Sigh. The things I do in the name of research.

I finished watching the first season of Rockville CA, an irritating Web show brought to the masses via Josh Schwartz, the wunderkind behind The O.C., Chuck, and Gossip Girl. Who knew 20 six-minute Webisodes would weigh down on me like a lead balloon?

Note: After hearing lead fanboy Hunter crack whip-smart for about two hours, I will resist all urges to make a Led Zeppelin reference.

My friend Kristen brought the show to my attention, as she does with many things, after sending me this interesting New York Times piece on it.

So, I’ll be honest. I kind of have an axe to grind with the Schwartz empire anyway. Mainly because it has commodified music geekery in the most generic, bland, pretend-smart, pretend-cool way possible (shooting daggers at you, Seth Cohen).

It could be a knee-jerk reaction. Schwartz’s right-hand lady, music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas, who co-produced Rockville CA and, like me, also got her start in college radio, has a job I’d kill for and know I could do so much better if I wanted to use my record collection to underscore beautifully-lit, woodenly-acted scenes of teen angst and lust. In short, my irritation could be simply reduced to “bitch took my job.”

But it’s never that simple.

Or is it? Christ, the things that are wrong with this show are so by-the-book.

1. The set-up. Oh, you know this one. If you’re seen any romantic comedy, ever, you’ve got this one down. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets . . . you know what? Not even gonna finish the sentence. You’ve got it.

2. You know the couple — Deb and Hunter — are in love because they hate each other instantly and start arguing. I don’t know where this narrative contrivance began, but this has never happened to me. Usually, if I like someone, the attraction has nothing to do with wanting to rip the person’s face off until enough people are like “hey, you two would make a cute couple” that I think “you know what, you’re right! This annoying person who I cannot stand is actually pumping my ‘nads.” No, when I purport to not find you appealing, I don’t actually want to go on a date and kiss in the rain or whatever. I actually don’t want to be seen with you socially at all.

3. Perhaps I’m being unfair about my next point in conjunction with point #2, as many romantic comedies hinge on adult couples not meeting cute, but this premise seems very high school. Especially for men, as Hunter sweats and stammers immature misogyny. Through 17 of the 20 episodes, his actions and banter seem to say, “I don’t like her, she has cooties! She scares me . . . I think my body is changing. I’m compelled to her, but I don’t know why. Foul temptress! I was much safer with my comic books, G.I. Joe figurines, and Ramones records!”

In fact, perhaps unsurprisingly given Schwartz’s involvement, this show reads like a high school melodrama. The nerdy hot girl with glasses. The pretty blonde girl who is friends with the nerdy hot girl with glasses that the male lead originally finds attractive (there’s a bit of The Truth About Cats and Dogs in there too). The unattainable hunk that the nerdy hot girl with glasses likes (at school it’d be a football player; here, it’s a bassist). The wise elder who is charmed nostalgic by all the angst and endearing awkwardness. And even though the show takes place at a venue (where the show gets its name), it could just as easily take place in in the high school gym, made all glittery for prom, or in the library, during weekend detention. I’ve been to Southern California. It’s a little dangerous and a little seedy. That’s part of its charm. This show turns it into an American Eagle ad. Or a womb. Whatever.

4. If this is what music geeks are really like, we are insufferable. By that, I mean, if we are, in fact, indexical, socially-inept, commodity fetishists. If all we do is make snide comments, droll asides, and catalogical recitations of bands and their output, we are lame. The show would also suggest that we are completely beholden to capitalism and instant gratification, blind to corporate enterprising’s hold on us, what with the show’s incessant plugging of Heineken. In short, if we are what this show suggests we are, we are sheep.

5. Goddamn, is the music awful. A perhaps promising trapping of the show is that each episode takes place during a different concert. However, almost everyone sounds like a reduced, flattened, laminated version of some pre-existing band (usually Joy Division or U2).

And, as you can imagine, almost all these bands are comprised of white dudes. Earlimart, The Duke Spirit, and a couple others are exceptions, but I’ll bet you know what position most of the women (who are the lone female in each band) occupy. Also, Lykke Li is in an episode, which kinda bums me out, as I like Lykke Li. But I already heard “Dance Dance Dance” at a Victoria’s Secret and “I’m Good, I’m Gone” on American Idol, so she’s already been co-opted.

