USA Network’s New Fall Dramedy

By Ed Aschbrunner

HOLLYWOOD- Let me begin by saying that I am not a television executive. Nor am I a producer, a show runner, a writer, or even a below-the-line PA. I don’t know the first thing about getting television shows on the air, but I have watched enough mindless commercials on the USA Network to pick up a thing or two. I’m not sure whether they made a concerted effort to produce a bunch of shows that have basically identical premises, or if it happened by mistake. When I look at the five or six most recent shows they have aired on their network, I definitely have a pretty good idea of what their executives like to hear in a pitch meeting.

I will boil down every USA Network dramedy down to its base elements for you in Mad Lib form: “Displaced former [insert exciting/prestigious profession here] is forced to leave his/her job and he/she has to learn the ropes of being a [insert tangentially related, less exciting/prestigious profession here], all while dealing with his/her crazy friends and family in an exotic locale. Hilarity ensues.”

If there was one show that followed this archetype, it wouldn’t mean anything. If there were two, it would be a coincidence. If there were three, we could roll our eyes at USA because they had clearly decided to piggyback on one successful show with a couple of others. But they have at least five of these shows that have the exact same premise. I’m not even sure that one of the shows was successful, so the only explanation I can imagine is that NBC rejected most of these ideas but wanted to promote the actors use them in a more interesting project on the parent network somewhere down the road. The ideas are just so bereft of creativity that I can’t accept that a TV executive would green-light them in good faith. I can’t accept it.

Think about it: Burn Notice- a former spy has to leave the agency to work as a private investigator in Miami while his old agency hunts him down. Royal Pains- a doctor moves to the Hamptons to start working as a physician to the rich and famous at their mansions. Fairly Legal- a former big city attorney becomes a sassy mediator in fast-paced Manhattan. White Collar, In Plain Sight, Covert Affairs. It’s all the same shit packaged with a different profession in a different city with different wacky friends and relatives.

So here’s my idea. You start with a sexy profession that will get people interested. It can’t be something remotely blue collar because the show has to be a sort of prism into the lives of the more interesting. I’m going to go with fighter pilot. There hasn’t been a good fighter pilot show or movie since Top Gun, so the job should slide nicely back into the national consciousness. But the guy has to have suffered some misfortune that prevents him continuing to be a fighter pilot, and it can’t be his fault. I want my star to be a roguish playboy named Bradley Austin (ooh, be careful, two first names!), so I’m going to say that he got into a bar fight over a girl and injured his eye, so he no longer has perfect vision and can’t be a fighter pilot any longer. I don’t know if Ryan Phillipe’s career has fallen far enough to take this role, but I have my fingers crossed.

[Look, Mr. Phillippe, I know this isn't how you saw your career going. But a paycheck's a paycheck.]

He also needs a new job that is somehow vaguely related to this old job, is clearly a step down in prestige, but is still interesting enough for people to tune in. He’s a pilot for a private helicopter company that rents out its service to the oh-so-very rich. That serves the dual function of putting him in high-pressure situations and setting up for some great B-Reel footage of gorgeous city skylines and landscapes. It’s also more plausible to bring in hot romantic counterparts if they are the wives and girlfriends of rich guys who rent out the helicopters.

The location, if you haven’t already figured it out for yourself, is Los Angeles. It’s almost too easy. You can do cameos by C-List actors who you can put in your commercials- “This week, Bradley has to fly Corey Feldman to Michael Lohan’s celebrity high-stakes poker game, or he risks losing his $50,000 buy-in! Will he make it through an earthquake?” Plus, in L.A., you can do the old Entourage trick and just pan through the streets of L.A. showing hot women, cool cars, and beautiful weather for 1/3 of your show’s airtime if you run out of ideas.

Lastly, we need to add some relation who complicates the story. I have two ideas. First, Bradley’s best friend is Gerry White, a black guy who he met in the Air Force who is still in the service, but who inexplicably is always available at a moment’s notice. He’s the only guy in the show who might be more suave than Bradley, and they frequently try to one-up each other trying to pick up women, playing bar games, and racing fast cars through busy freeway traffic while identifiable and adrenaline-boosting songs by Disturbed play in the background. Oh, and both Bradley and Gerry somehow have multiple high-end cars, motorcycles, and other accoutrements that are WAY out of their earnings brackets. If this guy sounds like he’s ripped off from Terrance Howard’s character in Ironman, it’s because he is. I wonder if Donald Faison is available?

