Binge & Purge: Red VS Blue (11 Seasons)

Red VS Blue is a web-series created by Rooster Teeth Productions that ended up becoming cult followed and supported pretty much out of the blue. The show was created using Halo: Combat Evolved for all props, characters, locations ect. In fact, the entire first 5 or 6 seasons of the show is really just a multiplayer game of the cast “acting out” with Spartans and voicing over their antics. Anyone’s who played Halo with a group of friends in a closed lobby has been in a Red VS Blue scenario of standing around joking, bashing mongooses (in game vehicle) for fun. Even though the entire series to be nonsense, it actually spawns a story in it’s own.

While the show’s plot is explained in the title, the characters on each team are what makes this show really brilliant. The series has been called “sophisticated” and is imagined to be a meta insult to military combat, but I honestly think it’s just 5 hilarious voice actors making the absolute best of a low production limitation. This shows that you don’t need a highly paid studio staff to make people laugh or to obtain a huge cult following. Just 5 writers, some friends, and desire to make it happen.
Although many love the show’s amazingly simple humor, it isn’t for everybody. Even though the writing (or ad-libbing. I really am not sure) is genius, I wouldn’t call it “meta” or put it on any philosophical level, sometimes humor is just humor. In the earlier season, it seems they abandoned the war at hand, which is the entire story, but by season 4-5 they turn into the main focus while maintaining the same quality of jokes and keeping the same characters in new predicaments.
The show started with a low budget, and looks as if it was produced in some guy’s basement but after about season 7 or 8 the budget really starts to pick up with it’s own original animations and CGI. Even though the animation stays pretty much based off the original work of Bungie (the devs who created Halo) it’s obvious that the movement and added graphics are completely original making it look as if it’s in own Halo campaign full of beautiful action packed cut scenes.

I appreciated the humor in the early seasons but I didn’t become attached until the end of Season 8 when the action just became too incredible not to watch. This made following the story pretty hard since I got used to zoning out and just listening to jokes and then out of the blue there’s this incredible story line beyond the basic “Red VS Blue” plot that’s thrown at you in a fast pace way.
All in all, I’m now recommending this show beyond my love for Halo and the Halo community. This show is so much more than that, and I’m kicking myself for taking so long to realize it.