Squaresville: A Promising Square Pegs for the 2010s?

A generation ago, in the fall of 1982, two misfit teenage girls trying to fit in appeared on American television sets in the critically-acclaimed Square Pegs. Though it lasted only one season, it was a forerunner of classic teen coming of age TV shows and movies of the 1980s, 90s and beyond.

Which brings us to Squaresville, a new webseries now launching from Matt Enlow. It appears to be a promising new entrant to that classic genre.

Check out the trailer:


Based on the trailer, this is the first web series in long while that seems promising and appealing to me. The show stars Mary Kate Wiles and Kylie Sparks as Zelda and Esther, two misfit teenage girls trapped in your typical American suburbia. They seem like the kind of girls I'd liked to have eaten lunch with in high school, hypothetically speaking (my lunch date card was wiiiide open, sad to say.)

In addition to the trailer, one "minisode" called Sassy Girl is also up. The release schedule for future episodes is dependent on the show's current fundraising drive seeking $12,000 to fund 12 episodes.

Certainly that's yet another hassle that teens of the 80s didn't have to deal with.

And by the way, my Square Pegs analogy is not just a tired journalistic hook for this piece. Well,not entirely. Back in 2008, when Square Pegs was released on DVD, a number of "minisodes" were posted on youtube, trying to condense down separate episode storylines into 5-7 minute lengths. That cutting and dicing of the original format didn't really work, which leaves Squaresville wide open to do the webseries format the right way.