Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
Scene:\u00a0 a cluttered office, a fat, balding man chewing a cigar, reading a script and scowling at it.\u00a0 A young man steps into the doorway and raps on the door, three times, quickly.<\/p>\n
Writer:\u00a0 Boss, I\u2019ve got a great idea for a new show.\u00a0 It\u2019s a political thriller, got action, intrigue, it\u2019s great.<\/p>\n
Boss:\u00a0 Yeah?\u00a0 Siddown and lay it out for me.<\/p>\n
Boss tosses the script he was reading onto his desk and leans back in his chair, studying the young man.\u00a0 Young man sits down, butt on the edge of the seat, and leans forward, speaking eagerly<\/p>\n
Writer:\u00a0 okay, there\u2019s the guy, see?\u00a0 And he works for the FBI.\u00a0 He\u2019s a true patriot, he hates the way the country is going and he wants to help a good candidate get elected. \u00a0He makes a donation like everybody in the office, but he wants to do more.\u00a0 All the sudden, he finds himself assigned to investigate his favorite candidate for breaking the law.\u00a0 But he doesn\u2019t want to do it, see?\u00a0 But he has to, see?\u00a0 So there\u2019s dramatic tension.<\/p>\n
Boss: yeah, but the law is the law.\u00a0 What\u2019s he gonna do?<\/p>\n
Writer:\u00a0 that\u2019s the cool part.\u00a0 He interviews the candidate but he \u201cforgets\u201d to put her under oath.\u00a0 So none of her answers can be used against her, right?\u00a0 And there\u2019s a suspicious death tied to the charges but he knows this candidate has a long trail of suspicious deaths and shady dealings so he\u2019s afraid she might be involved with this one, too.\u00a0 So he doesn\u2019t want to investigate that, see?\u00a0 But he\u2019s torn about it, see, because maybe she really is as crooked as the rest of them.\u00a0 But maybe she\u2019s not, and besides, her opponent is a real jerk.\u00a0 So he calls the death a \u201crobbery gone bad\u201d and when his boss is going to make a press announcement saying the candidate broke the law, our guy changes it to say she did NOT break the law.<\/p>\n
Boss: wait, why wouldn\u2019t the boss notice the change?<\/p>\n
Writer:\u00a0 the boss isn\u2019t a cop, he\u2019s a political hack, a time-serving moron.\u00a0 So he goes along with the charade and the candidate gets away with the crime and stays in the election.<\/p>\n
Boss: okay, weak, but we can work with it.<\/p>\n
Writer: wait, it gets better!\u00a0 His candidate loses the election.<\/p>\n
Boss: what the hell?\u00a0 How\u2019s that help?\u00a0 The show\u2019s over.<\/p>\n
Writer: no, no, it\u2019s just getting started.\u00a0 The candidate was supposed to win, see?\u00a0 All the polls said so. All the experts said so.\u00a0 She was so far ahead, she didn\u2019t even campaign the last week, the election was in the bag. \u00a0She booked a hall and ordered fireworks and had her victory speech written and when she lost, it was stunning.\u00a0 The talking heads on tv were stunned.\u00a0 The losing candidate was drunk two days, couldn\u2019t give a concession speech.\u00a0 Total disaster.\u00a0 And meanwhile, the smug jerk who won the election is all over Twitter rubbing it in, offering her five cents on the dollar for the fireworks she doesn\u2019t need anymore.<\/p>\n
Boss: yeah, so?\u00a0 Sounds like a depressing show.\u00a0 Nobody wants to watch that.<\/p>\n
Writer:\u00a0 Yeah, yeah, but our guy, remember him?\u00a0 He\u2019s in the FBI.\u00a0 They see all kinds of wacko stuff, all kinds of nuts and goofballs with conspiracy theories.\u00a0 So he\u2019s devastated that his gal lost and the jerk won and he\u2019s sitting at his desk moping when he glances at this file on his desk.\u00a0 Some kook claims the jerk was in cahoots with the Russians to help him steal the election and he stayed in a Russian hotel where a team of hookers gave him a golden shower right on the hotel bed.<\/p>\n
Boss: whoa, whoa, we can\u2019t put that stuff on television.\u00a0 Not in prime time.<\/p>\n
Writer: okay, so maybe we don\u2019t show it on screen<\/p>\n
Boss: but maybe a special episode on cable?\u00a0 Pay per view?\u00a0 Hmmmm.<\/p>\n
Writer: yeah, yeah!\u00a0 Like that.\u00a0 And anyway, so our guy, he sees this folder and he knows it\u2019s bullshit but he thinks \u201cIf only the public knew what a jerk that guy is.\u201d\u00a0 Just then his boss walks by and says \u201cI\u2019m headed to brief the President-Elect, anything new I should know?\u201d And all the sudden, on impulse, our guy hands his boss the folder and says \u201cYou might want to warn him this stuff is going around, so he doesn\u2019t get blind-sided.\u201d\u00a0 The boss, being a dope, doesn\u2019t realize it\u2019s a set-up, he thinks our guy is being all noble and professional, so the boss goes right along.\u00a0 But one of the long-term staff people in the President\u2019s briefing sees the dossier is political dynamite and leaks it to his buddies in the press. \u00a0Ka-boom, huge political outrage, our guy\u2019s losing candidate gets cheered up, the president-elect looks like an idiot, our guy is grinning like crazy.<\/p>\n
Boss: and then?<\/p>\n
