Why does EVERYTHING give me new ideas for tv shows that I could create if I were in the entertainment business?
Ok, imagine this show:
A 60 year old man stars as the lead character. He’s an overweight confederate flag wearing, racist, who just had his company relocate. Instead of working in Ohio, his factory is moving to Vermont. And so he’s going there too.
Now out of his echo chamber, he continues to be himself, the only way he’s ever known how. By repeating fox news talking points as his own original ideas. Completely unaware that he’s now surrounded by NPR donating listeners who already know the talking points he’s going to say for the day, and how to rebutte it before he even opens his mouth.
Faced with a new and challenging world changing around him, he feels he’s going crazy, until a conversation on a park bench. He talks with an elderly homeless man feeding the ducks, who shows him the deception he’s been led to believe, the brainwashing he’s victim to, and the consequences it has for people he’s never met. He has his eureka moment, and decides to change.
The show starts with him as the new manager of the factory, as the previous manager was shot and killed in a random public shooting that he had nothing to do with. He was just there. Being that the main character is the only other person to move from Ohio, he’s the only one who knows how to run the business. So now he’s working with an all new crew. Instead of 97% older whites, it’s now a total hodgepodge of races, ages, and backgrounds working the factory floor.
The series follows his progression and growth from being a racist out of touch boomer who’s only personality trait can best be described as “fox news”, to a more mentally complete well rounded person with compassion and empathy for people who may not be just like him. You see him at times struggle with this. He may not have fox news in his ears anymore, but he did for 30 years previously. So he’ll still slip up from time to time, and have to unlearn what his former life instincts would lead him to say and do.
He gets advice everyday from the elderly homeless man in the park. Whom on the last episode pulls his coat hood back, and it was Bernie Sanders all along.