The Downer!

Stuper Powers (term via Rob Rasmussen). Casual football fan, struck by lightning develops ability to see yellow line of potential that always leads to a step towards success. His CGI down-line inspires him to call himself “the Downer.” and no matter his personal goals, the personal yellow line leads the way.

Repo Games

I've always been digusted by the fact that repomen assholes are given a reality show. Just saw an ad for Repo Games, a show where, if the people in debt can properly answer a trivia question, they can keep their shit. An idea for an absurd society where all repomen are restricted by this concept and trivia wizzes gain huge amounts of valuable material with no money by consistently holding off trivia restricted repomen.

Critical and modern re-write of Wells “Time Machine”

Begin with modern era time traveler (TT). TT's first impressions will still be that of beautiful agrarian above ground dwellers and monstrous technological apelike underground dwellers. But as he explores the history and culture of both people he realizes that the both come from the same post-singularity group of humans who fixed the environment with some sort of pseudo science nano-tech. The above ground dwellers become a sort of technologically halted, but art and aesthetic obsessed agriculture society. The underground dwellers are obsessed with purely practical technological development. Their animal like appearance is linked not to de-evolution, but rather to accidental traits gained by genetic enhancement of strength and senses. The story will be an unraveling of the hypocrosies both societies are forced to commit to. Fresh food and other organic materials will come from the surface and technological innovations and media recording and playing devices that suit the art and aesthetics obsessed surface dwellers will come from below. The TT will spend his time analysing and attempting, futilely, to unite the two cultures.
Perhaps explore the taboo but common obsession that both cultures have with each other.
-Sexual fetishism of the other
-Orientalist tendancies, both positive and negative.

TSA Sitcom

Absurd sitcom following a group of TSA agents at work, complete with horrible laugh track. Have wacky neighbor stereotype function as owner/runner of airport shop. All main characters and jokes should be total shallow sitcom stereotypes, while all one appearance travelers should be completely normal, and realistic. Most travelers will be understandably irritated, uncomfortable and or angry as they endure increasingly horrible invasions of privacy and personal violations, all while idiot TSA cast make horrible jokes, that never or rarely have anything to do with what's happening to the traveler victims. Any good humored travelers will be treated with the most vile invasions, perhaps with the exception of a justifiably irate traveler.

This idea will not be valuable for more then a single episode, more likely as a long commercial and irritating jingle. I will, in all honesty, propose a few horrible ideas that wouldn't function as more then this, but as a one shot gag, I find it totally entertaining.

Possible titles include "All Aboard" "TSA-ll Good." Not very good, but should be something insanely cheesy and cheery.

Internal Affairs

Perhaps something like this already exists, but it seems to me that there is a strong sense in police shows and films that internal affairs is a bad thing for the hard working cop. These same shows tend to rely on civilian informants (aka snitches) to bust criminals. It seems to me that the world is badly in need of a show where police willing to enforce the law within their own ranks are regarded as heroes or at least valuable protagonists. Political MC Immortal Technique brought up a valid point in response to the “Stop Snitching” movement, that if police want civilians to inform on criminals, then cops should stop protecting abusive police officers. A special team of cops who root out internal corruption within a large urban police force would make for an emotionally intense politically charged television serial. The members of this teams would have to deal with social separation, threats, and possible violence from within the police force. Push the view of the police department as in internal gang of thugs, with a minority of intelligent manipulators fighting or organizing corruption. This show shouldn't be looking towards realism but rather a parallel opposite of many modern police dramas. Although, the illusion of realism that gritty dark drama provides is not a bad thing to shoot for. (See The Shield for an example of a lot of similar themes).

Episodes would be largely one shots, but with connected themes and villains, all building to major busts or near busts at end season connecting high ranking officers or city officials to police corruption. The key here is to portray the police force as a powerful gang occasionally scattered with a minority of frustrated idealists.

Make This Pitch

So the idea of this blog is to pitch ideas for stories and other projects to friends and possibly the public. All ideas on here are rough thoughts I will likely never try to produce. Many will be playing on pre-established cliches. As such, I consider them open to public use. However, if you are inspired by an idea I post here, I would request that you let me know about it, and ideally let me read or see it. I want to see what comes of this.

I'm going to publish these under a creative commons license that allows you to use and modify these ideas under the condition that you allow the same.

-Brandon Engmark