A Sitcom Revival Pilot By Netflix
Here's a quick episode I wrote about every 90's Sitcom series Netflix has tried to bring back from the dead. SPOILER: They should have left it buried in the dirt.
A sitcom revival pilot
INT. KITCHEN – DAY
SARAH comes out of her room. We see she’s aged quite a bit since she starred in this late 1990’s sitcom fifteen years ago. The camera zooms in so we can see how time has chipped away at her once porcelain teenage skin.
SARAH: Good morning, it feels like I’ve slept for fifteen years!
Cue laugh track at this hilarious joke as Sarah laughs, too. Her laugh lines are etched deep into her skin now.
Give the audience a moment to reflect on how time has affected their own faces, too.
PAULA: I second that!
PAULA comes downstairs. She too is older now. Like, way older. She used to be right on the cusp between a socially acceptable “TV mom” or maybe even a sexy grandmother, but now her oldness is just too much for the audience’s delicate eyeballs. Give them a second to recoil in horror.
The camera rests on her face so we can all leer at the wrinkled bags surrounding her once plump eye sockets, and the effort she and a team of people have clearly made to hide any signs or her aging body.
There is no laugh track now. The laughter has turned to soft murmurs of discomfort. Someone coughs.
PAULA: Yes, but at the same time it feels like no time has passed at all! Let’s pretend nothing’s changed and make no effort to normalize female aging.
SARAH: Sounds great! Breakfast?
JAMES enters the scene. We do not pause to ogle his face because even though he has more wrinkles than he used to, it’s not like he has them in a gross way, you know?
JAMES: Well hello there! I’m the flawed male lead Paula fell in love with ten years ago. Who wants pancakes?
The audience cheers.
PAULA: You know I’m not eating gluten anymore! This is a sign our marriage is on the rocks!
Sarah looks concerned. We pause for a moment so we can see how deep the worry lines on her forehead have become.
SARAH: Um. Okay then, I’m going to work.
Cue the laugh track for that hilarious line about the awkwardness of watching your mother’s marriage crumble away, along with her face.
INT. CLOTHING STORE – DAY
We see Sarah working at the small clothing shop she runs. It’s in the same town she grew up in even though she’s traveled the world and become semi-famous doing something fun and relatable, like fashion.
SARAH: I’m so busy today. If only someone could lend me an extra hand!
Enter Sarah’s teenage love interest, TOMMY! He has aged in a sexy way, and in a sexy way only. The audience cheers.
He takes one of the hands off the store’s wooden mannequin and places it on the countertop. Sarah looks up.
TOMMY: I could think of a hand or two you could borrow…
The audience laughs at his quick wit with the hand thing, and whatever’s left of Sarah’s youthful innocence lights up.
EXT. MONTAGE – DUSK
We see a happy montage of the two of them reuniting set to Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time.
This montage brings the audience back to the time period that Netflix probably should’ve left this show in, rather than ripping it from its peaceful slumber to build a kind of Frankenstein out of an already lukewarm sitcom. At best, this show has now become a painful reminder of everything that once was, and all that will never be again.
Roll credits as we cut to the show’s happy and carefree theme song we all know and love! Yay for nostalgic music!