So there I was last week, watching the new batch of ABC’s Wednesday night comedy block, when up popped this great new laugh-a-minute mini-series.It’s called the Presidential Debates. Maybe you heard about it?
What a knee-slapper. The casting was impeccable – patrician, condescending white guy talking smack to over-achieving, annoyed black nerd. And the satire! Well, who knew Dodd-Frank was a boneheaded giveaway to protect the biggest banks in the country? Obviously, those cigar-chomping bigwigs are chortling at how they hoodwinked Congress into passing Dodd-Frank.
So all-in-all, this was a pretty funny performance, and I can’t wait to see the next two installments of this mini-series. It’s too bad the show’s getting canceled in November.
On the other hand, they say that tragedy and comedy are two sides of the same coin. We’ve seen the comedy. Maybe we ought to be getting ready for the tragedy.
Show Time
When this show resumes in January, ABC will likely move it off its mid-week comedy lineup, and over to Sunday nights. That’s where the network puts shows full of arcane and twisted schemes, invented language, demonic deals and back-biting, nefarious skullduggery. Shows where everyone lies and everyone’s both the good guy and the bad guy at the same time.
Perfect!
We’ll be waiting for episodes like these:
“The Home Mortgage Interest Deduction Murder”: The Deduction is cowering in a dark home, with the President moving furtively in the bushes, knife in hand, ready to at least dismember the Deduction if not kill it outright. But then the National Association of Realtors shows up and scares him off. They walk in the door and clap their hands, which turns on every incandescent light in the house and somehow also puts a full turkey dinner on the table. The Deduction is safe!
“The Poison and the CFPB”: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a boy king – meant to rule over all, but just a toddler still, finding its way. Assassins from the American Bankers Association and the Independent Community Bankers Association form an alliance. They can’t just kill the CFPB – the subjects throughout the land would revolt. So instead they slowly convince lawmakers to make a little rule change here, and add a restriction there, until the CFPB is a disabled husk of what it could have been. The People will be left to the mercies of financial marauders. Will the President stand to shield the CFPB, or will he turn and deliver the fatal blow?
“American Jobs Horror Story”: Taxes stay level for small business owners, who are so frustrated that they all shut down and move to China, where consumers have much more disposable income than in the U.S. Meanwhile, the President has clamped down on the loophole that allows corporations to take a tax deduction for moving jobs out of the country. The resulting contradiction threatens to create a black hole, and suck all of North America’s jobs to Mexico, where Ross Perot has secretly made himself king.
“Revolution”: ABC understands that you can’t copyright a title, so it steals this one from NBC. In ABC’s version, all the electricity in the world has disappeared, except this time we know why. Private sector energy companies couldn’t destroy government lands in the name of drilling and mining, even though the private sector said it didn’t need any help from the government to be really successful. Now we’re all in the dark, and it’s all the President’s fault.
Oh, boy, I can’t wait! What a season this will be. I’m pretty sure this show is going to win an Emmy next year. It’s got it all – unfortunately.
Vincent Michael Valvo is CEO of Agility Resources Group LLC. He can be reached atvvalvo@agilityresourcesgroup.com.