And here’s the kicker. Bradley’s dad is a successful politician who objects to Bradley’s carousing ways. Played by J.K. Simmons, Terry Austin is a California Senator who can’t put up with Bradley jeopardizing his career. Being a Senator introduces a natural tension and opens up the possibility for countless other plot devices down the road. I suppose there has to be at least one recurring female character. Aisha Tyler can be his hot coworker at the helicopter rental company with an attitude.

So here’s the short version, “Bradley Austin was a hotshot pilot in the Air Force [shot of him flying a plane and yelling “Woooohoooo!] until an eye injury got him a medical discharge. Now, he’s partying his way through Los Angeles [shot of him taking shots at a bar and general revelry]. But it’s not all fun and games. He’s learning the ropes of being a helicopter pilot to the stars [clip of Mark Cuban yelling at him to hurry up] all while trying to keep his politician father off his back [shot of J.K. Simmons shaking his head in disappointment]. This fall, it’s Ryan Phillippe in The Son Also Rises on USA. Characters Welcome.”

Japan Deploys Old People to Solve Nuclear Problem

By James Hornung

TOKYO- The nation of Japan, facing a potential nuclear meltdown after a catastrophic tsunami, has faced the difficult situation of having workers risk life and limb to repair the radioactive site. To reconcile the problematic situation, the nation’s government has begun to ask its senior citizens to take the lead in the recovery effort.

The government cited several reasons why it chose old people to help deal with the potentially disastrous reactor. Perhaps the most important reason is that they will have less to lose. The Japanese are famously efficient people, sometimes trading sentimentality for better production, so it comes as no surprise that they would see the value in risking the lives of 80 year olds rather than young people with valuable lives still ahead of them. Moreover, nuclear radiation is a leading cause of birth defects, and if those exposed to radiation are well past their child-bearing years, it naturally follows that it minimizes the risk of birth defects.

[LEFT- While these volunteers are willing to help, they have long lives ahead of them that the government would like them to continue living. Old people don't have that same problem.]

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan explained the decision. “We were faced with a terrible situation that left us no good choices, so we had to try to find the least bad alternative. Sending our old people into a radioactive nuclear power plant is certainly not optimal. I’m sure that some of our nation’s finest soup recipes and fishing stories will never come out of those reactors, but the job has to be done. On the positive side, killing off many of our old people will save the young from many unpleasant trips to nursing homes. Also, there’s no scientific basis for this, but I have been thinking that if they melt on the spot like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, we won’t need to bury their remains, which will save some space in our already crowded country.”

Mr. Kan was also asked how the country arrived at the age of 65 as the cutoff for who would be asked to enter the nuclear reactor. He responded, “because I’m 64 and this should be over in a few months.”

It would seem as though Japan is depending heavily on old people either being extremely civic-minded or borderline suicidal. To help motivate people to volunteer for a very undesirable job, the government has developed a detailed marketing plan. As with most Japanese marketing plans, it will involve cartoon kitties telling people to go into the nuclear reactors and will remind viewers that not going into the reactor would bring great shame to the country and family. Perhaps the most brilliant part of the marketing plan is the strategy to target former kamikaze pilots from World War II. The advertisers plan to guilt trip the survivors for not completing their jobs during the war and blaming them for the eventual loss of the war. They will also tell them that they only way they can make up the great debt to their country is to perform a similar act of self-sacrifice by going into the nuclear reactor to repair the damage.

The trickiest part of the project is that nobody has any idea how to actually fix the nuclear reactor. The best solution they have come up with so far is to pour seawater on it because it looked like it was getting too hot. Nuclear physicist Yoshi Nakamura explained that

the country and its scientific community are in uncharted territory. “We’re just going to tell the old people to go in there and see if it looks like anything is broken. Hopefully, they will just sort of suck up the radiation and the power plant will stop glowing and pulsating. Every time we send someone in there, they get instantly evaporated. We are going to try sending a lot of people in together to see if the radiation targets only a few of them, and we’re going to cover them in mud so they don’t overheat as quickly. Now that I think about it, the radiation sounds

a lot like the Predator. I’m going to suggest to the panel to try to make it bleed, because it is a well established scientific principle that if it bleeds, it dies.”

[RIGHT- An artist's rendering of what the radiation may look like.]

