If you and your best friend have never discussed the fact that the two of you are essentially a camera-ready comedic duo that would surely make it big as reality stars or vloggers, then your friendship is due for a re-evaluation. The rarity, however, is obviously the BFF pair with real comedic talent who braves the YouTube uploading software and somehow creates a web show that will accumulate more than 25 million views in less than two years.
For best friends Allison Raskin and Gaby Dunn, this is a thing that happened. Their web show “Just Between Us”, a low-budget scripted comedy production masquerading as a weekly love advice vlog, has amassed nearly half a million subscribers since its inception in April 2014. Fans can email in their burning questions about love, sexuality, feminism and friendship, and (maybe) Allison and Gaby will give some solid advice about it. But it’s not likely.
Recognizable from the occasional BuzzFeed Video you’ll find scrolling through your timelines, Raskin and Dunn have made it clear that in all actuality they give terrible advice. The web series, which is more a vehicle for the team’s comedic writing and acting skills than anything else, has managed to brilliantly maintain the feeling that the audience is just watching an odd-couple bicker hilariously to a camera, all the while weaving in clever quips and social commentary.
Character driven and fueled by the dynamic between two opposite halves of an amusing whole, the stars of JBU play “heightened versions” of themselves, according to an interview the pair did with Bitch Media podcast “Popaganda.”
Allison in the show is “neurotic, anxious and abides by old-school rules of what it means to be a woman,” Raskin said, while Gaby is “just insane, very militant feminist [and] sexually aggressive,” Dunn said. On second thought, Raskin said, “Gaby is pretty much Gaby” while she, Allison, is “playing the worse version of [herself] five years ago.”
The characters have incited fan art, Tumblr hashtags and even hardcore shippers of the platonic couple, officially dubbed “Gallison”. Capitalizing on the whirlwind success of their channel, the team has recently added traditional comedy sketches to their YouTube repertoire. Raskin and Dunn now produce a second short weekly video in which they shed comedic light on subject matter such as adult tantrums, friendship breakups and how exactly Allison’s “Bachelorette” audition would play out.
Despite all odds and lack of faith in the production on Allison and Gaby’s part (given the fact that the e-mail they created for receiving questions is 2014justbetweenus@gmail.com), the show’s unique format, heartwarming friendship and downright hilariousness, has incited a breakneck rise in popularity that does not seem to be slowing down anytime soon. Do yourself a favor, make like a hipster and become a fan before they make it even bigger. You’ll thank me later.
