Let's Cast (Part) Of A Show! Series 1.

What the hell else are you doing this weekend? And yes, you will be judged by others. Start thinking of your favorite actors. It's go time.

I’ve had this idea for a while now and I won’t bore you with how it broke my brain several times and only a constant flow of glou-glou supernatural wine could bring me back into some semblance of refocused.

First off, I was right in thinking it was a perfect Friday column. It gives you time to think about the concept and do some research about actors (what is that woman’s name who was in that indie film from 2018 about the…the…the thing!”) before you post your cast names over the weekend. Or maybe you’ve been thinking about this exact thing FOR YEARS and you already have everyone penciled in.

Guess this show.

But let me get back to my broken brain. What I did was overthink things. I had, it turns out, too many rules, too much set-up, and frankly, too much meddling. You may have heard that I sometimes overthink things:

Overthinking It.

Oh, dear Lords of Television, did I have a lot of rules and asterisks and cute little complicated work arounds and savvy explainers and conceptualized plans for maximizing fun without stacking the deck in favor of cheap pandering and complicated strategy.

It was gloriously overthought.

Fuck that. Let’s just have fun.

Periodically I am going to ask you to cast a fictional show. The show concept will change — drama to comedy, random premises, etc., and then we’ll do it again (and again at some point, hence the “Series 1” start). The rules are that there aren’t really any rules. Cast whomever you would like. Be creative or funny or ruthlessly brilliant. Fellow readers — well, perk alert, the gloriously appreciated paid subscribers, will then just naturally “like” whatever seems the best cast to them, elevating your comment up the charts and voila, a winner. If it seems less than clear who won, I will just toss in a poll of the top candidates to make it definitive.

There is is. Pretty simple. Loads of good clean fun on a Friday/Weekend before moving on to next week’s shows/topics.

OK, are you ready? Good. Let’s go.

This show is a “slice of life dramedy” (readers gasp in excitement) with its premise explained thusly: “Two families living in an expensive urban city are forced by a downturn in the job market to grumpily move to the suburbs. It feels like failure, and neither the parents or the kids are happy about relocating outside of the hip city-center, but both families move in across the street from each other on the same day and quickly become fast friends, eventually realizing that the suburbs don’t equal death, just a fresh chance to make a meaningful connection. Hilariously, each has a horrible neighbor next door.”

(And yes, I egregiously bloated the log line because I can).

And this one.

Your job: Cast two families. Cast two annoying neighbors. Give it a title.

That’s it, but here are some things to consider: