Escapist Boy

Escapist Boy is a Flarlandian television series created by Charles Mesure for Pointierimage and Channel 14's The Friday Show and the ninth of its Greats.

The bulk of the show is an action series starring AJ Walters (portrayed by Mesure), the titular "Escapist Boy" in an attempt to run from the evil Kraventhorn Corporation. The climax is often interrupted by Charles Mesure "channel surfing" (see below) to other, unrelated television channels. Charles Mesure said that the series was inspired by his life before making the show, as an obsessive-compulsive TV channel surfer, who distractedly changed channels while watching something on TV.

Plot

AJ Walters is an 18-year old (19-year old in season 2) escapist who lives in a warehouse controlled by Kraventhorn, an international conglomerate that has "slaved the lives of over 20 million people worldwide". Kraventhorn's leader, Dr. Kraven Thorn (the corporation was named after him by mashing his name and surname) believes that AJ is an easy prey for his DNA to be converted into that of a serial killer, like Kraven Thorn.

On another channel lies a comedy series, Flatmates, a Flarlandian rip-off of Friends with really low budget. The characters don't seem to articulate proper lines and only Troey can understand them.

Style

The pilot episode seemed to consist exclusively of Escapist Boy with little to no channel surfing involved. Mesure decided that the series would emulate a person channel surfing in the regular series.

The episodes begin with a completely unrelated bit from a random television program that turns out to be a show Mesure is watching. This later continues into the show's intro, featuring parts of the supposed intro to the Escapist Boy series, turning into a mixture of random in-show intros and then lands on that of Escapist Boy itself.

About a third of an episode centers around Escapist Boy's attempts to be expelled from the Kraventhorn warehouse, but during the climax of a scene, it switches over to a variety of programs. An episode is divided in three acts, and some of the shows go to an ad break.

Between the acts, a mixture of fake ads with unrelated skits can be seen. Most of the ads are from the Ram Corporation, a gigantic international conglomerate known for its weird privacy policy (ads usually ended with "what's ours is ours, what's yours is yours"). There were also ads for Flarlandian Antibiotics and We Care Air.

Characters

Escapist Boy

• AJ Walters (Charles Mesure): Leader of a resistance group against the Kraventhorn Corporation, AJ is considered to be "escapist".
• Kraven Thorn

Miscellaneous channels and programs

• Charles Mesure (as himself) Often appeared at the end of episodes, switching off the TV set during the credits sequence.
• Channel 6: Spoof of local television channels with high professional production. The channel's main features are News Channel 6 (with traits of what Ten News looked like at the time) and 6 Seconds (spoof of 60 Seconds with the concept being taken to a new extreme). Non-news programs include the gameshow 6% and Goldfish Bay.
• Flarlandian Antibiotics: A company whose purpose, possibly apart from its name, is never clear, but appears in two episodes of the series, as commercials for it. In season 1 a number of unrelated scenes is depicted as representing "the best of Flarlandian Antibiotics" with the company not being aware of what it sells in the packshot. In season 2, a man appears in two commercials saying that he loves the company more than the average consumer.
• Foony Tranza: Spoof of Toony Franza with hyperactive and exaggerated presenters. This was apparently the inspiration for the alleged "lost video" of the show's cancellation some time after Escapist Boy was cancelled in real life.
• Goldfish Bay: Spoof of Home and Away with traits of Neighbours and the highly-obscure Breakers. The series consists of two fixed characters, Thorpe (played by Keith Sunderman) and Shana (played by Jezza Ellow-Bates). The two discuss their relations while an off-screen character (later revealed to be the neighbor) is apparently doing something to spoil their life. The segments were shot on location in Waverly Hills (in order to give a Northulian aesthetic) with the main characters being portrayed by local actors. The name is an allusion to the fact that, on the bottom of the screen, there are "comprehensive plot recaps for people with the memory of a goldfish coming every half second".
• Piss TV: Specialist channel broadcasting urine coming out of humans and animals. The joke was later reused in two episodes of Media For Dinner as a cutaway gag for risqué content.
• Ram Corporation: An international conglomerate (apparently headquartered in Flarland) that manufactures, according to the pitch guide for the series, "a good 90% of the products we use" and also "the only conglomerate in the world that knows what it does". Advertisements are always voiced (and with occasional appearences by) Parker Robinson, often known in-universe as the "Ram Salesman". Ram advertisements often include the tagline "with the power of 4000 rams", have unfitting background music and cover a wide variety of products, including the Ram Detergent, the Ram Sucker (a washing machine that Ram allegedly "invented", the Ram Primetime Soap Opera Restaurant among others). Ram also sponsors many television programs in-universe, including Escapist Boy.
• The National Island: Fictional "social experiment" created in response to Big Brother that appears in season 2 of the series. Over the course of six episodes, a group of twelve people are stranded on the southern part of Eumoritown and their only source of information is The National, delivered on delay.
• Your Gene Pool: Spoof of "serious" programming where a random element chosen by the production has to find out if a historic figure is part of his/her gene pool.

Episodes

DIY TV

• 0: Escapist Boy (August 18, 2000)

The saga of AJ Walters, a 20-year old young adult who tries to leave the Kraventhorn Corporation at all costs, is interrupted by Flatmates.