Writer:\u00a0 and then things get interesting.\u00a0 The losing candidate\u2019s political party seizes on the Russian Collusion angle and demands an investigation.\u00a0 The new Attorney General is a another political appointee, not used to how the game is played in the bureaucracy, so he recuses himself.<\/p>\n
Boss: excuses himself?<\/p>\n
Writer: no, recuses.\u00a0 He steps aside and lets the long-term staffers handle it.\u00a0 And they all hate the new President.\u00a0 So the staffers convince the new President the only way to clear his name is to appoint a special investigator.\u00a0 And they recommend their old boss, who they assure him is a straight shooter, which he is \u2013 straight in your back.\u00a0 But the new President doesn\u2019t know that, see, so the new President goes along with it.<\/p>\n
Boss: inside baseball.\u00a0 boring.<\/p>\n
Writer: no, wait!\u00a0 The special investigator hates the new President, too.\u00a0 And he hires a team of assistants to help him, all of them hate the new President.\u00a0 And here\u2019s the best part \u2013 he decides that for his top assistant on the team, he needs the guy who knows the most about the collusion.\u00a0 He needs the guy who discovered the folder.\u00a0 He needs OUR GUY!\u00a0 Our guy is now the top assistant on the team investigating the new President.<\/p>\n
Boss:\u00a0 okay, more interesting.\u00a0 Keep going<\/p>\n
Writer:\u00a0 so our guy is only part of the investigation, he can\u2019t go after the President directly.\u00a0 But he remembers that during the campaign, his team used a little \u201ccreative phrasing\u201d to convince a judge to let them wiretap some people in the jerk\u2019s campaign.\u00a0 And one of those people is now the new President\u2019s aide.\u00a0 Our guy drops by the aide\u2019s office to chat and just happens to ask some questions about one of the wiretapped conversations.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t tell the aide he\u2019s under investigation, the aide doesn\u2019t have a lawyer present, the conversation isn\u2019t recorded, but our guy goes back to the office and dummies up some notes in the file as to what our guy claims the aide said.<\/p>\n
Boss:\u00a0 so?<\/p>\n
Writer: so our guy walks into the special investigator\u2019s office and says \u201cHey, the President\u2019s aide lied to me.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what he said on the wiretap and here\u2019s what he told me in person.\u00a0 He\u2019s a liar.\u00a0 We can prosecute him for lying and maybe get him to roll over on his boss, testify against the President.\u201d\u00a0 So the special prosecutor is liking that and ready to run with it but our guy screws up.\u00a0 See, he\u2019s married but he\u2019s also having an affair with an FBI lawyer \u2013 that\u2019s the love interest and we can get some steamy scenes out of that, too \u2013 and our guy sends his lover some texts bragging about his scam.\u00a0 But somehow the texts leak<\/p>\n
Boss: how?<\/p>\n
Writer: I\u2019m working on that. \u00a0But anyway, the texts leak and the special investigator finds out our guy is bent so his testimony is worthless, \u00a0but the special investigator really hates the President so he quietly reassigns our guy out of the way for a bit while he tries to finesse the aide into pleading guilty so he can get something to use against the President.<\/p>\n
Boss: wait \u2013 what happened to our guy?\u00a0 I thought this show was about him?<\/p>\n
Writer: he\u2019s reassigned to Human Resources to lay low until it blows over.\u00a0 The special investigator temporarily becomes the star of the show.\u00a0 It\u2019s like when the main star is pregnant so the co-star gets a few episodes, you know?<\/p>\n
Boss: yeah, okay.\u00a0 Then what?<\/p>\n
Writer: well, that\u2019s as far as I\u2019ve gotten.\u00a0 But it\u2019s great, right?\u00a0 It\u2019s got everything \u2013 sex, crime, politics, drama . . . so when do we start shooting?<\/p>\n
Boss; \u00a0I gotta hand it to ya, kid, I really do. \u00a0Ya got a terrific imagination.\u00a0 But this stuff, it\u2019s too much.\u00a0 It\u2019s over the top.\u00a0 One guy at the center of a conspiracy to take down the President?\u00a0 Nobody would ever believe it.\u00a0 And what the hell kind of name is Strzok? \u00a0Fuggedaboutit, kid.\u00a0 Get the hell out of my office.<\/p>\n
End scene<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It’s only fiction if you ignore the real world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Scene:\u00a0 a cluttered office, a fat, balding man chewing a cigar, reading a script and scowling at it.\u00a0 A young man steps into the doorway and raps on the door, three times, quickly. Writer:\u00a0 Boss, I\u2019ve got a great idea for a new show.\u00a0 It\u2019s a political thriller, got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,129],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-65378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberal-tyranny","category-unions","tag-dramatization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65378"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65380,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65378\/revisions\/65380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}