I’ve reviewed a lot of Collegehumor’s web series for their Dropout subscription service, but perhaps one of the most unique ones is Total Forgiveness. It’s a 10-episode series that I doubt will ever get a second season because of its concept alone, but it’s an interesting and fun ride while you’re on it.

Two of Collegehumor’s cast members, Grant and Ally, both have a tremendous amount of student loan debt from their college years. They use this to their advantage with Total Forgiveness. The premise here is that Grant and Ally will challenge one another to do some kind of crazy task. Collegehumor has agreed to put forth money for each of these challenges, and so if they complete their task, they’ll get some more money towards their student loans. If they don’t complete the task, the other person will get that money. There are 10 challenges each for Grant and Ally, and each one winds up getting crazier since there is more and more money on the line. And so, it’s a competition where Grant and Ally see just how far they’ll go in order to get their student loans paid.

I absolutely loved the idea of this show, and luckily Grant and Ally are up to the challenge. It’s crazy to see what these two are willing to go through just for money, but it makes so much sense given their financial situation. The challenges start off reasonably light. The first episode gives Ally the challenging of Skyping one of her ex-girlfriends while eating spicy food, while Grant has to have leeches crawling over his body for a half hour. These challenges get crazier and crazier, though, with some including tasks like having to do stand-up comedy with bad material written for you, having to get your partner’s name tattooed on you, having to stay in bed with a snake, or having to take a shit in public. The lengths that these two go in order to pay off their college debt is crazy, and it provides for a really entertaining experience.

It’s also surprisingly emotional at times too. The show delves deeply into Grant and Ally’s financial situations, and it’s sad when you realize that the price of college puts people so far into debt that they’re willing to do the things that they do to pay it off. Without even really trying, Total Forgiveness provides some great social commentary on the state of college tuition, and how people are affected by it. The nature of the challenges also puts a heavy strain on Grant and Ally’s friendship, and so it’s sad to see the deterioration of their friendship due to the nature of the game. Like with all reality TV, it’s possible that some of this is staged/scripted, but the creators do claim that their friendship really did get strained during the making of this.

I would love to see more of Total Forgiveness, even if I’m not sure how a second season would work. Even after all of this, Grant and Ally are still in plenty of debt (and this is after a total of $50,000 was put forth for this competition from Collegehumor), so we could always have them do more challenges. Or we could see other people compete for the same thing. Regardless of whether or not this series continues on, though, I’m glad that we got a season of it at all, because it was one of the most unique pieces of reality TV I’ve seen in a while.

4.5/5