I really love LA. As a southern California native I can say that the absolute best thing about this town is the diversity and how so much of it is tied together by a common bond of creativity and the arts.
For the creators of “My Half Brother” – a group of New Yorkers who reconnected after moves to LA – their show feels very much like a nod to their life defining moments. While many would expect those moments to be profound, it is their lack of profundity that feels so much more honest, personal and comical. This is not a series defined by boyfriends, girlfriends, big auditions, best friends or broken hearts – this show is defined by the dream of YouTube fame, a love of old school hip hop and a fascination with horchata.
For the uninitiated, horchata (pronounced Oar CHAH tuh) is a sweet rice, milk drink popular in the south west and Mexico and ultimately the center of just about every episode of ‘Half Brother.’
Horchata is nearly as much of a character in ‘Half Brother’ as main character Rachael and Lee. What is really cool about horchata though is that it exists as a representative of the newness and fascination with the quirks of a new place. It’d be easy to move to LA and make a series of jokes about the traffic (it’s been done) but for some reason I find the singling out of horchata as the defining characteristic strangely amusing.
The show was filmed by a neighbor of series creator Kat Burke, Gianfilippo De Rossi, with a little help from lead actor Beau Van Donkelaar. This is another great thing about LA. You can pretty much just start knocking on people’s doors to find all the people you need for your project. Need a DP? He’s 3 doors down. Need an actress? You’re probably rooming with one. ‘Half Brother’ is very much a group of friends getting together to make something.
So what is ‘Half Brother?’ It’s the story of two incompatible half siblings, connected only by a single deceased father and a love of old school hip hop. It’s a comedy that makes you wonder why such a limited bond could end up seemingly so unbreakable.
As a web comedy it has it’s ups and downs. There were some big laughs but also a few moments where I had to ask myself just what exactly I was watching – though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. This is pretty common for the web shows we review. I feel that comedies are the most likely to benefit from workshopping and from receiving lots and lots of feedback. For ‘Half Brother’ I think there are a few jokes that aren’t going to work for most audience members and which could have been worked out with enough honest feedback.
There are also some technical troubles with sound that pop up in a few places throughout the series. Of course, with the impending season two in pre-production there is a corresponding Indiegogo campaign looking to raise about $5000 to help tackle those pesky sound troubles and other mild annoyances that come with a literal no budget production.
There are also some really good classic hip hop tracks in the show, in fact I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that’s why the show can be found on Vimeo rather than YouTube, or more simply you can find the show at http://halfbro.com.