By CHLOE ALEXANDER – Variety Editor
The Most Popular Girls in School gained Internet notoriety via Tumblr in January, gaining almost 800,000 views in a matter of days.
A YouTube series created by Mark Cope and Carlo Moss and produced by Lily Vonnegut, TMPGIS is a stop motion series that revolves around the lives of five of the most popular girls in school in Overland Park, Kansas, played by a rotating lineup of Barbie dolls.
With all else put aside, TMPGIS has all of the quintessential drama of a stereotypical teen movie, i.e. the race for prom queen and a war between rival cliques. However, what sets it apart from the rest of the tired stereotypes of modern cinema is the sheer profanity and ridiculousness that seems to spew from each of the character’s mouths.
In short, TMPGIS is what everyone wishes teen movie characters would say. It is the combination of Mean Girls and South Park – so insanely quotable and distinctly inappropriate.
The pilot episode, which aired in Oct. 2011, opens with two Barbie dolls clad in cheerleader’s uniforms.
“Well, then I was all like, ‘no,’ then you were like, ‘you are,’ and then he was all like, ‘no, but then you are,” and then I was like, ‘I kind of am.’ So long story short, he’s kind of my boyfriend right now,” the first, Mackinsey Zales, rambles.
“I am so pretty,” the second, Trisha Capenetti, replies.
The dialogue in the entire series is priceless and makes one wonder, ‘How do these people not have a show on Comedy Central?”
According to The Making of The Most Popular Girls in School, the most beloved dialogue was not originally in the script, but improvised by a cast of voice actors.
These actors create lines so profane, absurd and sometimes disgusting that one cannot help but sometimes cry out in uncontrollable laughter, often in an empty room or crowded coffee shop.
However, it is not merely the lines themselves that make the dialogue so incredibly hilarious. Many of the female characters are so obviously voiced by males that the combination of cracking, uncharacteristically low voices and vulgar one-liners coming from the mouths of the pretty and polished Barbie Dolls reaches a level of comedy that could really only be found on the internet.
The pilot is followed by 12 subsequent episodes in season one, all with generally the same cast of characters and a continuous plot. Surprisingly, each of the characters has a distinct personality and is fairly well developed, a feat for an amateur web series.
Mark Cope’s skill as a creator of stop motion is remarkable, as it is almost undetectable that the videos themselves are made of thousands of individual snapshots. The many head jerks and hands placed on hips are smooth and natural, or at least, as smooth and natural as such can be on a plastic doll.
As its popularity and notoriety grows, there is already an endless number of internet memes and references throughout social networking sites. However, at this rate of growth, its relative internet obscurity will soon be erased. TMPGIS is bound to be picked up by a television network sometime in the near future and one can only hope that its debut on the silver screen will not take away from the filthy quirkiness that makes it such a novelty.
