A 2005 graduate of Emerson College's acting conservatory and currently a Chicago resident, Lewis describes his webisodes thusly: "A young and frustrated director and a young and frustrated actress fumbling their way through the first stages of their artistic careers in Chicago use their real lives, their real careers and their real romance as the basis for a fictional story about a young and frustrated director and a young and frustrated actress fumbling their way through the first stages of their artistic careers in Chicago." In this YouTube director's statement, Lewis lets us know that the project is metapersonal, but just how much soul has he bared?

With a project this low-budget and self-reflexive, it would be easy to lump Lewis' work in with that of the directors in the quasi-guild labeled 'Mumblecore.' Like another Joe from Chicago, Lewis utilizes plenty of improvisation and a hand-held digital video camera as he chronicles the lives of post graduates who just aren't sure about what's next. But Miss Girl's visuals are more stylized than what we have come to expect from a digi-flick about chatty young adults.

Lewis vacillates between color and black and white but borders his image with a hot hue that never leaves the screen. Occasionally, a vibrantly colored object will appear in a black and white scene, lending a hint of magical realism to the grayscale of daily life. This same enchanted idea about color is present in Tyler B. Nice, Lewis' first feature, a modern-day melodrama produced more than a year before Miss Girl. This visual approach adds an unexpected, and very welcome, flavor to these tales of modern angst.

Lewis' stylistic quirks don't stop at his color philosophy. Miss Girl is complemented by an ambient electronic score by Melody Nife and series-centric comics by emo/indie/nerd genius Jeffrey Brown. Brown's crudely rendered and oddly sweet tales of twentysomething love-gone-wrong share major concerns with Lewis' work. And, with Lewis' love for colorful borders, Miss Girl itself takes on the appearance of a graphic novel come to life.

No stranger to drama, Lewis' feet are planted firmly in the world of theater. Currently holding a gig as an actor and director in a children's theater company, Lewis pulls from his conservatory training to lend a certain purposefulness to the improvisatory nature of his scenes. It's obvious that he doesn't allow his actors to meander from their assigned intentions, injecting each scene with a palpable tension.

Some of this tension may be the result of the relationship at the show's center. Lewis stars in the nine episode arc, along with real life ex, Austin Marie Sayre. Playing a character not-so-loosely based on himself, the Lewis of Miss Girl is far from flattering but also endearing in his heady combination of wit and petulance. Sayre is as elegant as they come. And sharp. There is a certain sweetness to their relationship in the first few episodes, but things grows more and more uneasy as the season progresses. Lewis' character directs his gal-pal in an ill-fated production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. She flirts with her cute co-star to relieve some of her frustration. The couple's apartment feels way too small. By the end of the sixth episode, Sayre tells Lewis "things are not going well."

As a gossip-guzzling Perez Hilton reader, I wanted to ask first, "How much of this is real?" The answer: A lot. After a year of cohabiting in Chicago, Ms. Sayre, as opposed to Miss Girl, headed off to Los Angeles to pursue her acting career. "We'd always wanted to make a movie about us," Lewis says, and so the couple mined the last months of their affair to create a funny, honest and at times heartbreaking portrayal of young lovers growing apart. Almost Shakespearian in its quiet, humor-laced tragedy, the series feels as though it is hiding a dark secret. Says Lewis: "The secret, if there is one, is that she moved."

The final episode has not yet aired, but I wonder if the character of Miss Girl will follow the same path as her real life counterpart. If Lewis' fervent and fluid life-meets-art approach to the series is any indication, I suspect she will.

To watch the series visit www.theadventuresofmissgirl.com.

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