AFTER A CHANCE MEETING AT A STRANGER’S FUNERAL, GREG AND LUNA DEVELOP AN UNLIKELY BOND THROUGH THEIR SHARED INTEREST IN ATTENDING RANDOM EVENTS.
ABOUT
Happenstance is a web series that straddles the line between dark and light comedy. Heartbreak, death, and mental illness are explored with reverent irreverence, finding the humor in life’s tragedies. At its core, Happenstance is a story about friendship and how it can be found in the most unexpected people. It’s like Broad City meets Harold & Maude in the time of smartphones.
SYNOPSIS
The series centers around the unlikely friendship of Greg and Luna. Greg is a straight-laced, average guy in his late 20s who is used to playing by the rules. Luna is a queer and quirky 20-year-old with a free-spirited approach to life. The one thing they do have in common: bubble hopping.
Bubble hopping is the practice of attending random events as assigned by an internet algorithm. The intention of bubble hopping is to challenge comfort zones and expand life experiences beyond immediate circles.
Greg and Luna first cross paths at a stranger’s funeral where they must bullshit their way through conversations with attendees who actually knew the deceased. By sheer happenstance, their paths cross once again at a speed dating event where neither of them is there to actually date. After realizing that they both participate in bubble hopping, they begin to intentionally attend events together. They find themselves going to everything from a hippie birthing class to a conservative politician's campaign fundraiser. As they attend more events together, they begin to break down their respective walls and open up to each other--Greg, about his recent devastating breakup, and Luna, about her mental health struggles and the death of her mother.
SIGNIFICANCE & INTENTIONS
Happenstance seeks to portray characters and subjects that are often underrepresented in film and do so in a way that is accessible and opens them up to further conversation.
The story is centered on the friendship between a man and a woman, but it purposefully stays clear of the “will they/won’t they get together” trope that is so commonly found in stories featuring male/female friendships.
Luna’s character is an unapologetically queer woman during a time when representations of queerness in media are still lacking. Therefore, it’s important to include more LGBTQ characters in film. She also lives with mental illness and struggles with the death of her mother by suicide. Mental illness and suicide are not often discussed openly, either in film or society in general. Happenstance seeks to normalize these and other taboo topics, show that they are realities of life that should not have to be hidden, and even find a bit of humor in the darkness.