6. The “clever” banter. Puns are the lowest form of comedy, and any punchline based on making a play on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is lower still. Hunter is the worst perpetrator, but Deb slings her share of barbs as well. Plus, people are never that funny and quick. It was unbelievable in the first half of Juno, when all the characters were always so damn quippy. Like Dawson’s Creek before it, the dialogue is completely fictive in Rockville CA.

Kristen’s big question at the time she sent it was “Web series that codes the music geek as male maybe?” And one thing that is good about the show is that I can say “No, not exclusively.” However, I must qualify . . .

It’s true, Deb is a confirmed music geek. And a music professional as well (fresh out of college, she works in A and R; I hope she finds a nobler calling in the biz soon). Thus, in many ways, Rockville CA is a workplace comedy for her (not so much for Hunter — he basically, and appropriately, sells digital ad space).

Unfortunately, Deb’s not very discriminating, stating that almost every band playing at Rockville is “major” (a doubly-unfortunate connotation, bringing to mind both Victoria Beckham and the corporate label system; indeed, any time she says a band is “major,” she may as well be saying “ready for the majors!”).

Also, while she does get to exhibit geek savvy, like correcting her crush (Syd, the elusive bass player for Australia) when he says Ian Brown was the frontman for Teenage Fanclub (he actually sang for The Stone Roses), she is given the cold shoulder and reminded by Callie, Rockville’s leggy waitress, that guys, um, like, like to be right sometimes and, like, don’t like to be proven wrong. And while Deb vocally rejects Callie’s advice, it doesn’t keep her from looking in the mirror and taking her hair out of its ponytail at the end of the episode (I think the black-out came just before she took off her glasses).

Thankfully, Deb is not alone as a music geek, a fact that Shaun is happy to exclaim. Though Callie and Isabel, Deb’s needy friend who wears stripper heels “ironically” to seduce a musician she hooked up with previously, are a bit regressive — though both seem like true friends to Deb — Shaun has potential. For Shaun, who owns Rockville, the show may also be considered a workplace comedy. Shaun’s presence is heartening; she’s tough, smart and also a hot, older single lady (picture Allison Janey playing Kim Gordon — not the worst, right?).

However, she ends up selling out, signing her bar over to Chambers, a tow-headed poser, and his business partner, who wants to phase out the bands and bring in more DJs. This happened in the finale. I’m hoping that if the show gets a second season (and I can bear to watch it), Shaun becomes a tough entrepreneuse and fights it. I sense a benefit on the way.

By the way, while I love deejays, I take the new (evil, soulless) owners’ hope to maximize profits by bringing deejays in as a way to suggest that the artform (and its raced, classed implications) as being denigrated alongside of the show’s clear investment in rock, perhaps aligning with Lisa Lewis’s assertion that early MTV catered to “rock’s white-male bias” (see “The Making of a Preferred Address” in Lisa A. Lewis’s Gender Politics and MTV: Voicing the Difference). There’s several mentions throughout the show that rock is the supreme genre in popular music, suggesting that it is pure and authentic and ignoring the ways in which rock steals from other genres, and the white-washing that occurs in the process.

Which brings me to race. If you’re picturing a bunch of white people bickering with one another when they aren’t kissing or playing, you’d be right. There are two people of color on the show (three if you count Isabel, who is played by Natalie Morales).

One is the doorman, Hugh, who is African American. He kinda had a promising bit at the beginning of the first few episodes where he’d freeze Hunter out of the club because he didn’t like him. This would create moments where Hunter would exhibit painful displays of white guilt by trying to seem down and then fearful that he accidentally said something racist. Deb, who is Hugh’s friend, would get him in as her plus-one. In these episodes, Hugh would be reading a different book, like The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. In other words, a smart guy with layers who wasn’t charmed by Hunter. More Hugh, please.

The other character is Annie, the Asian photographer who never speaks (the actress, Chris Yen, is Chinese American). SHE NEVER SPEAKS. In all 20 episodes, not a line of dialogue. While it’s interesting that she’s a photographer, and is always snapping shots of the bands and the venue’s denizens, having her be a silent outsider distanced by the camera kinda, you know, others her. Let’s get her to strike up a conversation with somebody. A great instance would be when Shaun threatens to set her on fire if she takes any pictures of her. Kind of an unfortunate line, as I tend to think of this image. Anyway, Annie could totally put down her camera and call Shaun out. But she doesn’t.

And that, in its way, encapsulates Rockville CA. A fair amount of promise, a lot of missed opportunities.