Pitching CBS Sitcoms: “Out of Smite”
Picture this: You wake up peacefully on a Sunday morning and step outside into a sunny, yet brisk fall day. The kind of day where you’re wearing a light jacket but also flip flops.
You take your Average Guy Amble™ on over to Starbs or Dunks and get your morning cup of cinnamon apple flavored whatever the fuck, all the while admiring the day and abhorring the idiot tourists taking pictures of a tree because they’ve apparently never experienced the color orange.
Soon, you’ll head back to your home, vacate that mess of caffeinated nutmeg that you just slurped down, and plop your slightly lighter self down onto the couch for 7 hours of football. It’s perfect.
Well…almost perfect.
You see there are two main drawbacks to football season:
Losing all of your money on ill-advised 4-team teaser bets (this may be specific to me)
The introduction of the new fall lineup of God-awful CBS shows
Don’t know what I’m talking about? Family guy does:
For some reason, CBS (and all the major cable networks really - CBS is just the worst offender) are insistent upon churning out absolute dog shit television year after year. God Friended Me, Call me Kat, Ghosts, Bob <3 Abishola, etc.
“Well George, they’re not for you. They’re appealing to the masses in Middle America.”
Oh really? So you’re telling me that Tony Pallanzolo, a father of 5 from Pittsburgh, comes home from a long day working at a steel mill that hasn’t been operational since 1978, cracks open a warm PBR, sits down in a La-Z-Boy recliner so worn out that he has a spring burrowing into his ass, turns on the tv for the 30 minutes of solace he gets a day before waking up at 5:00 AM to go inhale more asbestos and iron ore, and he’s going to flip on Young fucking Sheldon? Nah, I don’t think so.
Also, I’m not exactly a coastal elite who only indulges in highbrow intellectual humor. I audibly say “nice” every time I hear the number 69, and probably always will. The bar for making me laugh is below the floor.
But anyways, these awful shows all sound like they took 10 seconds of thought to create, and fall under 1 of 4 basic categories:
Reboot of a popular 80’s show where they made one tweak to differentiate it
This is a tried and true classic. And as a lazy person, I respect it. Why come up with something original or waste your time putting in 5 seconds of thought or taking any real pride in your extremely enviable career, when you could just Google “top tv show from 1989.” Oh dope, Quantum Leap was hot in the streets back then? Let’s bring it back, make Scott Bakula Asian, and get out of here by lunch. And yes, I get it’s a nostalgia play for the older folks. But if you wanted to capture that market, just run old episodes of Quantum Leap. Same shit, way cheaper.Other examples in this category include: The Equalizer, Hawaii Five-0, Magnum P.I, The Wonder Years, etc.
Terrible sitcom where they replace one word of the title with the main character’s name
I admittedly love these because I’m a sucker for a lazy pun. These are shows that you know from the name are going to suck. Examples include: Kevin Can Wait, Good Sam (like good samaritan, but also her name is Sam - that’s why CBS writers get paid the big bucks), and my new personal favorite:
Woah, two cops with opposite personalities who combine their contrasting styles for good? Really pushing the envelope here CBS. Good looks Skylar, this is a huge step up from Pitch Perfect.
3. Gritty medical/police/firefighter drama, usually set in Chicago for some reason, where all the doctors/cops/firefighters are impossibly attractive
Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, Chicago P.D. — you get the idea. Kind of want them to lean into it and make a show for every department in the Chicago government. I’d watch the shit out of Chicago Sewage.
4. Show about a really vague supernatural occurrence that keeps getting more convoluted and gets cancelled before you ever figure out what the fuck is going on
These are all going to be one-word, non-descriptive titles that make the show seem a lot more ominous than it is. The general plot of these shows is that someone or something turned up mysteriously and no one knows where they came from. Or there’s an alternate dimension or some shit. Idk I’ve only seen Manifest.
Examples: Manifest (actually a pretty good show), Resurrection, Emergence, Fringe
Honorable mention goes to the shows that try to capitalize on a trending Internet fad by putting out a show about it like 2 years after it stopped being relevant. God Friended Me, Ghosted, I think Fox filed for a trademark for the phrase “OK Boomer” a few years back, etc.
So anyways, I see these shows every year and one day decided to create my own for fun. The parameters are simple: It needs to have a catchy name and terrible plot, but still sound vaguely like something CBS would actually green light. So thus, I give you my proposed entry into the CBS fall lineup: Out of Smite.
Out of Smite
Description: Disillusioned with the world He created, a down on his luck God tries to start his eternal life over in the big city. But after a chance encounter with Jess, a woman created in His own image, the smiter becomes the smitten. The catch? She’s a devout Satanist! Hilarity ensues as Jess tries to show God that not all sins are mortal, and some Commandments are made to be broken. Meanwhile, God tries to work his greatest miracle yet: getting the girl who only wants to raise Hell back on the path to Heaven. But there’s one twist of fate that even God himself couldn’t pre-determine. In his Crusade to help Jess find God, God ends up finding himself.
Out of Smite airs Tuesdays on CBS at 8 EST/9 Central, followed immediately by a full hour of a guy puking into his own crotch because what’s the difference.
