Tag Archives: sitcom

Rob’s guide to 2014

Do you feel like you were just getting to know 2013? Like it wasn’t until October or November that you finally thought, oh, OK, I get it now, 2013, this is what it’s all about, this is great. And now it’s over, and for what? The teased promise of what could have been, if only you knew what you were doing for the first nine or ten months? It’s kind of like that really cool friend you made during your last semester at college. Where were you hiding this whole time? Why have we never hung out before?

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And then it’s graduation and you both go your separate ways and, even though you make an effort to stay in touch, one of you moves away and the other gets a job and, well it’s not like you have that much of a shared history to fall back on. I mean, yeah, it was cool watching the entirety of Star Trek: The Next Generation together on the Sci-Fi channel. But time flies by, people enter and exit our lives seemingly at random.

Is this what 2014 is going to be like? Are you asking yourself, am I fated to stumble around blindly through the ages, never really getting a grip of where I’m at or what this year is supposed to be all about, not until it’s way too late?

Of course you are. But I’m here to make things a little easier. Even though we’re only at day one, I’ve got 2014 practically all mapped out. And I’m going to share with you some tips and tricks to really squeeze the most out of this year, what would have been the second new-world New Year, if only the Mayan apocalypse had arrived like we were all promised.

Let’s talk 2014 TV. Breaking Bad is over. That’s so 2013. And all of your other favorite TV shows aren’t getting any younger. Do yourself a favor and make sure you catch the second half of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Yes, it’s on Fox, and nobody really watches Fox. But I’m telling you, this is definitely the most underrated show currently on TV. I started watching it almost by accident. I have my Netflix and Hulu all streaming to my TV via a little Roku box I picked up at Costco, and for whatever reason, when one show ends, it gives you like five seconds to play a new program, or it starts streaming something else automatically.

When Brooklyn Nine-Nine started up, I made a pretty decent attempt to find the little wand remote that the Roku came with, but after forty-five seconds or so of not immediately eyeing it within my general vicinity, I gave up and thought, OK, well at least I can dick around on my iPhone until this thing’s over.

I had no desire to watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Aside from the Lonely Island SNL videos, I never found Andy Sandburg to be particularly funny. But this show had me roped in almost immediately. I don’t know what to say besides the fact that it’s really funny. If it survives past season one, I know that it’s going to blow up into something huge. But that’s a big if. Fox has a reputation of cancelling strong shows that don’t immediately post stellar ratings.

And from what I’ve heard, there’s not too much buzz about it. I’m saying this not from looking online or reading any reviews, but just by asking around. Nearly everybody who I’ve inquired about Brooklyn Nine-Nine gave me the same dead stare, like they’d never heard of it, wondering if I was talking about something maybe I dreamt of, but a really strong dream, one that I carried into my waking life, mistakenly believing that I’d happened upon a hidden cool show. But it’s cool. Watch it.

More 2014 advice: Did I talk about Brooklyn Nine-Nine already? I did. Right. OK. What else? Actually, I don’t have anything else. I thought I’d get the ball rolling with the TV show thing and that it would naturally lead to all of my other great 2014 plans, but here we are, I’ve basically written what’s usually a blog post’s length of material here, and I’m kind of thinking that, why force any more out of it? So what, so I only have one half-hour network sitcom serving as the bulk of my plans for the New Year. Whatever. And yeah, I guess I should have just turned it into a straight up review post instead of making it like it’s going to somehow be topical, about today, about New Years. But like I said, I’ve already lost interest. I’ve got plenty of the year left to waste everyone’s time with this nonsense.

Happy New Year.

Siamese Friends

I have this great idea for a TV show, it’s called Siamese Friends, it’s about two friends that get in a terrible car accident. That’s going to play in the intro, every episode, just so you can really get a sense of how bad this crash was. Maybe both cars will explode, I have no idea, I’ll leave that up to the director, but in my script, that’s going to be a stage direction, or a note, “Bad car wreck!”

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And then they’ll both wake up in the hospital, you won’t really see them, the camera will be positioned behind their beds, staring at the attending doctor. He’ll go into this speech, “Boys, I want to tell you how incredibly lucky you two are just to be alive. In my history as a medical practitioner, I’ve never seen two human beings sustain the kinds of injuries you two did.”

The camera will start to swing around, we’ll see the friends, they’ll be relieved. But then they’ll start to squirm a little. The doctor will continue, “However, when the paramedics brought you in, we had to operate extremely quickly. Both of your lives were on the line, and so the lead surgeon stitched you together, figuring that your tattered bodies might stand a better chance at survival if they were sewn together.”

“And it worked,” he’d continue, “But I’m afraid the process is completely irreversible. You’re both sharing several major organs, and your circulatory systems are almost totally fused.” And he’d continue on like that for a while, giving all sorts of medical-sounding explanations as to why they’re going to have to exist in this current state, a pair of conjoined friends.

Naturally, both of the guys are going to be devastated. Their lives are going to be forever altered. But that’s going to be the whole show. They’ll get an apartment together, and each week we’ll watch them try to pick up the pieces of something resembling a normal life.

Like maybe they’ll have two totally different jobs. One of them will be a really rich and powerful stockbroker, but the other guy might only work as a restaurant busboy. And so, thinking that they’ll still be able to sort of manage two separate lives, they’ll each take a stab at running two careers at the same time. That episode will culminate with the broker trying to conduct a business lunch at the same restaurant where the other friend happens to work. And so it’ll be back and forth, negotiating deals while clearing plates and pouring fresh water.

And then later that summer at the corporate picnic, they’ll both get in a really competitive potato sack race, or a three-legged race, I haven’t really planned out the specifics of where exactly these two guys are going to be stitched together. I guess it all depends on how much of a budget I’ll be working with, like if I’m operating on a shoestring, I guess I could just get an oversized sweatshirt and have them both fit inside. But if I have the special effects department at my disposal, I could CGI three legs, one torso, probably any type of attachment.

I don’t know why any of the networks haven’t responded to my emails. I’ve been watching TV lately and I think I speak for most everyone when I say that I’m not especially impressed with the fall lineup. The only thing that NBC had going for it was that show about the wheelchair cop, but that got cancelled after only two episodes. Come on, don’t you guys want to make some great TV? Let’s make Siamese Friends a reality.

Maybe sometime late in season seven, some foreign doctor will visit them, he’ll say that he has a new experimental surgery he wants to try out, “I can make you two separate again!” And they’ll consider it, at first glance, it’ll be everything that they’d ever hoped for. But by the end of that episode, they’ll realize that they love being attached, that what’s better than never being an arm’s length away from your best friend? So they’ll choose to stay conjoined. And that’ll be the last episode. Somebody’s got to help me make this happen. We’ll be rich.