1. "My Two Wives": By a weird fluke, a man has two different marriages registered at exactly the same time, and because the laws of his state forbid marrying when one is already married, but not simply having two wives at the same time, he and his wives slip through the crack. After all, says the lead character, "You tell me which one I married first!" It would be a CBS-type sit-com vaguely like "The King of Queens" (cf Episode 6x24: “Awful Bigamy”) focusing on the obvious humor, yet leaving virtually unaddressed any community response to the situation, which is not kept secret.
2. "The Littlest Country": Vaguely a mix of "Grand Duchy of Fenwick" series and "The Almost Royal Family" 1980s ABC Afterschool Special with a young Sarah Jessica Parker. Due to a treaty fluke centuries ago, a few people find themselves in possession of a teeny tiny independent country within the U.S. It would be either a small plot of land barely holding one building, or somehow simply an office in a building. It would seriously address how international relations work, the complexities arising from such a rather small situation, as well as the personal lives of these people who can literally spit from one end of their country to another.
3. "Vanity Plates": alternate title, "Insanity Plates": NBC Monday Night Movie with French Steward-type actor playing guy whose personalized license plates were the very last made by a psycho prisoner, who hunts the fellow down out of vengeance (reminiscent of the gas station scene in "The Jerk"). A series of near-misses ensues as the lead character realizes he is being stalked, and he goes on the run with a 1980s Nancy Allen-type character. Eventually the bad guy is stopped, and the couple live happily ever after, though with new license plates.
4. "A Cat's World": Barely if hardly at all "Cats and Dogs"-derived, it features a world where domesticated felines are intelligent and speaking, and secretly manipulating events in the world. Very little human politics will be discussed.
5. "Cats and Men": Features a world where domestic cats are openly intelligent and speaking. Takes off on numerous works, like "The Country Bears," where two or more sentient species or living types coexist. Societally, cats would continue to live as pets or strays as they do today, but as independent and free beings as recognized by law. They would be legally recognized as such, but politics would rarely be discussed, and it would decidedly NOT be used as a PC vehicle calling for racial harmony or some such thing. The world featured would be geared from the beginning around both humans and domesticated felines being intelligent, each accepting their respective roles.
6. "The Furry Alliance": An alien attack on Earth with a radiation intended to lower human intellect to that of cats and dogs is somehow reversed, leading to most humans being killed, but cats and dogs being elevated in intelligence, as well as made more bipedal (two-legged) in form. These animals, who really seem to have absorbed a lot more information during their pre-attack lives than one might think, form an alliance with the few humans left to defeat the aliens. In one humorous scene, a dog admiral at a staff meeting uses a laser pointer to cause a cat general to compulsively paw at the dot on the table. While the dog quietly goes, "Hee hee hee!" the human in charge of the meeting says, "Stop that!"
7. "Home Movies": Now-obsolete idea about a family or small collection of friends who live in a motor home parked at a drive-in theater. A variant would make it a "Riptide"-type collection of private investigators. Basic comedy-drama, with whatever movie playing having big role in the tone and flow of the show, as well as dealings with the theater management. My worry is that the drive-in element would be lost in later seasons, kinda like how "Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place" became "Two Guys and a Girl."
8. "The Crash": Internet usage overtakes server capacity, causing a complete shutdown of the Net, and many other facets of our civilization. The action that puts it over the top is a young girl in "a midwestern city" (Kansas City, MO) posting a picture of her kitty on a website. The story would follow four stories: 1. A soldier deployed to "a country in southeastern Europe" (Kosovo) who has to do his work manually; 2. The aforementioned girl and her family dealing with the social chaos. 3. A family in a smaller city near that city; and 4. a National Guardsman in the area who knows the girl because he helped run the website to which she was posting. A major part of the story would feature rioting in the city, revealed when the family in story 3 sees the glow from the city at night, then remembers that the power is still out (scene cuts to burning neighborhoods). The Guardsman pulls some strings (and a 9mm sidearm) to get his friend and her family out of the city (vague similarity to Will Smith taking the helicopter in "Independence Day"), while Guard units surround it to contain the rioting. In a nod to "Titanic," there is a scene where some angry city residents are threatening to charge a road barrier, and two Guardsmen point their rifles to stop them. One says, in a fake British accent, "Back I say! Or I'll cut you down like dogs!" (nod to the "Titanic" scene where the sailor holds back crowds with a revolver). His buddy looks sideways at him, and the speaker says, "Hey, I saw the movie!" |
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