MTV's I Just Want My Pants Back is the latest television show to try to capture hipster lightening in a bottle.
Based on a 2007 David J. Rosen novel of the same name, Pants, as its star Peter Vack refers to the awkwardly titled show, moves the action from Rosen's childhood home of New York's West Village to the more hipster-friendly Greenpoint area of Brooklyn.
"I set the novel in the West Village, which is sort of where I did my growing up and getting in trouble, and it felt like that wasn't really going to be an accurate place where young, broke people could be living anymore," Rosen, who produces the show and also wrote its pilot, explains during a press conference call. "We really felt like Brooklyn, specifically Greenpoint, was the right area for our cast."
"One of the grooviest things I think about shooting in Greenpoint is it's actually where kids who are moving to New York who want to get involved in sort of artistic or creative jobs like the characters on Pants do," Vack adds. "It's actually where they live. I grew up in New York and I hang out a lot in Brooklyn."
In the show's pilot, which was directed by The Bourne Identity's Doug Liman, we're introduced to platonic best friends Jason (Vack) and Tina (Kim Shaw) as well cutesy couple Eric (Jordan Carlos) and Stacey (Elisabeth Hower), who are a tight foursome despite living seemingly opposite lives – Eric and Stacey participate in organized Wii Tennis tournaments while Jason and Tina constantly search for meaningless sex. (The mouthful of a title comes from Jason's one-night stand, who steals his heart – and his trousers.)
"It's really a true ensemble cast," Rosen boasts. "Jason and Tina have a great platonic friendship and I'm really proud of how that really came together. I think it feels very honest. And then on the other side we have Stacey and Eric, who are a couple who are a little more serious, a little more grounded than the other two, who live together, navigating what it's like to be right out of college and be living with your serious other half, which is obviously a pretty big step."
Aside from the core members, the show is littered with strong minor characters to provide both comic relief and foils for the two couples.
"We have Sunkrish Bala, who plays Bobby of Bobby's Deli, who is like sort of the Greek chorus of the show and really weighs in and gets his nose into people's business and offers advice that he thinks is sexy but is sometimes sexist," Rosen explains. "And there's a lot of great recurring characters. There's Nick Kocher as Lench, who's sort of like the entrepreneur. In a way, he's like a nemesis character."
Rosen says the characters and the culture are inextricably tied to a specific time and place in this modern era of hip.
"People really love the specificity and you can think about what your role (would be)," he says. "To me, the show does a really good job of creating a very specific world and Brooklyn and Greenpoint in specific, in the few blocks where we really mapped out where our characters live; it's all really figured out. I think it'll be inclusionary once you sort of understand the role and how it works.
"I mean Seinfeld – I'm certainly not comparing us to that show – but they were a very, very specific New York show. And it seems like people were able to get into that."
Much like the recently cancelled HBO show How to Make It in America, I Just Want My Pants Back relies heavily on the viewer's ability to keep up with the zeitgeist-baiting dialogue – heavy with slang and pop culture references spoken at breakneck speed – and the indie soundtrack that anchors the show. It also helps if you have a partiality to people who are equally randy and emotional -- think a mix of Juno, Scott Pilgrim and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, each stripped of their respective Michael Cera character, with a focus on the witty best friends instead.
Despite the gimmicky premise, the creators insist the show won't just be about Jason's search for his pants. In the pilot alone, there are enough ideas to keep the characters occupied for weeks to come (Strider's job as an assistant to Chris Parnell's casting agency alone could fuel a whole CBS show).
Though a name change wouldn't hurt.
I Just Want My Pants Back airs on Comedy Network Friday at 10 p.m.
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