Season 1

• 1: Lovemeter (November 17, 2000)

In Escapist Boy, AJ kisses his girlfriend only to be interrupted by Kraven Thorn's megalomanical attitudes. In Flatmates, tensions arrive in the gift exchange. At the Shame Shopping Channel, we get to see a lantern disguised as a pen in order to save energy.

• 2: Pet Shop Boys (November 24, 2000)
• 3: Diamonds and Value (December 1, 2000)

AJ steals a prized possession from Kraven Thorn.

• 4: New Man (December 8, 2000)
• 5: Year's End (December 29, 2000)

Christmas and New Year's special. Kraven Thorn addresses all of his denizens in order to provide a fiscal rundown of the year 2000. We also find out, in unrelated notes, that Christmas was invented by Christopher Thomas Masters as means to hide end of year depressions.

• 6: Lying Faker (January 12, 2001)
• 7: Star Quality (January 26, 2001)

Every show has star quality. AJ is enlisted by Kraven Thorn to win a sum of dollars just for acting in a television series, the main characters of Flatmates are all stars of a film and the key plot of the episode is a show called Star Quality where people try to get a role in a dishwashing liquid commercial (Obsessive).

• 8: Fired (March 2, 2001)
• 9: Good Old Days (March 23, 2001)

AJ goes back in time to pre-Kraven Thorn days only to find out that there are equivalents of Kraven Thorn. Flatmates holds a 1984 party.

• 10: Agent X (June 10, 2001)

Agent X hacks Escapist Boy and Flatmates. In Escapist Boy, he saves AJ, in Flatmates he becomes a regular character the others hate.

• 11: Arts Club (June 24, 2001)

Central to this episode is Arts Club, an episode that offsets the supposedly "comedic" episode of Escapist Boy.

• 12: Thief (July 8, 2001)
• 13: Just a Dream (July 29, 2001)

All shows and channels have dreams where Kraven Thorn has invaded their own lives, only to realize that Kraven Thorn has become a good character and that AJ is now the new leader of the Kraventhorn Corporation, renamed AJ Corporation in homage of him.

Season 2

• 1 (14): Racing from Chepstoke (December 2, 2001)

Horse racing disrupts this week's episode of Escapist Boy.

• 2 (15): The Escapist Man (December 9, 2001)

A strike, coupled by the main actors of both Escapist Boy and Flatmates, leads to the replacement for the week by silent film serials from 1926 starring all actors' ancestors. These are "The Escapist Man" and "Friends of the House". On the other side, a spin-off series of Flatmates for kids is announced.

• 3 (16): Agent W (December 16, 2001)

Agent X returns, this time with his brother Agent W.

• 4 (17): Everything is Changing Fast (December 23, 2001)

In time for the Christmas reunions on both sides, AJ's reality is taken over by Kraventhorn becoming a worldwide monopoly and the apartments in Flatmates become stores, only to realize that all of Wembley became Wembley Hut, in an attempt to become Flarland's largest mall.

• 5 (18): Live from Studio 56 (February 10, 2002)

Everybody is invited to the party of the year. Except for Kraven Thorn and his evil corporation who outlawed dancing, where AJ tries to pull a Footloose. A Goldfish Bay and Flatmates crossover is made during Live from Studio 56.

• 6 (19): Elections (February 17, 2002)
• 7 (20): A Kraventhorn Family Reunion (February 24, 2002)
• 8 (21): Dr. Yes (March 3, 2002)
• 9 (22): Underwater (March 10, 2002)
• 10 (23): Lelma and Thouise (March 17, 2002)
• 11 (24): The Flood (March 24, 2002)
• 12 (25): Amnesia (March 31, 2002)
• 13 (26): It's Over (April 7, 2002)

The episode starts as a behind-the-scenes look at both shows, only to be interrupted by a network executive telling them that one of the shows must be cancelled. Inevitably, AJ and Kraven Thorn become characters in Flatmates. The series ends with Charles Mesure simply switching off the television set and in a news presenter's attire (as a sign for the then-future premiere of Media For Dinner, a series that eventually premiered in December).

Production

The series had a decent budget of about 40.000FL$ and had a complex production structure. All but one segments were filmed in fixed locations around Wembley, often lent to a number of production companies. Only Goldfish Bay was filmed in Waverly Hills, and this was a minor stretch, considering that the soap was often assigned a minute or less.

The creators wanted a series that spoofed the by then-dominant digital television platforms, particularly BEdigital but especially Cable Flarland and FST - as there is an on-screen menu similar to FST's with a slightly different color scheme. The concept was later revisited in another series made by Pointierimage and starring Mesure, Media For Dinner, as a cutaway gag (see Piss TV above).

The premise of the show was essentially "a climax that leads to nowhere" due to the constant interruptions caused by the other shows. This was remarkably similar to one of the main actors' experiences with Xena (formerly broadcast on Channel Ten) where he had to switch between channels during climactic scenes. The concept of the main series was similar to a number of "totalitarian" works, with Escapist Boy's universe having an Orwellian aesthetic yet the main villain (Kraven Thorn) is cartoony in nature.