Early on, though, the funny stuff came fast and hard. There were moments that rivaled the best of Pee Wee's Big Adventure and Napoleon Dynamite. Among the bits that stood out: Uncle Jim's monologue about bread in episode six; Miranda, with top hat and cane, performing "All That Jazz" in a sex club; Miranda's fear that she was being stalked by an internet fiend ("I need a panic room and a body double!"); and the recurring scenes where Miranda meets Patrick, the young ice cream salesman next door, for her daily popsicle. She stands with him in the front yard of her shabby suburban home, slurping at her gigantic frozen treat, staring out over the horizon, dreaming her YouTube dreams. The boy's unrequited love, and Miranda's self-absorption, manages to be both funny and poignant - elevated in no small manner by Amotz Plessner's beautiful score, and Michael Balfry's cinematography - much more so than any of the recent rubbish pedaled by Hollywood or basic cable. In fact, one could take the front yard image of Miranda and Patrick and sell it as a seedy American Gothic for the digital age.
It's also a traditional romantic tale, with a subplot that goes back to the Bronte sisters. Ignoring the boy who loves her - she likes him but he's not famous enough - Miranda prefers a toothy blond goof who sings at her local church. She even attempts to join the choir to be near this angelic stud, only to be bounced out after her first rehearsal. Miranda's vulnerability is at least part of what makes the series work. "What's so funny about someone loving me?" she says in a stirring climactic scene. Still, it's odd that the show ended on such a down note, as if Theodore Dreiser had sneaked into the writer's room and jiggered the plot to bring this ruthlessly driven character crashing to earth. Oddly, had Netflix not asked for a second series of episodes, our last image of Miranda would've been quite melancholy. (But wait...was that the ice cream guy's bell we heard just as it ended?)
Ballinger, an attractive 31-year-old blessed with a comic's rubbery face - her oversized mouth recalls 1930s comic Joe E. Brown - has spent many years honing the Miranda character on YouTube. Over the course of 1,000 or so videos, she has endowed Miranda with a strange accent ("Stawp it! Are you keeding?") an inflated ego, and bitterness about everything, from her annoying mother to the haters on YouTube. She'll also take baths in jelly, belch and fart loudly, complain about her Christmas presents, and give comically bad singing and dancing tutorials. Most compelling for me is that she always frowns just before she signs off, as if her life is actually miserable, her only respite coming from a brief interlude with her friends in YouTube land. (In one video, a friend sneaks into her house and sees Miranda alone in her room playing with a Jack in the Box. Miranda's weirdness is toned down for Haters Back Off!, where she's less of a disturbed woman-child and more of a traditional television character.)
Miranda is not without antecedents. In some of her grimaces, one can see Lily Tomlin's old characters from Laugh-In, while Miranda's herky jerky movements remind me of Gilda Radner. Even the Miranda accent has an echo of 80's comic Judy Tenuda. The performer who really comes to mind, though, is vintage Carol Burnett. Not only is there a slight facial resemblance, but like Burnett, Ballinger can sing, act, and do the slapstick. She is that rarity in comedy, a three tool player: she can look funny, sound funny, and move funny.
Where Miranda is entirely unique is in Ballinger's use of YouTube, paring her comedy down into small, easily digestible tidbits. She plays with the medium the way Ernie Kovaks played with television in its early days. One of my favorites is Miranda's attempt at a new dance craze called "Juju on that Beat!" At a mere 90 seconds, it is the perfect rendition of a clumsy girl who thinks she can dance just because she saw someone do the moves on television. There's also one where Miranda simply eats a bowl of Cap 'n Crunch. I could go on for hours about that one, but I won't. Then there was her reading of Donald Trump tweets in the Miranda voice, pointing out that our current president is not much different than temperamental, delusional Miranda.
With several videos posted each week, a book, and concert tours that have taken her around the world, plus the Netflix show, Ballinger must be the hardest working person on YouTube. The effort has resulted in the Miranda channel grabbing more than 8-million subscribers. To give you some perspective, SNL's YouTube channel has only half that number. Granted, there are many YouTube channels with higher numbers, but Ballinger/Miranda does it without major network backing, without a hit single. Unlike other YouTube performers who are content to act goofy, she created a fully realized fictional character, and a labyrinthine backstory of creepy uncles and gay boyfriends and enough personal tics - she loves meat and crunchy things, loves Jesus, believes in Santa Claus, but hates animals, porn, and balloons - to fill a Sears catalog. She's a small phenomenon in our midst, as the endless BMW and AllState ads on her channel attest. (Though how many of her followers, generally kids, are in the market for a new BMW?)
The majority of her admirers are girls in the 12-16 age range. They attend her concerts wearing lipstick to match Miranda's, so to Ballinger it must look like she's playing to hundreds of little clown mouths. Her "Mirfandas" love her in a way they can't love a regular industry star. For one thing, Miranda mingles with her followers, engaging in marathon hugging and autograph sessions. She'll even ask for their phone numbers so she can prank call them. Part of the allure, I'm guessing, is that Ballinger has her own YouTube channel separate from Miranda's - two, in fact, one called PsychoSoprano, and another called Colleen Vlogs - plus her own busy social media accounts. The little girls love knowing that gawky Miranda grew up to be a beautiful young woman with a Netflix deal. If Miranda taps into the slouching brat living in all girls, Colleen Ballinger is their hope for the future.
