did you have a drink for me last night?

Natalie: Um, more than one.

Brooke: Aw, you're the best friend a girl could want.


The soap opera scene (and all of the many glories associated with it — remember The Gates?) has made a triumphant return to Columbia with the brand-spanking new release of The Exclusion Suite, touted by its creator as "Columbia's newest dramatic web-TV series." From the looks of it, The Exclusion Suite is off to a better start than its older sibling, The Gates, (the brainchild of Davide Barillari, CC'09) which failed to follow up its opening episode with a heartily promised sequel.


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