Geekscape Review: Syfy’s “Fangasm”
The concept for SyFy’s newest reality series, Fangasm, is simple: Follow seven interns as they spend a summer working in Stan Lee’s ComiKaze Expo offices. If the title, Stan Lee’s involvement or the word ComiKaze didn’t clue you in, the seven interns are definitely members of the comic book fandom.
And they truly are. We quickly meet our interns—Andrew Divall, Sal Fringo, Kristin Hackett, Molly McIsaac, Paul Perkins, Mike Reed and Dani Snow as they arrive at the ComiKaze headquarters in Los Angeles after a very brief “geek background check”. The show is formatted like your typical reality show, with ‘confessional’ one-on-ones; backstory tidbits; challenges (handed out by Geekscape friend Regina Carpinelli, co-founder and CEO of Comikaze); and house drama.
The cast is cute in their fandom, but, while they are highly representative of the fan culture, they are not, necessarily, fully representative of the geek culture (where’s the board gaming?). They belong on the Venn diagram, sure, but they are not the totality, as evidenced by an early division among Marvel VS DC lines.
Yes, That Just Happened
And maybe this challenge of trying to encompass everything that makes us geeks is inherent in the “identity crisis” that the show runs into in some segments. At times, it’s incredibly sincere, like when a cast member expresses his dream of meeting Star Trek’s George Takei (and just wait until the heartfelt ending). At its worst (and we did like the the show), Fangasm struggles to fit the cast into a story-driven reality format, as evidenced when the guys are tasked with lighting a gas grill. Are we being asked to relate to a show that makes fun of us?
Ultimately, does the production know what to do with its seven interns? We spent most of our time wondering: is this a celebration of the geek? Or a one-hour long practical joke put together by the mean girls to show during the pep rally? Are we supposed to be contemptuous of them? Because it surely feels like that’s the show’s theme. For a culture that prides itself in being all inclusive, Fangasm spent a lot of time labeling its cast mates as “other”. Sorry, that we’re not The Jersey Shore.
A prime example is the girls-of-comics segment (put on during the National Geek Day celebration). It was mind-blowingly misogynistic, sexist, exploitive and insulting. The full thirty-seconds spent on “Supergirl” shaking her bikini-clad behind at the camera—why? What did that prove? If a cast member had been tasked with doing something like this, we could have explored our own geek crisis, to be accepted, but on our own terms. But as onlookers, the cast was split along gender lines, with the boys asking for dollar bills and the girls looking horrified. The entire segment seemed there as some sort of ‘look, geeks can be hot, especially when they dress/dance like strippers!’ and McIsaac’s follow up concern to the dancing felt swept under the rug in the name of just having fun. Again, do we want our culture to be accepted by all just so they can re-appropriate it into something it was never intended to be? Are the cast members only present so they can be poked with sticks? Fangasm has to decide.
But…ComiKaze! Stan Lee! George Takei!
In the end, the positives definitely outweigh the “concerns”, and the show does have a lot of fun moments (and the castmembers are all pretty likable, even “Macho Geek” Sal, who we get to know the least and is seen doing push ups twice during the show (is he our ‘Situation’?). And the internship at Comikaze definitely looks fun, a huge expo where all things geek, nerd and comic book are celebrated. And, again, there were many truly sweet moments in the show in which you really root for the cast members, especially in the last few minutes, when George Takei makes a special appearance.
The casts’ genuine appreciation for what they are doing—working with Stan Lee!—and their support of each other speaks to all the best things about the geekdom. The producers have done a great job of picking our representatives. The seven interns deserve every opportunity that this show will give them; and hopefully the show can appreciate them as much as they seem to appreciate each other.
Fangasm is produced by the creators of Jersey Shore, 495 Productions, with Executive Producers SallyAnn Salsano and Joel Zimmer. It premieres on the SyFy channel on Tuesday, September 24th at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
Rating: 3/5
