DAILY VIEWED: Angrypunkbronxkid's "Dear Vloggity"

I took a break from TheRagingBeaverCo's epic library in order to focus on the gentleman I intended to start with: Angrypunkbronxkid. And again, the point of this little project of mine is to go through and watch all of my friends' videos. 100% of them. When I come across a video that is flat-out spectacular, I will blog about.

In a somewhat fortunate (for me) turn of events, Billo cleaned up his channel a short while ago, removing what I assume was a lion's share of his videos. Of the 38 remaining videos, the two main highlights are his internet show "Dear Vloggity" and "Critical Times". After plowing through his earlier work (NINJA BEAR! HE'S A NIN-JA BEAR!) I settled in to re-watch Billo's freshman internet show, "Dear Vloggity".

The show spans 11 episodes and it's abrupt ending may or may not be continued at some much later date. As with most all of Billo's work, conceptually it's really great. Execution, on the other hand, doesn't always do the concept justice. Again, considering that this is Billo's freshman effort, most of the niggling complaints are more than forgivable. The important thing, above all, is that "Dear Vloggity" is actually enjoyable.

The concept, as established in the title and the pilot episode, is that the character of Billo is telling the story of his life by way of vlogging on the internet. To make this work in all the ways that talking to a webcam doesn't, Billo setup the pilot episode a vlog, but then relegated the "vlogging" to narration as he proceeded to show us what he was talking about. Again, conceptually, this is a great idea and great way to execute an internet show.

When I was trying to decide on an episode to feature here, it became a quick toss-up between the pilot (an excellent presentation of the premise), episode 3 (wherein the premise is expertly applied to a fully-realized episode), episode 4 (Billo's first toe dip into the abstract, but with enough sentimentality to make it the most memorable episodes) and finally episode 5 (which is a delightful tribute to Talking Heads/WEBCAMS). Clearly, I settled on episode 3 as it really does represent "Dear Vloggity" at its very best.

Another thing I noticed (and I'm hoping to have Billo back on the Vlog-A-Log to talk to him more about all of this) is that after a handful of episodes, he gets a bit creatively fatigued and lets his otherwise strongly character-based episodes become far more abstract and "film schooly" (that's a technical term). I haven't decided if this is necessarily a bad thing or not.

Finally, I do have to say that in rewatching "Dear Vloggity", I have a much finer appreciation for the depth of the characters that Billo was developing. I think it's a shame if he can never return to this show because these first 11 episodes serve as an excellent introduction.

Watch the video above and then check out the whole series here.