Short Lived – Essa Writes a Sitcom

So I’ve been offline for a bit and the blog and my writing have taken a back seat. But I have a very good reason for this.

I’ve been watching TV.

I recently got a Roku. In case you don’t know what it is, it’s one of those delightful little boxes that allows you to stream internet shows right to your TV, so you don’t have to watch TV on your laptop and get 3rd degree burns on your thighs. Anyway, I’ve been busy doing some important research.

I call it research because after 18 hours of straight TV watching, I had to put on my glasses. In my world, glasses = ‘I’m a scientist’ and ‘I’m a scientist’ = any mundane task counts as research.

Anyway, during all my scientific research, I managed to watch every single episode made of ‘Arrested Development’, ‘Malcolm in the Middle’, ‘My Name is Earl’ and ‘Perfect Strangers’. All of these fantastic shows ended about a decade ago and it leads me to one final conclusion.

The American sitcom is dead.

I bring up those four sitcoms because they strayed from the pack when it came to sitcom making. They weren’t the standard ‘group of friends trying to make it in the city’ or ‘middle class (ethic or non, depending on channel) American family’ formulas. They were different. They did something different. They took a new perspective.

No one seems to do anything different anymore. Instead, television producers keep churning out the same fucking reality shows because they’re easy. I mean, anyone can make a reality show. All you need is 5 people who would do anything for money, some cameras, an unlimited alcohol budget, and you’re done. No wonder no one writes decent sitcoms anymore.

I’ll be the first one to admit that I like “How I Met Your Mother’, but I’m pretty sure the only reason I like it is because I liked it when it was still called “Friends”. No joke, the similarities are creepy. Replace a coffee shop with a bar and they’re practically fucking identical.

I’m tired of the same formulas getting tossed around. I’m tired of laughing, then getting a weird feeling of déjà vu, when I realize that I watched the same fucking thing happen on a television show 10 years ago. I’m tired of feeling like television executives are making fun of me.

So I made my own sitcom. Enjoy.

 

Short Lived

An Essa Alroc Production

The camera pans over a large white building during the opening credits. It lands on a sign. “Shady Oaks Hospice; As Good a Place to Die as Any”. The camera continues. It enters the building and lands on two terminally ill patients, sitting in chairs in a common room. Their names at Leland and Russell.

Leland: What’s that you got there? (He eyes a small baggy that Russell just pulled out of his pocket)

Russell: Black tar heroine. I got it from one of the orderlies.

Leland: Don’t tell me you’re going to try to kill yourself again.

(note to studio execs, Russell’s continued suicide attempts will be a running gag during the show.)

Russell: Just because the last fourteen attempts failed doesn’t mean I have to give up now. How many times do I have to tell you? I put the ‘can’ in ‘cancer’. Now if only I could figure out how to use this stuff. (He pulls out a small black capsule shaped object and looks at it in confusion.)

Leland: (eyes the capsule as well) It looks too big to swallow. Maybe you’re supposed to smoke it?

Russell: (snorts derisively) I don’t smoke, that shit will kill you. Maybe its one of them suppository things?

Leland: (nods) You know, I did see a documentary about people putting heroin in their butts on the discovery channel. Weirdly, they always did it at airports though.

Russell: Yeah, that’s sounds about right. (Russell stands to go to the bathroom. On his way, he runs into non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Larry. Larry is pounding down handfuls of candy that his niece just brought him during visiting hours. He isn’t paying attention and they both crash and fall to the floor. Russell drops his black tar heroine and then grabs a small black capsule off the floor)

Larry: Watch where you’re going man. You nearly made me loose all my black licorice ‘Mike and Ike’s’. You know how hard it is to find this stuff? (A grumpy Larry takes his candy and pops one in his mouth. He ambles off.)

Russell emerges from the bathroom, looking triumphant, after inserting what he thought was black tar heroine into his rectum. He walks back to his chair and sits with only moderate difficulty. Suddenly, Larry goes running past him. He’s screaming.

Larry: Spiders! They’re all over me man! They’re all over me! (He drops to the ground and rolls around, while clawing at his eyes)

Leland: Wow, I seen this on the discovery channel too! It’s what happened when the heroine addicts overdosed.

Russell: (His eyes get wide and he has a flashback to the capsule he picked up off the floor. He realizes he accidentally switched his heroine and Larry’s candy) Aww man, I swore after prison, I’d never have a Mike or an Ike in my ass again. (He lets out an audible fart)

Leland: (sniffs) Do you smell black licorice?

There we go. It took me twelve minutes to write a scene that has never been done on TV before. It included cancer jokes, people putting things in their butts, hilarious mishaps involving people putting things in their butts, man on man prison sex and fart jokes.

Beat that, ABC execs. Now if you’ll all excuse me, I have 217 hours of “Hogan’s Heroes” to watch.