Have you heard of Verticals? These are mini TV series designed for mobile phones with teeny episodes (1.30 minutes to 2.30 minutes). The entire show is usually over an hour, and in some rare cases, two hours. That makes it a movie, but broken into several episodes and aired over a few days. Platforms like ReelShort, DramaBox, and Micro Drama are quite popular for airing hundreds of verticals. I’m not exaggerating the number! There are way too many of them out there, and more are being shot as I type this.
Now, what do I have to do with verticals, you may ask.
Nothing really. I’m not into reels or YouTube videos. My speakers are almost always on mute. And yet, I got lured into the vertical black hole a month or two ago!
It started with such innocence. A reel with a cutesy kid appeared on my Facebook. I couldn’t help but watch her acting. Scarlett Shields is an adorable five-year-old born to rule the screen. It helped that her co-actor in that video was a handsome guy (shhh!).
Facebook smelled my interest… and bam! Similar reels started to flood my feed. Being a curious cat, I watched a couple of those reels and wanted to know more. Imagine my surprise when I found out that an entire niche industry has been growing thanks to social media. The actors in verticals are newbies, models, students, and enthusiasts who want to make a mark in Hollywood. The shoots happen mostly in LA, with many shows being made simultaneously. I didn’t know this until recently.
Naturally, you have to pay the platforms for credits to unlock the episodes. But there are some very generous souls out there who put them together for people like me. This helps with promotion too, so it’s a win-win situation.
As I began to watch the reels and search for the shows, quite a few patterns emerged. Of course, these align with what we see in daily soaps and even mainstream entertainment—an indication of the kind of content people enjoy even as they complain about the lack of creativity and originality. Some plots are inspired by romance novels, or so it seems.
Tropes and Clichés
A huge side effect of social media and influencer marketing is that plots have been reduced to tropes. Now, every book comes with a checklist and tags selected to trigger the algorithm rather than to create a meaningful plot. Verticals are no different.
The leading trope is other woman (OW) drama. Nothing sells like a doormat heroine married to a brainless idiot who is the ‘vamp’s puppet. You’d think this gets boring after a while…. But no! It continues to rule the charts.
The other tropes are:
- Adopted child drama (with two/three brothers and one fiancé, all of them being idiots of the first order)
- Ultra-rich families (all that glitz and glamor)
- Office romance (I haven’t watched enough of them, but secretaries are rather popular… ahem)
- Mistaken identity (apparently, they can’t even tell who they slept with)
- Heiress in disguise (she almost always disappears for three years and leads a pitiful life with a douchebag)
- The ex who leaves the hero but comes back to cause trouble (if only he had some functioning brain cells)
And for some variety, we have subgenres too:
- Alpha romance (yeah, these werewolves are borderline comical)
- Mafia romance (some of them don’t even look like dons)
- Military/ Political romance (Presidents who have too much time on their hands)
- Sports romance (haven’t seen these fully yet)
- STEM romance (thrown in a bit of space, computer code, or a chemical formula)
- Rebirth, some crypto freezing, etc.
For all the fun I make at these tropes, I read half of them in books. In fact, I’ve read tens of books with similar themes because they are comfort reads. In a way, the verticals are no different. They also have an added appeal of some really good-looking artists, trendy clothes, and cool backgrounds.
The Dark Side of Entertainment
I just mentioned good-looking people, and that, right there, takes us to the dark side of entertainment. Verticals are no different from mainstream and OTT content, where hyper sexuality is celebrated, skin show is mandatory, and abuse takes center stage.
While the women are dressed in clothes that are either too revealing, too tight (I wonder how they can even breathe), or too uncomfortable, men are supposed to go shirtless at least 3 times if not more. There has to be a bathroom scene or one where the guy is in a towel so low, it’s a wonder it says on his hips. In one show, the guy was chopping wood shirtless when it was snowing.
Of course, if we compare, the guys do get some leeway as they wear suits more often, while the women have to wear little dresses with impossible heels.
While smut is still okay, abuse is not, at least for me. I cannot bear to watch the extent of deliberate cruelty and physical abuse that characters inflict on each other. It is usually the heroine and her children who are subject to this kind of torture before she grows a spine, dies, or the hero swoops in to save her. In a few instances, the heroine fights back, and such scenes are a bit of relief to watch (you can bet I skim the scenes with abuse or abandon the show). Moreover, I hate it when they kill kids. Ugh!
Vamps and Villains
No story is complete without a villain. As I mentioned, women are popular as villains in daily soaps. Verticals inherited the same trope. Luckily, in many shows, they are supported by male villains. However, the bias shows when it comes to casting.
Did you guess it already?
The same male leads play heroes, morally grey characters, and villains. However, female leads have their roles pretty much fixed. The same six or eight women play the ‘other woman’ roles, be it an evil ex, a jealous sibling, or a bestie sabotaging her friend’s life. I do feel sad for some of them, especially since they are beautiful and better actors than a couple of heroines. Being stereotyped to play the same roles in multiple verticals doesn’t allow much space for growth, doesn’t it? Guess I could say the same about female leads who have to take the on-screen abuse and be such doormats. That can’t be good either, right?
With recycled plots, it starts to feel stale and boring. At least, the male leads get to showcase more acting talent and variety!
There’s Good Stuff Too
I ranted a lot, but verticals have some good stuff too! I like that in quite many shows, the women DO NOT go back to toxic men. They choose themselves or the guys who cherish and respect them. I cannot tell you how satisfying it feels when the heroine walks away from a worthless husband and rebuilds her life with a better man or on her own. Some of them even get revenge! None of that ‘you have to forgive crappy people if they are family’. They choose their own families, much like in the books I read.
The short duration makes them easy to watch in installments. Also, I don’t have to wait forever for the show to end. While some of them have time leaps and are illogical, they don’t drag on and on and on! And if nothing else, some of that drama is so exaggerated that it is hilarious if you stop taking it seriously (that’s what I do many times). Entertainment, but not how they meant it!
What I Want from Verticals
Verticals do have many advantages over other forms of media. However, I wish they would explore their potential a bit more and work on fresh plots rather than rehashing the same old ones with a few tweaks. With some strong scripts, vertical shows can become more popular than what we get on OTT or mainstream entertainment.
