A few years ago, I had some TV writing aspirations. But ultimately we decided to move from Los Angeles, and if you're not in Los Angeles, you're not writing sit-coms. Also, the odds of getting on a sit-com these days are less than making it to th NFL (not a joke). I did some specs, a King of the Hill, a 70's Show, and a Scrubs. Earlier today, I was looking through my notes and found a whole bunch of stuff on an Arrested Development spec that I guess I never got around to writing. It turns out that Lindsay and I came up with some of the concepts together.  Arrested Development is probably my favorite sit-com of all time (so of course, it had no audience), and while these ideas aren't the greatest ever, they do indeed still make me chuckle.

After a show goes off the air, there's no point in doing a spec for it, so rather than completely waste these character specific ideas, I thought I'd post them on here.

Some of the notes make no sense, and have no context ("rubber"), but I can also hear him saying it.

General Notes: 6/11/05

• GOB gets into a minor accident on his Segway and has an epiphany. Life is too short and he needs to pursue his dreams.

• Gets a job at a Target-like store to work with “real people”

• Gets paycheck – amount is so small he thinks it’s a joke. Can’t believe people live off this. Leads a revolution of some kind for all the Target workers

• GOB loses all interest in his magic, which then makes all of his tricks work for some reason and he doesn’t even care anymore. One of them has to be incredibly spectacular. People are really impressed with his tricks – ask him if he’s ever thought of doing magic shows for real.

• GOB – “Rubber.” Now where do I get this “rubber.”

• Gender roles in children

Stories:

GOB gets in accident, tries to change his life, get a new career. Learns something.

G-M is walking past Tobias and knocks something over with his hip/butt. Tobias makes a good natured joke about G-M getting to be a bit of a wide-load, or tubby, completely kidding. G-M laughs it off and doesn’t think about it. George-Michael later goes to find some school clothes, and the medium doesn’t fit, so the salesperson suggests he move from a large to a medium, and he flashes back to the comment and has a panic attack about the fact that he thinks he’s gaining weight.

Then GM develops an eating disorder, which he doesn’t perform correctly. Binging but not purging, for example. Or he finds a terrible diet on the internet and decides to follow it, but it’s the worst diet ever. All bacon or something. Only eats cereal.

Buster adopts dog

Tobias gets a fan or a groupie, or just a guy he meets who fawns over him and flirts with him openly. Tobias, oblivious, flirts back and refers to this guy as his new best friend. He’s really attractive, and its obvious to everyone that he’s coming on to Tobias.

He can also play into the other characters’ stories, because he has a great career which GOB wants to emulate, and he has a great body which GM wants.

He finally bares his soul to Tobias, who misses the point completely, and he’s wrecked. Everybody else wants to keep him around, and doesn’t explain it to Tobias, because they want to take advantage of him.


ACT I

GOB gets into minor accident on segway, and sustains a small injury. He rushes himself to the hospital. He calls the family like he’s been hospitalized, be he’s only got a bruise or a splinter.

In hospital waiting room, he’s doing tricks that he doesn’t care about. Family comes to see him and he does a great trick that works perfectly, but his point is to show them that he’s not inspired, and he needs something better, something new.