jPod

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

jPod is a CBC series based on the 2006 Douglas Coupland novel of the same name. It focuses on a group of game designers at the fictional Neotronic Arts in Vancouver BC. More specifically, it follows the darkly humourous work/personal life of Ethan Jarlewski.

At the beginning of the series, we are introduced to the residents of jPod, a section of cubicles located in the Neotronic Arts basement, and formed when a Y2K glitch caused all employees with surnames beginning with the letter 'J' to be placed here. The inhabitants of this freaky 'pod of the corn' are:

  • Ethan Jarlewski: Gore expert. A med school drop-out and sneaker enthusiast.
  • John Doe (crow well mountain juniper, all in lower case, because no letter is more important than any other letter): Backgrounds. The son of a scary hippie lesbian and a turkey baster, raised in a militant lesbian commune and at the series outset, attempting to become as statistically normal as possible.
  • Cowboy (Casper Jesperson): Coder. Cowboy spends most of his time smoking and attempting to make it into the top ten of the VanCity player board, until a 'tussed up dream involving his parents (who died in a murder suicide pact one Christmas) prompts an obsession with death.
  • Bree (Brianna Jyang): Motion capture. A perfectionist and Puma (or Cougar in training).
  • Kaitlin Joyce: Character design. The newest member of jPod, an American go-getter who once worked at Apple, and whose personal stories resemble Kate's holiday remembrances from the Gremlins movies.

Other characters:

  • Steve Lefkowitz: the new head of marketing, placed in charge of jPod. His first act is to demand the insertion of a buddy character in the form of a turtle into a violent skateboarding game. It goes downhill from there…
  • Carol Jarlewski: Ethan's mother, a home maker channeling her severe empty nest syndrome into a successful basement grow-op.
  • Jim Jarlewski: Ethan's father, a retired businessman turned actor, desperately seeking a speaking role.
  • Kam Fong: a Chinese smuggling kingpin and ballroom dancing fan.
  • Greg Jarlewski: Ethan's brother, a successful real-estate salesman who spends his spare time chasing ‘Cougars’ and aiding Kam Fong in human trafficking.
  • Alistair Parish: Steve’s eventual replacement, a coder whose brilliant flight simulator led to a lengthy internment in Guantanamo Bay.
Tropes used in JPod include:

Kaitlin: After hanging with you guys for months, I like to think I learned something.

Carol: Finally, a chance at grandkids!

Cowboy: I dropped out of Yale to work at this place because the money's great and it's the only place in town where you can smoke your brains out and download porn and write code.

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