Ballinger, when she's not being Miranda, is a standard YouTuber. She strums her ukulele, talks about her cat, shares personal anecdotes, and like Miranda, belches like a walrus. Ballinger is a generous sort, often taking part in "collabs" with her family. (It seems the entire Ballinger clan, for better or worse, have jumped on the YouTube bandwagon.) As is the case in the YouTube universe, Ballinger/Miranda will also collab with other YouTubers, mostly shrill young men. These collabs can be breathtakingly funny, or just plain stupid. Sometimes I wish she'd do fewer videos and make them count, rather than hit us so often. Then again, part of the fun of YouTube is that it's a free for all, largely improvised. The bits of gold that turn up, like Miranda trying to do a yoga challenge, or using a magic 8-ball to see if her boyfriends really love her, make it worthwhile to sift through the less inspired junk.
For the uninitiated, YouTube performers are a distinct lot. They're largely from the generation that grew up on boy bands, Spongebob, the Olsen twins, and The Bachelor. Hence, their own output is predictably silly and lightweight. They're essentially children's entertainers, a few notches below the dross you'd find on the Disney channel. There's a dash of the old "Let's see how many goldfish I can swallow" mentality of the 1920s, and a lot of what used to be called "camp humor." Much of it is awful. Yet, the YouTubers know their audience, and are relentless self-promoters. Since kids are always looking for something to call their own, they embrace these YouTubers. Here's hoping the tykes will eventually outgrow them and find harder stuff, they way kids once outgrew the Archies in favor of Led Zeppelin.
In some of Ballinger's current videos, the creator of Miranda has looked and sounded weary. Overseeing the second season of Haters Back Off! was a chore. Shooting in Vancouver kept her away from her family. She doesn't know what her little "Mirfandas" want now, and worries that YouTube is changing. In August she had something like a nervous breakdown after a scary cab ride. She has ongoing shoulder problems. Though Ballinger tries to remain chipper, the impression she gives is of a frazzled, overworked woman being pulled in too many directions. It seems that any kind of fame, including the flimsy, fleeting kind found on the internet, comes with a certain amount of weight.
The whole idea of YouTube "stardom" didn't exist 15 years ago, and Ballinger's genius as Miranda is in satirizing those wannabes who think YouTube is the new version of Schwab's on Sunset Boulevard. Still, there's a fear that unless you constantly feed the beast, it'll turn on you. Even a rare talent like Ballinger is yoked to the demands of her niche, where even the best become like caged chickens clucking for pellets, or parrots who have been taught to say, "Like and subscribe."
As I watched Ballinger's latest, I started thinking about all of those tiny red mouths in the audience of Miranda's concerts, imagining them as poisonous suckers, latching onto this poor young woman, taking as much they give. I felt bad. Then I clicked around Ballinger's channel and found a heartbreaking clip from last year where she talks about her divorce. I wasn't sure what to make of her candidness. She suffers from the same generational tic that has driven hundreds (thousands?) of people to expose their personal lives on YouTube, all in hopes of making money.
After being introduced to Miranda on Haters Back Off!, I took a crash course in her and her YouTube peers. The effect was insidious. Within weeks my head was polluted with jingles and catch phrases and weird voices. It's a bit like having "Pop Goes the Weasel" stuck in your mind, nonstop. It's peculiar, and I'm not sure who is more bizarre - the people inside the YouTube fishbowl, or the ones on the outside looking in. How many performers and viewers are allowing their engagement with YouTubers to take the place of real relationships? I watch YouTube on a giant Roku TV, so Ballinger's enormous, root-beer colored eyes stare down on me with a kind of unintended intimacy. As the tears rolled down her face in a recent video, I was tempted to hand her a tissue.
Frantically, I turned to Miranda's channel to see what she was up to. There she was, in her red-lipped splendor, demonstrating cat toys and fidget spinners. All was right in the world. For now.
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Haters Back Off! returned to Netflix Oct 20.The second season was a nice continuation of the first, full of great performances and plot twists, but Netflix abruptly decided to end the run. This is disappointing, for the show was unique. On the other hand, the show can now be viewed as a perfect 16-episode arc. It never got stale on us. It's life may have been brief, but it glowed mightily. I loved it in a way I haven't loved a show in a long time.
Here's a thought. Back in the 1970s, when a TV series was canceled, the star would always resurface in a network variety show. Hell, they all did it: Jim Nabors, Mary Tyler Moore, the entire cast of The Brady Bunch. I'd like to see Miranda come back in a variety show. She could host, sing a few songs, appear in a skit, and then Colleen could sing one of her beloved Broadway tunes. This wouldn't be too different from Miranda's touring show. In fact, she may have been building up to a variety show for years. Haters Back Off! may be done, but Miranda, I think, still has legs.
It's all a matter of whether her legs can outrun the inevitable challenges: fickle fans, number crunching network executives, and YouTube burnout.
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