Best of Writer Vixen
Originally published for "Zeitgeist: Quirkyalone Pop Culture" on Quirkyalone.net.
Choosing to remain single in a coupled world is sometimes a lonely gig, never more so than when all of your close friends are smugly cocooned in their couple-bubbles. It can make you feel like the last single person on Earth.
As once-single friends morph into couples, it often becomes irritatingly apparent that they no longer understand the challenges or perspectives of singledom. You sometimes feel like hitting them over the head, yet you still love them and yearn for common ground to maintain your friendships. This painful conflict is played out to hilarious effect in the engaging Web series Imaginary Bitches.
Eden is the last single girl in her circle of friends, refusing to compromise her standards simply to have a boyfriend. After an amazing date with a guy she really likes, Eden calls each of her friends to share her exciting news, but they’re only interested in talking about their relationships. Increasingly dispirited with each aborted call, Eden discovers, to her astonishment, that she has conjured an imaginary friend named Catherine—a friend who’s avidly interested in discussing all the details of Eden's date.
But Catherine proves to be less a “friend” than a total bitch, with lots of nasty things to say about Eden and all of her real girlfriends.That's right, Eden herself is not exempt from Catherine's bitchiness. Furthermore, Catherine is soon joined by a second imaginary bitch named Heather. The imaginary bitches quickly establish their presence in all of Eden’s relationships, leaving her to deal with the fallout even as they help her sort out her friendships and her love life.
It’s Sex and the City meets Ally McBeal—except that Eden (played by Emmy award-winner Eden Riegel of All My Children and Year One) is the only one who can see the imaginary bitches. She delivers all of the bitches' lines, parrying her real girlfriends' careless cruelties with a brutal honesty offset by a disarming sweetness and genuine dismay. It's the best of both worlds: total honesty without consequences.
When Eden's real girlfriend, Brooke, hangs out with Eden and the imaginary bitches, Brooke asks what the bitches are saying about her. Eden replies, “Catherine is saying that you’re a fat, selfish bitch who likes me being single because it makes you feel superior . . . But Heather thinks you’re pretty. Sexy, in fact. And that if [your boyfriend] is amazing enough to abandon your best friend for, then she’d like to take him for a spin. Like, have sex with him.”
Eden's real girlfriends eventually band together to stage a coup against the imaginary bitches, eagerly informing Eden that they’re going to get her a boyfriend “so you can be one of us!” But Eden hesitates, saying that Heather thinks they “sound like body-snatching aliens, and that the boyfriend is a plot to turn me into a relationship pod-person.” The real girlfriends wonder if imaginary bitches can have boyfriends, and discover that yes, they can, but “different kinds of boyfriends than you guys have—not losers.”
Through all the casual and deliberate indignities that Eden suffers—from being excluded from couples dinner parties, to going on blind dates, to trying to cultivate new single friends—Imaginary Bitches is a fun, catty look at being single in a coupled world. Season One is available on DVD, as well as on the show’s website and on YouTube. You can watch all 13 episodes in less than 90 minutes.
The following episode (“A Spiritual Bitch-Bath") shows the tart and tangy flavor of the series. The imaginary bitches take it upon themselves to deal with the “pseudo-spiritual psychopath” who stole Eden’s previous boyfriend. Which makes us wonder: Are the bitches really imaginary? Or simply invisible to the non-psychotic?
My own imaginary bitches are telling me to shut up and watch the episode!
Bitch back in the comments.
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Twittering vixenish things @WriterVixen
