Gen Zed
is (was?) an upcoming animated comedy show about a young trans woman who wants to be a stand up comic & her online friends who all move in together. It is written and directed by Hayden Black.
It focuses on protagonist Shona Sommers, a 19 year old trans woman living in Downtown Los Angeles with her friends in a loft. Shona aspires to be an “edgy” stand-up comedian, while her other friends/roommates embody various millennial stereotypes, such as Cameron, described as a “shit poet” and nerd; Huey, a tattooed musician prone to acting like a “douchebag;” and Betsy, an Asian-American heiress to millions of dollars who’s addicted to prescription drugs and aspires to be a fashion designer.
The show's pilot was set to be released some time in 2016 according to the show's now defunct website, but nothing has come of it as we move into the 2020s.
Provides examples of:
- Alliterative List: Shona describes Cameron, Huey, herself, and Betsy as "a train wreck, a troublemaker, a trans girl, and a trustafarian" respectively.
- Alliterative Name: Shona Sommers.
- All There in the Manual: The show's (now defunct) website gave extra information about the main characters and some side characters like their names and ages. At least one (a yet to be seen character named Mr. Jiminez) has a rather detailed backstory compared to the ones above.
- Asian Airhead: Betsy's a nice person who gets along with the other main characters but her head is not all up there. This might have to do with her painkiller addiction.
- Creator's Culture Carryover: Meta-example: the show is called Gen Zed, obviously referring to "Generation Z" but they used the British English pronunciation instead of the American English one, which is "zee." According to the trailers, they call themselves as such as they don't want to be "Gen Y" but the show is set in LA and the characters, for the most part, are American. It's worth noting, however, that the creator is English.
- Establishing Character Moment: Huey gets this most of all who is often depicted in the trailers as always yelling and very angry.
- Five-Token Band: The protagonists. Shona is a trans woman, Cameron is black, Huey is white, and Betsy is Asian.
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: The main cast which consist of girls, Shona and Betsy, and boys, Huey and Cameron.
- Limited Animation: The animation is rather simple and unpolished. For instance, in the trailer, the characters' full profile when they're in a close shot are superimposed on the otherwise letterbox background.
- Milking the Giant Cow: Betsy's dancing in the next-to-last scene of the trailer (the one that provides the page image).
- Pungeon Master: Betsy seems to be the queen of this:
- On finding out about Shona being trans had this to say: "No pun intended but, it takes balls."
- She names both of her Azalea plants after two musical artists and took Oxycontin so she wouldn't go "Lana del Cray before going down the Depeche road"...'kay.
- Trans Equals Gay: Shona's family seem to think this way from what little we see of them in the promo. One even stated that they're throwing her an "Inter-transitional Homosexual Turn Around Fiesta" so as to make it not look like an intervention. Oh, and they used her dead name.
- Upper-Class Twit: Subverted with Betsy. While said to be rich and spends all her money in rather useless things, she's actually nice enough to be friends with Shona.
