With so many shows on hiatus until the fall, summer is prime time to check out some of those web series you’ve been bookmarking all year. Plus, they’re so short that you can watch a whole season without spending your entire weekend indoors on a couch! If you’re at a loss for where to start, one of the year’s most promising web series is Made to Order, from sketch duo Skinny Bitch Jesus Meeting. The quick series is an absurdist comedy about a ill-advised DIY food delivery business, and the more things go awry, the funnier the episodes get.
In Made to Order, sisters Katie and Leah are broke, without jobs, and desperate for money. In the pilot episode, “Business Women,” they try to come up with an idea for a business together and settle on a food delivery service because “people will buy anything if it’s delivered by a short girl in a pretty skirt.” Their first delivery is less than successful, but they keep at it regardless.
The next three episodes — the first four are all available for free viewing on YouTube — all benefit from ramping up the absurdity, balancing a very real poor-in-New-York struggle with a more surrealistic and unhinged narrative. The second episode, “Cous Cous,” is a great example and an early highlight. Trying to combat the negative Yelp review they received, Katie and Leah end up kidnapping a food blogger and trying to force him into writing a positive review with a particularly inventive version of good cop/bad cop.
What is most at play in every episode of Made to Order is just straight-up funny women being funny. Whether Katie and Leah are going head-to-head with a nosy health inspector or dabbling in the baby food business, the episodes remain humorous — especially when it comes to cutaway gags and callbacks. The easiest comparisons to make are Broad City and High Maintenance, which are both inventive and wildly hilarious series that began online and deal with the misadventures of NYC (and, in High Maintenance‘s case, the delivery business).
While Made to Order hasn’t quite reached either show’s level yet, it’s definitely heading there — as evidenced by its fifth episode, “Date Night,” which premieres this month (the midseason launch party celebrating the rest of Season 1 is tonight at The PIT). It takes the girls out of their typical delivery element and sharply remarks on their interactions with outsiders, heightening the series’ unique humor. Made to Order is a great summer watch: short and funny.