Stuff I Think Up When I Spend Too Much Time Alone

I have taken to reading NY Magazine online lately. Today I read about the return of the "Down-Market Sitcom", where we can all rediscover the hilarity of an Archie Bunker type standing on an unemployment line and meeting a down on his luck banker (I actually remember this episode).

One of the new shows around this seems to star Michael Strahan of all people "as a former NFL pro who returns home to help his wheelchair-bound sibling". This gives me pause. I few years ago I floated a 1 page outline around for a potential high end cable TV series. The concept was simple and inspired by a Chris Rock stand up routine that end with the point that a guy's whole job as a dad was to keep his daughter "off the pole". I thought there was a lot to that idea and outlined something about a fairly middle class guy who gets in a car accident and gets into a coma. He wakes up 15 years later and his wife has moved on and remarried and had a perfectly nice life. While he was away his now 20 year old daughter had a daughter of her own and became a mid level stripper somewhere in a somewhat emotionally taxing relationship with a deadbeat. The first season would be about him figuring out where he fit in, rehabbing physically (he was in a wheel chair due to his muscles atrophying) and ultimately settling with his daughter who could use help of the form he could not provide. It would of course be a light comedy. No one liked it, calling it too depressing...

I’m pumped, my time might be now.