JPod

JPod is a novel by Douglas Coupland published by Random House of Canada in 2006. Set in 2005, the book explores the strange and unconventional everyday life of the main character, Ethan Jarlewski, and his team of video game programmers whose last names all begin with the letter 'J'.

JPod was adapted into a CBC television series of the same name co-created by Douglas Coupland and Michael MacLennan. It premiered on January 8, 2008, and ran until its cancellation on March 7, 2008, leaving the series with a permanent cliffhanger. The first thirteen episodes of the series aired in the United States on The CW.

Plot

JPod is an

The JPod staff are required to insert a turtle character based on Jeff Probst into the skateboard game that they are developing as 'BoardX'. The marketing manager, Steven Lefkowitz, mandates the turtle's addition to the game, much to the team's chagrin, to please his son during a custody battle. "JPod" is then drastically challenged and changed when Steve goes missing and the new executive replacement declares further deeply unpopular changes to the game, including changing Jeff the turtle into an adventurous prince who rides a magic carpet, and renaming it "SpriteQuest". The JPodders, upset that they would not be able to finish their game, decide to sabotage SpriteQuest by inserting a deranged Ronald McDonald-inspired character into a secret level where Ronald works malevolence, thus creating a culturally-suitable game for the target market.

Ethan begins to date the newest addition to JPod, Kaitlin, and their relationship grows as she discovers that most of the members of the team, including herself, are mildly

Douglas Coupland, as a character, is inserted into the novel when Ethan visits China to bring a heroin-addicted Steve back to Canada. This Google-version of Douglas Coupland consistently bumps into Ethan and manages to weave himself into the narrator's life. JPod finds itself in a digital world where technology is everything and the human mind is incapable of focusing on just one task.

Related works and influences

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• BookShorts; a short video film depicting characters of JPod was filmed in 2006 by BookShorts.com project with support from Random House Canada.^[1]
• Microserfs; JPod has been described frequently as an updating of Coupland's 1995 novel
  autism, a condition Coupland has himself.^[3][4] In Microserfs, Daniel says that he thinks that all tech people are autistic, and in JPod, Kaitlin describes all of her co-workers and her boss as mildly autistic. On an interesting side note, hugging machines as described in the novel have actually been developed to help those with autism.^[5]
• Sitcoms; JPod was called by one reviewer "a 448 page sitcom".
  Arrested Development
  . The humor mostly originates from character flaws. The characters themselves do not have much depth, and their flaws are exaggerated for comic effect. For example, John Doe is obsessed with being an 'average person' and many of his actions result from this singular character trait.
• Terry;
  Jerusalem Post saying that all of his "more noble character traits went into [Terry]. There was a tar-pit of ooze left over that wanted to go somewhere. JPod was it."^[7]
  This helps to explain the malicious version of Douglas Coupland (Anti-Doug) who appears in the novel.
• Epistolary novels; Parts of the text of JPod are written as e-mails, text messages, and other messages written by the characters themselves. Therefore, JPod can be considered partly an epistolary novel, although much of the novel is also standard narrative format.
• Self-insertion; JPod makes extensive use of the literary device of
  The Divine Comedy
  , and numerous other fictional works.
• Video gaming; JPod draws similarities to several real-life elements of the video gaming world. For example, the company that the characters work at is called Neotronic Arts, which is extremely similar to the real company Electronic Arts. Besides the similarity in the name, both video game companies have their main office in Burnaby, close to the freeway, and both deal heavily in sports games.
• TV series; A TV series based on the novel was produced by CBC and began airing in January 2008. The show starred David Kopp, Emilie Ullerup, Ben Ayres, Steph Song, Torrance Coombs, Colin Cunningham, Sherry Miller, and Alan Thicke. Six of the episodes were written or co-written by Douglas Coupland. The show began airing on Tuesday nights, but because of low ratings it was moved to Friday nights. The continued low ratings resulted in CBC announcing the cancellation of the series in March 2008, despite the fan-based protest that this sparked. A total of 13 episodes were produced. The executive producer of the series, Larry Sugar, blamed CBC for the cancellation, saying that they had not done enough to promote the show.^[8]

Reception

JPod has been received with mixed reception from literary critics. Some felt it is just an unsuccessful update of Microserfs, with no added substance, while others enjoyed its entertaining style and satire.

Favourable

Favourable reviews of JPod largely focus on its entertaining qualities arising from the improbable-probable lives and quirks of the characters. As a Post-Gutenberg novel, JPod is recognized for reflecting the fragmented state of a technology saturated generation, illustrating the stereotype of current generations being unable to concentrate on one item or task for more than a few seconds.

John Elk's review of JPod comments on the novel being an affirmative updating of Coupland's previous Microserfs, for the "Google generation". Coupland is mentioned as being "possibly the most gifted exegete of North American mass culture writing today", with JPod being "his strongest, best-observed novel since Microserfs."^[9] JPod is described as an engaging book, with bizarre characters and devices making it "definitely worth the read" and while it is "not fully satisfying, it is entertaining".^[10]

Another review of JPod describes how the fragmentation of the book relates to the autistic characteristics of the characters. The book is about employees in technology and video game generation, who "paradoxically have superhuman powers on concentration, yet can't seem to focus on anything".^[6] This message is brought up throughout the book, which tends to provoke the reader to really think about the effects of technology on our society.

Unfavourable

On the other hand, many critics were frustrated and irritated by the book. Dennis Lim of The Village Voice called it "smug, vacuous, easily distracted, and often supremely irritating".^[11] He did note, however, that this "may be purposeful, but it's not in service of a meaningful larger point—unless you count the unmissable observation that too much information is, like, overwhelming". John Elk said that Coupland "is neither a master of plot nor of characterization",^[9] and his characters were also called "hollowed-out cartoons".^[11]

Coupland was further criticized by critics like David Daley of