33A ADVENTURES – EPISODE 01: ‘THE “A” IS FOR ADVENTURE’

When Douglas (Douglas Pluylaar) notices some strange sounds and rumbles coming from around his house, he tries to alert his housemates that something odd may be going on. Unfortunately, his housemates can’t seem to be bothered, and it is only when the entire building begins to shake violently that anyone besides Douglas catches on (and at that point, Ralph (Ralph Lindsen) is playing his electric guitar in appropriately furious fashion, thus still not noticing anything strange). When the results of the shaking and sounds are revealed, the stage is set for… well, something.

See, this is the first episode of a webseries and it doesn’t really do much story-wise except show us the different characters, and have this building-quaking event happen to them. On the narrative and character development side of things, this is lean. It is intriguing however, and even though it is all setup, it does a good job of it. If nothing else, folks who watch episode one would be enticed to at least watch one more.

Much of that is because of the professional look and feel of it all. The camerawork is incredible, and the entire production has a slick feel to it that elevates it beyond normal webseries fare. If this did run on TV, for example, as the first act of the first episode of a TV series, it wouldn’t look or feel out of place.

If you do give 33A Adventures a look, remember to turn on the subtitles (I missed the memo and had to stop, “rewind” and turn ’em on). The dialogue is sparse in this one, sure, and the plot more than develops without it, but you’ll probably want to know what is being said anyway. Still, in this episode, it probably works even if you don’t know what they’re saying.

Overall, I’m on board to check out the next episode in the series. The eight-plus minutes of this one do seem a bit long in hindsight, once you see how the episode wraps up, but it doesn’t feel that way while watching and thus more of a criticism after-the-fact. We’ll have to see what comes next, and as of this writing that second episode isn’t available yet, but hopefully it won’t be too far off (there is a previous episode, a Christmas special, that is worth a look if you like what you see in this one, however). Then again, considering the quality of this production, I wouldn’t be surprised if episodes take some time to turn out.

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