New NBC series 'quarterlife' premieres Tuesday

I’ve been meaning to write about quarterlife on NBC for awhile now, but suddenly the premiere is tomorrow (Tuesday, February 26) and I realized I still hadn’t done it yet.

By the way, I’m not having problems with my caps key, the show is basically named all in lowercase, so I am sticking to it.

quarterlife is an internet series from the creative minds of Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the team behind My So-Called Life, thirtysomething, Legends of the Fall, and Blood Diamond.

(look at thirtysomething, another lowercase named show!)

It premiered on MySpace and quarterlife.com back in November of 2007 and was broken down into 36 eight minute episodes, with two being released every week.

They received such high praise that they’re now going to be shown as a brand new series on NBC. Pretty sweet. From their website:

Known for their incisive portrayals of relationships and experience during life’s key passages, quarterlife takes on the crucial years between 20 and 30, when so many of life’s important decisions are made. quarterlife tells the ongoing stories of six creative people in their twenties. As with Herskovitz and Zwick’s earlier series, at the center of quarterlife is a commitment to realism, and the recognition of universal human themes through the truthful depiction of the way young people speak, work, think, love, argue, and just have fun.

One of the main things that sort of hooked me on this thing is that one of the characters, Dylan (played by Bitsie Tulloch who has appeared on Lost and The West Wing and is pictured right), is an avid blogger about her personal life and sometimes “spills the close secrets of her friends” for the world to see.

Aside from the blogger on Gossip Girl (whom we never see), I don’t think there is a show out there that has a character who blogs, so that was kind of intriguing to me.

Here is the cast list and basic descriptions of each character on quarterlife.

The cast stars Bitsie Tulloch as Dylan (“Lonelygirl15,� “LOST,� “West Wing�), Maite Schwartz as Lisa (“Medium,� “Dexter,� “House of Grimm�), Scott Michael Foster as Jed (“Greek,� “The Horrible Flowers�), David Walton as Danny (“Heist,� “Cracking Up�), Michelle Lombardo as Debra (“Click,� “Entourage,� “October Road�), Kevin Christy as Andy (“Love Don’t Cost a Thing�), and Barret Swatek as Brittany (“Seventh Heaven,� “40-Year-Old Virgin�).

Starting with Dylan (Tulloch), a young woman whose overly truthful video blog (on quarterlife.com of course) spills the closest secrets of her friends, the show’s characters – filmmakers Danny (Walton) and Jed (Foster), actress-bartender Lisa (Schwartz), geek-extraordinaire Andy (Christy), and still-tied-to-her-parents Debra (Lombardo) – chart the sometimes excruciating, sometimes comic, often emotional experiences that comprise coming of age in the 21st Century.

You can actually watch the first 32 mini-episodes online right now, but I’m planning on just waiting for them to come on television. I still haven’t gotten hooked on watching too many things online because of the lower quality and the fact that I am sitting at my dining room table writing. It’s just not as comfortable.

The other thing you can do is join their community on the quarterlife.com website, and submit your own video blogs and all kinds of stuff. It’s not just a television show, it’s an experiment in community.

Anyways, I’ll be checking it on Tuesday night. It comes on at 10/9c.