Talk about revenge of the nerds: Talented actress Felicia Day has taken her own love of online gaming ("eight, nine hours a day," she confesses in the cast interviews of this DVD) and turned it into one of the Internet's most compulsively watchable, sympathetic web-based series ever. The Guild will instantly charm online gamers and fans of role-playing experiences like World of Warcraft, but the characters are so winning, the writing so sympathetic, that The Guild will win over non-gamers too.Day sparkles as Codex, an addicted gamer whose online posse, or "guild," includes about nine regular members whose avatars support and rescue and challenge them, day in and day out. Codex is winsome and darling, but lives most of her life online--so much so that season 1 begins with her therapist breaking up with her. "I don't live in an imaginary world!" Codex insists to the therapist, even as she juggles the phone to "save" one of her compatriots online.
But what happens when gamers come out from behind their avatars? That winning concept is what gives The Guild its sweet and guilty pleasure. One of Codex's guild members, Zaboo (Sandeep Parikh), "goes missing" (from the web) for 39 hours, and the rest of the gang chimes in via voice-web and IM how worried they are. But they needn't have been. Zaboo shows up on Codex's actual doorstep to continue the "relationship" he's convinced they developed online. The characters are believable and subtly hilarious, especially the two leads, but also including Robin Thorson as Clara, a mother of three unwashed, un-diapered tots. "I don't want to say Clara's neglectful, cuz that's harsh," says Thorson in an interview on the disc. "But she is," she concludes merrily. As Codex and her Scooby gang try to navigate their friendships offline, real emotions fight with online personas, in ways that everyone can relate to. Day is truly captivating, and is as talented a writer as she is an actress, and the rest of the cast is believable, sympathetic, and more than a little weird. The splendid first-season disc contains 10 webisodes and a wealth of extras, including commentary from the cast and from the director; gag reels for every single episode (bonus!); cast interviews, which may be the set's true highlight; the first-episode script, and more. The first season of The Guild is as bountiful as the web itself, and no avatar is necessary for its full enjoyment. --A.T. Hurley
Price: $14.99
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