When you’re retired, and living on a fixed income, you’re
always looking for an angle to make a few more bucks. Carolyn and I have
stumbled on what we think is the perfect scam—er, um, opportunity—to get
someone to pay us for our unique talent.
We discovered this talent during a conversation about the
cancellation of the television show Harry’s
Law. I, and my partner in crime-writing and co-parent of the world’s
thickest dinky dogs, loved this show. Kathy Bates played an irascible, rude,
brilliant, and funny lawyer named Harry Corn, who walked away from big money
doing civil litigation to assemble a legal firm stacked with misfits, head
cases, and windmill tilters who took on lost causes and bizarre legal
challenges. CJ and I found the show thought-provoking, dramatic, and often
laugh-out-loud hilarious. So, of course, NBC gave it the axe.
After sifting through our past, we discovered a common
thread. Most of the television shows we thought were high quality and worth
setting time aside to watch never saw the light of season two.
Firefly, Joss Whedon’s
tongue-in-cheek space-adventure show combined unforgettable characters with
witty dialogue and intriguing plots. Fox decided 13 episodes were plenty, thank
you very much.
Slings and Arrows, a
Canadian Broadcast Company show about a wacky repertory theater troupe in a
small Canadian city was snort-cola-through-your-nose funny. Apparently few
people like having bubbles stream through their proboscis because it bit the
dust after a season. At least we don’t have to feel bad about torpedoing it by
becoming viewers. It was already gone by the time we got tipped to it and
rented DVDs.
Other shows we’ve liked enough to put on our viewing
calendar, but didn’t last long include Studio
60 On The Sunset Strip, Black Adder, from Britain, and the Americanized version of Prime Suspect.
Here’s where the financial opportunity comes in. Since
Carolyn and I have an unerring ability to pick shows that are doomed to end
quickly, we could save the networks a ton of money. We’ll set up a consultancy
called Fuh-gedda-bout-it, Inc.
For a reasonable yearly retainer (We’re thinking something
in the neighborhood of $50,000), we’d offer the networks a chance to send us
television pilots and/or early episodes. We’d watch and make a list of our
favorites. We’d then email this list to the networks and they could cancel
those shows without shelling out the millions more it would take to produce an
entire season. Our $50,000 would be chump-change compared to what they’d spend
in production and promotion costs.
For another small fee, we would agree to tell them which
shows we truly loathed, so they could focus their advertising dollars on those
productions.
Fuh-gedda-bout-it,
Inc. is number 4567 in a series of 5000 of can’t fail get-rich-quick
schemes. For only $39.95 we’ll send you a complete list. (The list itself is #
4568)