If you are interested in applying to help fix the broken nuclear reactor, you are over 65 years of age, and you have a horrible feeling of shame that causes you to want to die, but you still want to help Japan, contact Japanese Union of Plutonium Engineers for more information.

Aborting a Retarded Fetus Is Better that Giving a Retarded Baby Up for Adoption

By Frank Medlock

Is there a more self-serving and offensive thing a person could possibly do? Tempting to do, of course, rather than give up the rest of your life taking care of a kid whose best outcome is to sort of be able to take care of himself. But there is no greater burden you could possibly put on the rest of society.

Before I go any further, I want to address the readers who are put off by the fact that I am using the word “retarded.” I’m not going to stop using, and there are two reasons. First, it is the most general and descriptive word. Everyone knows what it means and it’s in the DSM-IV because it is the official term for the variety of disabilities. Also, the word is not inherently bad. I don’t care if it has been used in a hateful context. The word itself means that the person’s psychological development was impeded in some way. The development was retarded. The person was retarded. The word makes sense. The word “nigger” was invented to express disdain. The word “faggot” was adopted from the idea that gays should be burned to death. Those are inherently hateful words. Whatever hate is in the word “retarded” is just a reflection of social reality. If you come up with a new word to replace it without changing the fact that retarded people are looked down on socially, then that word will eventually be considered hateful too. “Nigger” was replaced by “negro” when blacks were still extremely marginalized, so that word eventually became perceived as hateful. If you replace “retarded” with “developmentally disabled,” middle school kids are still going to use it to make fun of each other, and activists will eventually get pissed off that the word is being used. Then we’ll have to find another new word, which I would say is pretty retarded.

But back to the point, there are definitely arguments for why you should be able to give up a retarded baby for adoption. On one hand, it’s kind of hard not to be sympathetic. I mean, all we hear about is how having kids changes your life and how every parent’s life revolves around his or her kids, but there’s a pretty big step up from going to soccer games or piano recitals and wiping your 22 year-old’s ass for the fourth time of the day. Maybe the worst part would be the period before the child is born but after you have found out that the baby is going to be retarded. Anticipating the misery that is to come would be atrocious. Well, I guess that’s not the worst part. The worst part is still having to spend every free minute trying to prevent your retarded kid from causing a total disaster. I admit that when you’re staring down the barrel of that gun, it would be hard to avoid pulling the adoption trigger.

On the other hand, the decision to give up the retarded baby for adoption is basically saying, “Hey, my life is too important to be disrupted by taking care of a retarded baby.” Maybe you could delude yourself into thinking that someone else wants to take care of the baby, but that is a lie. Nobody affirmatively wants to take care of a retarded baby; people just have an appropriate sense of responsibility not to throw that job on the government or some random person. They know that it is arrogant and self-centered beyond belief to think that someone else should have the completely thankless job. Believing that someone really wants to raise the retarded child is like thinking that people like picking up their dogs’ shit. Nobody likes it; you just do it because it would be fucked up to leave it for someone else to do.

Giving up a retarded kid for adoption would probably destroy the rest of your life. How could you ever feel good about yourself after doing something like that? You wouldn’t donate money to charity, because it’s not like you’re ever going to get back on the positive side of that ledger. You might still have friends, but you would always know that the friends probably look down on you for being a selfish prick, and they’d constantly worry that you’re going to pass off some responsibility on them instead of taking care of your own business. Anything you ever did would be under a dark cloud of guilt, knowing that the fun you’re having is only possible because you completely dicked over someone else who is probably spending that time reassembling a book case that your biological child tore apart for no apparent reason.

There is an obvious solution here, but you probably don’t want to hear it. When you weigh all of the options, you pretty much have to abort the fetus that is going to become a retarded baby. Think about the other possibilities. If you keep the baby, you will ruin your entire life. You are taking on a responsibility that will take up all of your time, and will not be remotely enjoyable. What you now think of as a horrible day will become a pretty good day, and there won’t be anything better. If you give the baby up for adoption, you will be annihilated by guilt for the rest of your life, and that feeling will be justified. You will have taken all of that evil I just described and passed it onto someone else. From a net social value standpoint, it’s even worse than keeping it because there is one life ruined by responsibility and another ruined by guilt. However you feel about abortion, you have to admit that it’s the socially optimal outcome. The only way to deny that argument is to say that someone would actually derive happiness from raising a retarded child, and I already explained why making that argument proves that you are a self-centered jerk.