'Lonelygirl15' protagonist gets the axe in season finale
"Bree" is no more.
In the "season finale" of the Web series "Lonelygirl15," which was broadcast in a well-publicized event on Friday on the MySpaceTV platform, the cute teenage protagonist met her death at the hands of a religious cult's sacrifice. A dramatic, soap-opera worthy exit indeed--especially considering that Lonelygirl15's videos were mundane enough at first to fool scores of viewers into thinking they were the real Webcam diaries of a flesh-and-blood teenager.
Lonelygirl15 was exposed as an actress last September, but the video series continued and grew increasingly elaborate. Leading lady Jessica Rose, 20, has since gone on to several movie roles and a regular spot on the ABC Family Channel sitcom Greek, but had continued to play Bree in the meantime.
The video series was occasionally maligned for being cheesy and melodramatic, but at the same time, the production team's tactics--guerrilla filming style, use of multiple platforms and social-networking sites, and interaction with a highly engaged viewer community--was also hailed as an influential step in the evolution of Internet video fiction. Unfortunately for the team behind Lonelygirl15, it may be somewhat telling that most people seem to have learned about Bree's death from blog posts on Monday--it didn't exactly create an online uproar outside of the series' loyal viewer community (some of whom refer to it as "Lonelycrack" on the official Web site). But even though Bree's out, it's apparently not the end of Lonelygirl. A British spinoff, "KateModern," has already started, and there's a chance that future Lonelygirls may appear as well. The final episode, after all, alluded to more young girls being pursued by the same cult. We've e-mailed representatives from the series' small production company and will update this post if they comment.
Fake Steve Jobs unmasked, and now this? What a weekend.
UPDATE (7:34 PM PT): A correction was made to this post. Greek is on ABC Family, not the Disney Channel.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
