This is a perceptive, dark and funny Web series based on Dan Rhodes' acclaimed short-story collection, Anthropology. The book is composed of 101 chapters, each containing exactly 101 words. Director Victor Solomon has adapted the stories faithfully, having his main character recite Rhodes' prose in voiceover and retaining the book's strong point-of-view.

Each episode is about a man in his twenties who seems to have a new girlfriend every time we see him. He's overwhelmed by the girl's beauty to the point of feeling sorry for her ex-boyfriends, and his wry observations mask a hidden fear that she might leave him.

Beauty is shot in the style of the old silent-movie reels, with each scene viewed through the lens of a Kinetoscope. It's probably the funniest of the videos. The man lists off the ways his girlfriend causes havoc every time she leaves the house (her worst offense being that she once caused “600 unwanted and embarrassing erections”). The generically titled Bulletin is actually the most poetic, as the hero mails progress reports about his girlfriend to all her ex-lovers. The darkest is Pieces, in which kidnappers send his girlfriend's body parts to him.

Each video features lush musical scoring and controlled color schemes, with an emphasis on rich, velvety reds and the blackest of blacks. There's something a little too tasteful and arty about this series for me, but you can't argue that Solomon doesn't know how to get what he wants as a director.