The Web and 1, a blog that “reviews original made-for-the-web series,” just posted a ridiculously awesome review of Wage Slaves!

The piece is amazingly long and involved — I swear I don’t know the writer, Andy Asensio, but I am having many amorous feelings for him just now.

Here’s a taste:

Wage Slaves is pretty bleak, a show about a group of coffeehouse employees stuck in a dead-end situation and desperately hoping that their lives will turn around. Bleak, but also terrific — there’s nothing laborious about having to sit through this show. It’s really, really good.

Wage Slaves employs a perfectly executed blend of comedy and drama. You’ll empathize with all of these characters, while also getting to laugh both with and at them….It’s fun because the bleakness of these characters’ situations is coupled with some really strong humor.

How much did I like it? This much: the rare 10 out of 10.

Click here to read the whole thing.

The Web and 1 also mentions the show in a (far less favorable) review of another web-series, calling it “super-low-budget but rather excellent.” I might have that tattooed on my arm.

(P.S. to Lexus: you can give me the budget for Puppy Love, instead.)

* Update, 9.13.10: It looks like The Web and 1 ceased publication sometime in November of 2009. Wanting to preserve the full text of the review before the site disappears into the ether, I’m posting its entirety here:

september 7, 2009
Wage Slaves (season 1)

It’s Labor Day, so let’s do a holiday special. Of course, you could probably guess based on title alone that Wage Slaves doesn’t exactly honor labor the way the holiday is theoretically supposed to. Wage Slaves is pretty bleak, a show about a group of coffeehouse employees stuck in a dead-end situation and desperately hoping that their lives will turn around. Bleak, but also terrific – there’s nothing laborious about having to sit through this show. It’s really, really good.

Wage Slaves employs a perfectly executed blend of comedy and drama. You’ll empathize with all of these characters, while also getting to laugh both with and at them. But the most important reason that I’d recommend this show to people who care about the web video medium is the fact that it does such a good job of balancing out all of the characters and giving them all meaningful character development and plotlines. Given the fact that web series can have short episodes and short total running times, series producers often take that as an excuse to only develop a main character or two – focus on one character and have the supporting players just be there to further the main character’s story as opposed to getting meaningful arcs of their own. Wage Slaves, on the other hand, proves that you can indeed have a single central character (here, the character of Mitch) while also properly servicing every other character with multidimensional personalities and meaty storylines.

The whole premise of the show is that these characters are running in place, stuck in dead-end jobs and dead-end lives, but within that framework there’s still enough room for characters to grow over the course of the show. So even though most of them are going to end the series still stuck in the coffee shop, they all come to meaningful realizations about who they are and what they want.

Part of the reason that the show is able to have this impressive level of character development is that the episodes are way over the average length of a typical web series. There are only six episodes, but they average over fifteen minutes each. That may feel abnormal and challenging to some viewers, but the show is worth investing your time. The extended run time especially helps with the authenticity of scenes at the coffee shop, where much of these employees’ time is spent staring off into space or having mindless conversations to pass the time. Wage Slaves pulls off something sneakily impressive – it makes tedium fun to watch. Not easy.

It’s fun because the bleakness of these characters’ situations is coupled with some really strong humor. Service industry jobs are a goldmine of comedic potential, and the show succeeds with awkward and hilarious scenes of the employees interacting with customers. The character of Dirk, especially, offers great scene after great scene, as Dirk never once conceals his loathing of every customer who comes in to the shop. Dirk’s contempt for his fellow man – coworkers as well as customers – is tremendous as he constantly manages to outdo himself in how acerbic he can be. (And yet, as with all the characters, there remains a real person inside there, somebody whom you root for even as he curses out everyone in his path.)

Dirk and Mitch make a notable contrast as Dirk’s antagonism to everyone is balanced by Mitch’s sweet optimism. The difference is somewhat a function of their age – Mitch is in his mid-20s, Dirk approaching 40 – and the decision to have this range of ages is a smart decision by the show. If you were to conceptualize people working in go-nowhere service industry jobs, your mind probably first lead you to younger people, so having a diversity in ages among the characters does offer up unique perspectives on the situation. Although everyone here is stuck in the same position, they all have different personalities – Mitch’s innocence, Dirk’s sadism, Alicia’s cheerfulness, and Stacy’s self-destructiveness.

Although Dirk and Alicia have a suicide pact for if they get to age 40 and still haven’t reached their goals, they’re not actually the saddest story here. For that, I would have to go with the character of Stacy. The others have dreams, even if the light of those dreams is flickering away. Mitch is an aspiring writer, Dirk an aspiring musician, Alicia an aspiring actress. It’s only Stacy who’s stuck here without even a light at the end of the tunnel. She seems to have completely abandoned the idea of reaching any personal goals – she now lists her life’s dream as having somebody write a song about her, which wouldn’t even really be her doing – and has become resigned to the fact that she’s only going to make bad choices.

So the broad approach of the show is people who can’t catch a break and who have had to endure a loss of confidence, optimism and dignity. But as the end of the series arrives, not everybody is going to be dealt a completely losing hand. Somebody does get a win, because that’s real life – most people face mostly disappointment, but a small minority have to make it through the cracks and find a little success. So one character does get a chance to chase his/her dream – although there could certainly be some debate as to whether or not it’s a good thing or whether he/she really deserves it. And in any case, most of the cast ends up right where they were at the beginning, still running in place.

Wage Slaves is set in Portland, and that city’s liberal aesthetic certainly shines through. There are people walking around for Greenpeace, and unironic references to people eating hummus. Still, there is a universality to the plight of these characters – young-ish people across the country face similar circumstances. Everyone’s in the same boat. I’ll let Dirk explain, in his signature style: “What do you think, you’re the only one whose dreams don’t come true? Yeah, when I was twelve, I said, ‘Dear God, please, let me grow up to be Mayor McShit of Sucktown, USA!’ I don’t get what I want. You don’t get what you — nobody gets what they want.”

… Ah, such a festive attitude on this holiday.

Be warned going in that Wage Slaves is super, super-low budget. The “coffee shop,” the series’ primary set, is quite obviously just somebody’s kitchen. The low budget nature of the series may actually help, though, as it fits the tone of the show – that these characters are barely scraping by.

I should note that the low budget does factor into the series’ one obvious flaw, which is some wonky editing. Writer-director Chris A. Bolton does a terrific job with the series as a whole, but as an editor he clearly was backed up against the wall a few times – which I’m sure will just make him a better director going forward as the series films a second season. There are some oddly patched-together scenes of the same shot from only slightly different camera angles, the cuts are too fast and jumpy at times, characters wear the same wardrobe through an episode even if the episode takes place over two days, and there’s a scene in episode two in which the boom mic keeps repeatedly dropping into the shot.

No big deal. I think your reaction to minor imperfections like those is probably predicated on how you already feel about a show or a movie. If a movie sucks, then technical misfires and continuity issues just reinforce how much it sucks. But if you’re already won over by something, then little imperfections may just make it feel quaint and charming. I found Wage Slaves completely charming, and so those little imperfections just make it feel like a nice home-cooked meal, where the love that went into it is part of the appeal. How much did I like it? This much: the rare 10 out of 10.