“Oh, if you like the first two episodes, just wait for the rest of the season. I’ll be honest with you, it just gets better.” 
That’s what Jon Dore, star of Held Up, told me last Friday. Crackle‘s newest original series launched online this morning, and I’ll be honest with you; if what he says is true, I can’t wait.
Last week I had the opportunity to speak with Jon Dore as well as Randy and Jason Sklar, the writers/producers of the series, and if there’s one thing I walked away feeling confident about, it was that this group decided to take on this project not because it was just another something to get involved with online, but because it’s awesome.
The series started originally as a pilot for Comedy Central, in which Randy Sklar and Jason Sklar were cast. Randy admits that “the energy in that original pilot was off, in large part due to the casting, so when Crackle took over and we got on board to write and produce, we sought out a cast that we knew would be really good at playing with the energy of the show.” This happens to be one of the show’s strongest suits. 
It’s Always Sunny‘s Kaitlin Olson is, in Dore’s words, “genuinely amazing. It’s so easy to act with someone like that because she is so committed. She is relentless when it comes to staying in character.” He would know, as the two have an offbeat budding romance – that is to say, his character has a major “comedy boner” for her and she keeps turning him down which, “usually ends with me not being able to finish the take,” Dore adds.
Jon Dore, himself, is a perfect fit for the dry-witted bank teller, Ray Pfeifer. The Sklar brothers discovered Dore through his Canadian television show, appropriately titled The Jon Dore Television Show, and when they asked him to join the cast of Held Up, he didn’t hesitate to say yes. Though he might toss out an overtly humble self-deprecating joke about his skills on camera, the Sklar brothers made it clear that they agree he was the perfect choice for the role. The Wire‘s Cyrus Farmer holds up as the “character who keeps it all together,” the Sklars acknowledged. “In a world where everyone offers some kind of comedic element, you need the character who adds that level of reality, and he does that very well.”
And then there are the Sklar brothers, themselves. They’ve honed their on-camera chemistry thank to years of, well, growing up together and later sharpening their craft while NYC’s alternative comedy scene was on the rise. The way the two play off of each other adds an element of comic absurdity that ties the whole ensemble together. They might be the most obvious characters to laugh at, as the two bank robbers clad in DIY Batman and Robin costumes and clearly no understanding of how bank heists are supposed to function, but that’s part of what makes their dynamic so charming and part of what makes everyone else look more legit.
This is another strong point for the series; like any good comedy, it’s got layers. You can have fun with the obvious jokes without losing your curiosity about the less obvious ones; minor inside jokes like the fact that the bank is called Village People’s Bank. “We played with a lot of ideas,” the Sklars told me, “for a while we wanted to call it The West Bank.” It just goes to show that Web series don’t have to skimp on the details. Though Held Up had a budget that most Web series would probably dream of, they were still limited. “With a bigger budget, you can really expand,” Jason said, “so we had to adapt the original TV pilot and broke everything up so that it could be shot in just one location. We had to make sacrifices, ‘what’s really more important? The cop cars or the helicopter? The cop cars.’ Okay, so we got rid of the helicopter and used stock footage for that shot, instead.”
Lack of money is every Web series’s biggest gripe, but when you put the time into creating a story with layers and when you develop characters that are interesting and when you take the time to put together a cast whose energy is immediately apparent on and off screen, you have a series with incredible potential to succeed. You have a series like Held Up.
Don’t waste time getting around to this one; episodes 1-3 are online now. And for an added behind-the-scenes look at what made this project such a success, check out the Why It Crackles episode embedded above.
Many thanks to Jason Sklar, Randy Sklar, and Jason Dore for taking the time to chat with Clicker Talk.
