Dave Adler is the epitome of a dreamer. But he’s in denial about it. He thinks he’s different from Tim and Frank, because he is 100 percent going to “make it.” Yet, he is blind to the facts, which are that he has had zero success as a comedian.
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Matt Ritter
With Paige, we wanted to avoid the typical, perfect unattainable girl. We wanted a girl with her own issues and problems. Honestly, how else would she end up down in document review? It’s not a world filled with lookers. So we came up with the backstory that she was in a band and she sort of had a phase were she dated and slept with a lot of drummers.
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Nicole Baxter is Bottom Rung’s Grinch, the character who wants nothing good to happen to anyone down in the dungeon of doc review. Because she has a chip on her shoulder about her lack of education compared to everyone else, she has turned her latest project into a little fiefdom. And she’ll be damned if anyone tries to contest her authority.
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Doc review gunners often race through documents, literally shortening the length of a doc review project. So when Skolnick in Episode 3 explains that he wants to be a “sniper” and snipe his way to the top—whatever that top could possibly be—Tim complains to him that he’s just “taking money out of our pockets.” Throughout the season, you will see dreamers like Tim try to work around Skolnik and his conniving ways.
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Frank Wu is part of the core dreamer group on the Bottom Rung. Much like Tim, though, the term “schemer” would be more appropriate. Deep down, he knows he was probably a gaming nerd who did not get a lot of girls. Now he’s hell-bent on trying to be a big shot like the people he sees in the movies—at least that’s what he tells other people.
On every document review, there is usually one guy who is vocal about the terrible working conditions. In truth, most of us feel this way. But we need the money and say nothing, accepting conditions that are less than ideal—and, on occasion, working conditions that are illegal. Garvey Harris is the guy who thinks all of us need to take a stand. He’s a rabble rouser. The problem is, we have no leverage and the bosses know it. Anyone who makes a peep is summarily dismissed, never to be heard from again, and possibly blacklisted from further doc review work. So we all suffer in silence.
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With Bottom Rung Episode 2 we were trying to capture the essence of a document review “Lifer.” There are different kinds of lifers, some sad ones, like Feldman, and others filled with rage, like Locker in this episode. The one thing that all lifers have in common is disdain for hope.
In this episode the dreamers are just starting to get to know each other and Tim is teasing Dave about chasing his dreams. Any time Locker hears the word “dream” it’s a verbal cue for him to sound off. He knows deep down that everyone will “die down here.” He also has crazy conspiracy theories that you will be hearing about in future episodes.
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Eugene is known as the “second best gunner” and is a pretty hapless guy in an environment filled with hapless guys. He can’t help being a gunner, but he’s not the a-hole that Skolnik is. He just happens to be a really hard worker who is not that bright.
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Meet Feldman. An FIU College of Law grad, he’s a document review lifer who’s been at it for decades, experiencing all the ups and downs of the doc review business—and seemingly always unhappy about it.
I created Bottom Rung out of my own experience doing document review in Los Angeles. Until I moved out to LA in 2010, I worked as a big firm corporate associate in New York and had never heard of document review. A former lawyer and TV writer told me that if I was short on cash, document review was an easy way to earn a stress-free paycheck, allowing me to focus on my comedy work. The reality? Some document reviews can be pleasant and a good fit for someone trying to focus on an alternative career. Other document reviews can be as bad as anything I’ve experienced as an adult.
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