Making Waves, Generating Buzz: It’s Water and Power

Two detectives walk the mean streets, where gratuitous appliance usage and loose spigots are a cold, hard fact of life.  Representin’ for Water, we have old-timer Dan (Dan Harmon), a jaded bigot who wants to throw the book at everyone — especially for crimes committed during peak usage. His desiccated opinion of humanity hints at a drought of the soul. Then there’s the rookie, Ryan (Ryan Ridley), whose beat is Power. Ryan is the wide-eyed idealist who believes even hardened wastrels can be reformed. But will Dan’s cynicism, combined with an endless parade of unrepentant consumers, lead this rookie to follow in his partner’s footsteps? Are dimmed hopes and moral outage inevitable?

Water and Power is a nearly pitch-perfect crime drama parody, from the first moments of the grandiose Law & Order-styled opening credits, to the clichéd moral-of-the-story laden speech that is trot out by episode’s end. Surprisingly, the crime drama genre’s stock characters and rote dialogue, when juxtaposed against the mundane and even surreal backdrop of everyday “crimes” involving, say, small appliances or fecally-enhanced drinking water, make for some soundly amusing moments.  There’s even an Important Cases Bureau to be called upon when all other avenues — and surge protectors — fail.  

Water and Power is brought to monitors and handhelds everywhere by the well-ensconced Channel 101, where pop culture parody reigns supreme. A monthly short film festival of sorts, Channel 101 uses a live audience’s votes to determine which mock TV show pilots to feature on its web site — a selection process that has kept its content on the cutting edge of comedy since 2002. The site’s alumni include Jack Black and SNL’s Andy Samberg (who makes a cameo in Water and Power), though a 2007 stab at mainstream programming — the VH1 series Acceptable TV — failed to pay off, proving that even the funniest of shows cannot transcend the dreaded oldteevee twin curse of a sickly time slot and virtually no promotion from the network. But Channel 101 itself is still going strong — since early 2007 through January 2008, the channel has seen an increase in high-level corporate sponsorships from the likes of Windex, Gatorade and Colgate . 

Episodes of Water and Power have garnered anywhere between 2,500 and 6,000 downloads apiece on the Channel 101 site.  These may be somewhat low comparable to the standard numbers for your typical YouTube phenom, and even for a typical Channel 101 champ like Kicked in the Nuts or Yacht Rock.  But it is a series with an intriguingly off-the-beaten path quality — a particularly remarkable feat for well-worn genre satire — and great dry humor and crackling performances. If Water and Power can continue to survive the drunken audience that determines its fate at the live screenings, perhaps it might see a surge in viewership.