Source:    AlternaTV.com

By Anthony Letizia

How does someone continue to pay their bills after losing their job during tough economic times? The webseries medium has offered a variety of approaches that are as original and creative as the narratives themselves. In Saving Rent, for instance, advertising agent Mike decides to rent out rooms in his plush Los Angeles home in order to pull in some extra cash. In Odd Jobs, investment banker Nate Brooks scrutinizes the listings on Craigslist for offbeat sources of income. The former white collar employees of Bad Crooks, meanwhile, go to even more extremes when they turn to a life of crime. Although they do not find success, their capers are filled with enough comic twists and turns to keep even the most financially desperate amongst us entertained nonetheless.

“We’ve been unemployed for two years,” it is explained in the opening credits of each episode of Bad Crooks. “We could be criminals… we’re fast learners… how hard could it be?” The group of seven former office workers thus take on aliases and make numerous attempts to embrace the dark side of the law but inevitably find it more difficult than expected. Creator Gregory Jones portrays the Mastermind of the gang but the ensemble cast also includes Rob Gorden as Fingers, Tara Copeland as Eagle Eye, Eric Deskin as Crazy, Darin Guerrasio as USB and Brian Hotaling as Vroom. Separately they were mail room workers, HR assistants, data entry clerks and accountants but together they are simply “bad crooks.”

In the episode “Bank Robbery,” for instance, the gang attempts to steal money from an ATM machine but run into difficulties when USB has difficulty disabling the security camera and “hacker” Fingers fails to show up at the crime scene. “I just need cash, credit cards. And give me your information and I promise I’ll reimburse you once I get back on my feet,” Vroom tells a woman in the episode “Metro Mugging” before she sprays him with mace. The intended target goes on to explain that the would-be thieves should have worn masks and brought along a weapon before turning the tables and robbing them instead.

In “Spam Scam,” meanwhile, the gang takes turns sending out e-mails in which they claim to be Nigerian royalty in need of assistance, operators of celebrity porn websites, sellers of sexual organ enlargement medication and mothers of illegitimate children. Lastly, “Taxi Takedown” features an elaborate plot involving multiple teams of the crooks in an effort to rob a taxi cab. “This is not what we used to do,” the Mastermind tells the others. “This is not copying, this is not Power Point. This is crime. This is not Excel, this is crime. And we are going to excel at crime.” In the end, however, they fail in this endeavor just like all of the others.

Actor Gregory Jones crafted Bad Crooks as a vehicle to not only showcase his thespian abilities but his improv skills as well. Thus while the premise and initial dialogue for the episodes were crafted by Jones, a large segment of each installment was left for the improvisational talents of not only the creator but the other six actors as well. Bad Crooks likewise does not feature any sort of overarching narrative tying the episodes together. Although these two factors could easily transform Bad Crooks into a handful of short skits rather than a distinct show, in actuality the concept gels in much the same way that Fourplay in LA and Anti-Matter utilized unrelated episodes to form a coherent webseries.

Bad Crooks is not the first entry into the medium to utilize improvisation within its creation. The Bitter End, for instance, was crafted from the improv theater performances of Dan Beirne, Etan Muskat and Brent Skagford. Just as the Montreal-based production benefited from the already built-in chemistry between its actors, the same holds true for Bad Crooks. The seven actors who portray the wannabe criminals originally appeared together in the even more improvisational Corporate Knobs. That webseries features Gregory Jones and the others as male chauvinist corporate executives who utter detrimental gender-related remarks that even Michael Scott from the NBC sitcom The Office would find offensive.

“I don’t know why the sexual harassment seminar has to be led by someone so ugly,” the Jones character remarks in one episode, only to have a colleague reply, “Couldn’t we get someone harassable?”

The experience of performing together on Corporate Knobs obviously benefited the group of actors during the filming of Bad Crooks as the mixture of scripted and improv are seamlessly integrated into each installment. Filming the webseries through the lenses of security and web cameras enhances the overall authenticity and originality of the narrative, while the situations of the comedy likewise adds to the humor and enjoyment of the episodes.

A lot of good people have found themselves unemployed in recent years due to the economic downturn facing both the nation and the world. While renting out spare rooms in one’s home like Mike in Saving Rent or finding untraditional means of employment like Nate in Odd Jobs may indeed bring in extra cash, the lessons of Bad Crooks should not be forgotten—going from salesman to criminal may seem easy and fun but is actually a lot harder than it looks. The same also holds true for creating a webseries, despite the ease that Gregory Jones and his cohorts make it appear.

————Anthony Letizia

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Michael Millius, The Record-Review, March 26, 2010; pg. 17

“…Brian Hotaling’s Buddy, the dad, is so pervasive that it’s all the more obvious how brilliant his work is, gliding his character through such dramatic transitions as from Buddy the helpless drunk to Buddy of post-rehab, looking doofy in a che’f's hat, making dinner….”