TheU: The Ivy League Meets After School Television
You know those useless but entertaining online translation programs? We’re starting to think the WB is like one of those, except for life. With the right combination of jump cuts, reverse video, Jimmy Eat World, and splashy cut-out freeze frames, they could make a Senate confirmation hearing look like an episode of Room Raiders.
So you can guess what happens when the WB decides to start producing hosting college tour videos. Behold theU, the cinematic lovechild that would emerge if Mischa Barton had relations with a Princeton Review handbook. TheU’s founder, 25-year-old Columbia pseudo-alum Doug Imbruce, says he got the got the idea while watching “MTV Cribs.” It shows. Here’s theU’s narrator on Brown University: “Brown is like the token cool mom of the Ivy Leagues.” Or her thoughts on the World’s Greatest University: “Harvard won’t reveal its selection criteria, but it’s clear that talent, ambition, and genius are key.” They even have the lovable Penn frat boy, caught on camera in his natural habitat: “I don’t remember Spring Fling. I’ve been told I had a really good time. I had relations with a tree. It might have been an elm, might have been a cedar. I don’t really know.”
There are some inspired moments, like when a narrator points out that “Princeton definitely isn’t a crazy hookup scene” as we watch boys and girls juggling pins on a lawn. We know TheU means well. Of course, it also means to do well, by making shit-tons of money off terrified, TV-happy high-schoolers for whom an endorsement from “Everwood”s Chris Pratt seals Brown as their first choice.
Brown tour:
Harvard tour:
Penn tour:
