Indie Series: 'Losing Hope' Bites Off More Than It Can Chew

The success of an artistic endeavor relies on how focused its subject matter is; if it’s all over the place, it ceases to captivate an audience that stays along for the ride. It’s common for creators to get carried away and stuff all their ideas into one tiny box that doesn’t have the capacity to fit it all. Not knowing how to channel the thoughts is a major setback in the artistic realm that results in nothing.

This is precisely how the YouTube series Losing Hope plays out. It opens with a great deal of promise but crumbles under its own weight with each episode. Created, written, directed and produced by Derek Daniel, this is a redemption romance padded with corny R&B tunes that has no proper narrative — it lacks substance.

The presentation value of the series is very high, but that still isn’t enough to make up for its oversimplified subject matter. Cinematography, soundtrack, casting and all the visual elements rank high on the Losing Hope grade sheet. However, it is poorly executed. Isolate any shot and you might even think this was released on a major streaming platform, but the stiff scriptwriting stands out particularly because the story is centered on love and emotion. The dialogue isn’t at all in tune with how people communicate, which is of great detriment to the series’ overall impact. Firm writing such as this works for books, but certainly not screenplays.

The plot is made up of a series of conversations and interactions surrounding the skepticism of Gideon Hope, the central character who struggles with falling back in love after a failed romance. Played by Daniel himself, his supportive friend circle consists of Kelly, who constantly encourages him to date again, and Leo, who does the same with a creepy and annoying emphasis on “getting ass.” He meets another queer man named Donny who restores his faith in love and… that’s about it. Given the simplicity of this layout, you’d think that acting would’ve been a priority, but the script prevents it from being so. Though Leo and Donny do indeed do a good job, Gideon and Kelly’s respective performances cancel out their convincing work.

The series sets out with a commendable goal that it fails to accomplish for one simple reason: overcommitment. Whereas it is refreshing to see queer representation through the Black and Hispanic identities, Daniel sprinkles into the plot a long list of important issues that he never comes back to. It’s rather confusing to bring up these subjects when they stand alone with no more than a minute of screen time.

He clearly went into this project with a handful of problems he wanted to address, and in his forced attempt to squeeze them all into a series that is too short even for a mini-series, left most of them unresolved. It seems like the plan was just to depict non-white queers with an overwhelming number of non-sequiturs — sexual assault, gentrification, parenting, racism — none of which are dealt with properly.

Kelly advocates for and assists survivors of sexual assault. The first time we see her, she’s speaking to a group of people about this, stating bullet points about a larger concern that the script fails to justly tackle. We never hear about this again. In one scene, Gideon gives a monologue on the gentrification of Inglewood in Los Angeles County. He works in commercial real estate and proposes that his company go about their expansion in a sensitive manner by involving members of the community. This moves his superiors and they seem to take note of it. We never hear about this again.

At one point, Leo visits his parents and is greeted warmly only by his mother. His father, on the other hand, is not at all pleased with his son’s decision to pursue a career in music and is thus cold toward him. The tension is obvious and it brings down Leo, who seems to be desperate for his father’s approval. This situation remains unresolved, and we never hear about this either.

A little later, Donny and Gideon get into a debate over race when the latter is stopped from illegally entering an apartment building by a white person. Gideon then gets overdramatically offended at being referred to as “people” by a White person. When Donny suggests that “everything isn’t about race,” he responds by saying, “Everything in America is about race … that’s all America sees.” This creates a slight rift between them but in the end, they both admit they were wrong. Although Donny and Gideon make up after their dispute, the writer could have enhanced the script by exploring the shift in their relationship.

In the absence of a deep dive into these matters, the series ends up becoming one giant clutter of incomprehensible social commentary. Each subject mentioned above deserves a headlining spot in its own series, and there was no need for Daniel to have slipped them all into one production.

Even the protagonist (who, let’s not forget, is also the person in charge of this entire operation) doesn’t do much to win viewers over. Gideon doesn’t really deserve sympathy because all he does is feel sorry for himself and complain — he’s a walking, talking “sigh” who brings down the energy in a room because he waits for others to pull him out of his misery rather than trying himself. Donny, on the other hand, deserves better. It’s unfortunate that he keeps giving Gideon more chances given that he is the spark of redemption that carries this series.

There’s no doubt that art is a matter of taste and that different people like different things. Losing Hope, however, seems to have fallen flat altogether.

A year since its release, its YouTube channel has less than 150 subscribers and just a little over 3,000 views in total over its five episodes. The series showed potential but it’s not long before the disappointment sets in. The fifth and final episode has barely over 300 views as of now.

It’s corny but not tastefully so. It’s romantic but inauthentic. It’s progressive yet near-sighted. Losing Hope, with thoughtful writing, better acting and more screentime to address each topic, could be a great series, but right now it’s incomplete.