India-West
March 22, 2002
A Web Sitcom Aimed At the Cubicle Crowd

By Lisa Tsering
India-West Staff Reporter

Roommates – can’t live with ‘em, can’t pay rent without ‘em.
Performance artist Ravi Jain, 31, draws on his real-life adventures sharing a house near Boston with chums Sarah and Brian for an ambitious “web-friendly” sitcom called Three Abreast (www.three-abreast.com).
Although the show itself isn’t much more than a string of gags – a Seinfeld ripoff punctuated with funky music and an honest-to-god laugh-track – it’s earning Jain some attention in the local press for his use of multimedia in putting together the whole thing together.
Each eight-minute episode is accompanied by something he calls the “Comedy Extender,” a trademarked feature that incorporates storyboard sketches, info on the cast and crew, links to other sites and “pop-up” miscellany designed to enrich the viewing experience. The films’ short running time is designed with the cubicle dweller in mind.
Three Abreast’s first episode, “The Prize-Winning Tomato,” finds Ravi on moving day, sharing a house on 65 McKinley Ave. While making a sandwich in the kitchen, he spies a ripe tomato belonging to roommate Sarah and gobbles it up, but learns later that it was a very precious prize tomato that she had planned for a special recipe. High jinks ensue as he tries to sneak into the corner store and acquire another tomato.
It’s the kind of slim story line that could be charming if the acting and characterization were up to par, but as it is those eight minutes drag on and on. The climactic scene, a parody of the film Platoon in which Ravi commandeers a tomato in slow-motion to the tune of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, is in fact a nearly perfect copy of a scene in a Seinfeld episode titled, “The Fatigues.”
The ideas for future episodes look good on paper – a “sepia toned” flashback to the house as it might have been in 1873; Sarah’s boss comes to dinner in an episode called “Bigger Night”; and (in another Seinfeld-esque turn) the trio gets trapped in the labyrinthine basement of their building. New episodes will be posted every two weeks, and time will tell if the show lives up to its hype. He calls it a labor of love, and says he isn’t in it for the money.
Ravi Jain estimates that he spends from 15 to 50 hours per week putting the shows together, moonlighting from his day job as a designer (www.ravi.nu) and his hobby as a “Transportation Pioneer”.
As a Transportation Pioneer, Jain is obsessed with being the very first person to ride any new form of transit – be it the 2000 maiden run of the Amtrak Acela Express (dressed in a silvery costume), or a new bridge in Boston or Denmark.
He’s demonstrated a skill for getting folks to go along with his ideas, and getting an audience along the way. Who knows what he’ll think of next?

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