Hey everyone on Facebook, it seems as though your witty status updates, consistent checking into impressive places on Foursquare, and carefully assembled albums of sexy, yet artistic and mysterious photos you took of yourself have at last caught the attention of McG, a director who knows marketable flash when he sees it. The descendant of the famed Irish “G” clan (responsible for exploding countless scores of potatoes) is developing what’s being billed as the first-ever “social series,” which is a fancy way of saying that it will attempt to appeal to viewers for a Facebook-based show in a way that would most obviously appeal to people on Facebook, i.e. by allowing them to stare at their very own faces.
On the one hand, the new Aim High is just an ordinary action-comedy about a teenage boy (Jackson Rathbone) balancing high school and crushing on an elusive popular girl (Aimee Teegarden), all while leading a double life as a government spy, as the government frequently reaches out to teenage boys, because they are so skilled and reliable. On the other, in McG’s words, it’s a “truly revolutionary” experiment in social media integration where you can submit your Facebook profile info via the show’s app, then possibly see you or your friends integrated into various scenes, “from their photo appearing on a student body election poster, to having their name seen as graffiti on the bathroom wall.” And then you can share your big moment with all of your Facebook friends, and point out that that’s your name that was fleetingly glimpsed in the fake, digitally superimposed bathroom graffiti on an obscure web-based series it’s likely none of them would have paid attention to otherwise—which, come to think it, is a fairly apt metaphor for the “fame” that social networking provides. (That title is meant to be sarcastic, right?)