"Ave 43" What is Happening?

What is going on in Highland Park? Everything if you watch the web series “Ave. 43”. Highland Park is a quiet neighborhood between downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena known more for craftsman style houses ripe for real estate flippers and as the home of Forever 21 stores.  Playwright Justin Tanner has created a fast almost dizzyingly paced web series set in the quiet neighborhood that leaves the viewer both stunned and laughing. Murder, drug addiction, time portals, witchcraft and pederasty are just a few of the subjects that fly at the viewer. When Tanner’s characters aren’t sleeping with one another they seem to be murdering and blackmailing each other. If a character dies he or she may just come back to life or appear again as a ghost. Family secrets aren’t secret and families may not even be families but lies.

The series shot almost entirely in Tanner’s home revolves around characters played by local Los Angeles actors who bring the stories to life at a break neck speed. The episodes of “Ave. 43” are short, most under seven minutes long, packed with deadpan acting and twisted story lines. Is it a soap opera? Is it a comedy? Is it an accurate slice of life in Highland Park? Men hop from bed to bed usually with an ulterior motive that eventually is revealed. Engagements and divorces are the causes of murder plots that always seem to go unsolved and awry.  The shooting style evokes voyeurism with its tight shots and funky angles making the most of the home that Tanner shares with his husband and musician Kristian Hoffman.  The viewer gets so sucked into the story that the fact everyone’s bathroom and front door looks exactly alike doesn’t register.

“Ave 43” can be viewed on you tube and needs to be watched from the beginning. It won’t explain anything but it doesn’t hurt. Characters appear and disappear sometimes coming back as ghosts or in disguises.  Making sense of the plot is at times useless but always a lot of nasty fun. All sins are committed, nothing gets left out. Pornography and Satanism along with greed, lust and incest are plot points that whizz by in this twisted funny web series skewing reality TV and night time soap operas. Just when the viewer has seen it all something new and more shocking comes along.  What will happen next? Only Justin Tanner knows.