10. Vintage Fashion Forum
This is undoubtedly one of the best episodes from the series. When you’re making a series about an online retail business, you are faced with the decision of how you choose to represent that digital world. This episode takes things in a Scott Pilgrim-esque direction in it’s innovative representation of technology, presenting a chat forum as a roundtable discussion between human participants. Each of the participants has their own quirks and mannerisms in their speech which signifies the way they type their messages in the forum. Gail, as the forum moderator, shows that Sophia should not have underestimated her.
The forum conversation is a novel way of accelerating the plot and characterising the faction of online retailers who are keen to gang up against Nasty Gal, who has been stealing their business.
Sophia: “First off, it’s Nasty Gal. Second, this message board should be called David Lynch’s ‘Elephant Man’, because it’s full of freaks and sad as fuck.”
The troubling aspect of this episode is Annie’s disproportionate reaction, after she asks Sophia to take her on as a full time paid member of staff but is shut down. Clearly hurt by the fact Sophia doesn’t recognise what she already brings to the Nasty Gal brand, Annie infiltrates the message forum and encourages the forum participants to go on a witch hunt against her friend.
Verdict: A well-executed and novel concept which finally adds some proper suspense into Nasty Gal’s story. But how can Annie and Sophia’s friendship ever come back from this betrayal?