Last night, a bunch of friends watched a show called Scorpion. i had no idea it was on, nor did i really have any interest in watching it, but they took to twitter to comment about how bad it was. From what i understand (again, having little interest in actually watching the show) it was the usual Techno-Crime thriller about a group of “geniuses” who use Technology to battle Crime. The show featured such techno crime fighting as driving a Porche behind a plane so that the heroes could grab a network cable dangling beneath, apparently because nobody on the plane had a cellphone or anything that could do wifi, and tossing a few USB sticks would have probably been out of the question as well.
Honestly, it reminded me of something my Sister in law (who is in the entertainment industry) yelled at me while watching a similar sort of show “It’s Entertainment! It doesn’t need facts!”
That flash of insight into the mind of what’s making this stuff really helped me understand quite a bit. i mean, how does one possibly counter something like that? It did, however, make me understand that there’s a huge opportunity there for folks.
i realized that what was sorely lacking was a show that treated the rest of the planet the way that technology is horribly abused. i’d call it “MacGuffin“!
It starts off with a sweeping shot of the city that’s central to the story:
We see our hero, Jack MacGuffin engaged in a chase with his partner Alan Smithee.
Smithee: “Jack, they’re getting away, we need to go faster.”
MacGuffin: “Alan! Quick, grab the wheel and start driving!”
Alan grabs the wheel and starts pounding on the brake and gas pedals of the car. With a cloud of tire smoke, the car lunges ahead and quickly overtakes the van containing the enemies, a group of 80 year old women who had once seen a crime drama and were acting out the overwhelming influence of that corrupting medium.
MacGuffin and Smithee soon learn of a gang that plans on flooding the streets of Phoenix with drugs and white slavery purchased using counterfeit Monopoly money.
Smittee: “Jeez, imagine the number of houses you could buy with that kind of money”
MacGuffin: “Houses? you could fill the block with hotels.”
They reach their biggest break when they spot a “Classified Ad” in a local “newspaper” that they quickly correlate to a “phone number” using a copy of “Yellow Pages” and with that phone number in hand, race to the abandoned warehouse of the gang.
Before they go in, they quickly construct some guns out of some tinker toys and sheet metal they find outside, before bursting in and taking out the gang with a 2 X machine.
Of course, my biggest fear would be that it actually would be made.
