I don’t have experience beyond having watched a lot of tv and talked about it but I have watched a LOT of tv, read a LOT of books, and seen quite a few movies.
Insofar as you make average people and situations the enemy of your main cast, you are positioning yourself as critical of normality, in a way similar to Dilbert. I think that’s a decent stance to take, though I can’t think of a good example that has a wide cast of competent people. But making fun of normality is a LOT easier than presenting a coherent upgrade. This is similar to the problem of writing very intelligent characters: It’s not easy to write someone smarter than yourself.
Since your show is explicitly didactic, it’s very vulnerable to mistakes on the part of the writing, as well as your own biases. The fact that you’re drawing your bottom line before you start also has a sort of gravitational pull on the quality of your story. There will always be a temptation to present normal people as extra irrational and the solutions of your “rational” main cast will work much better than they might in reality. Even if every situation is drawn from real life examples of rationalists and their households, they can still come off as preachy and unrealistic. I don’t think you can make this show with this intent and have it be good entertainment, as opposed to a blatant after-school special style program.
I am going to try to work out how to put the first few steps into creating a plot/script for an episode and see how it goes. (when I get around to it—it will be posted somewhere online)
I don’t have experience beyond having watched a lot of tv and talked about it but I have watched a LOT of tv, read a LOT of books, and seen quite a few movies.
Insofar as you make average people and situations the enemy of your main cast, you are positioning yourself as critical of normality, in a way similar to Dilbert. I think that’s a decent stance to take, though I can’t think of a good example that has a wide cast of competent people. But making fun of normality is a LOT easier than presenting a coherent upgrade. This is similar to the problem of writing very intelligent characters: It’s not easy to write someone smarter than yourself.
Since your show is explicitly didactic, it’s very vulnerable to mistakes on the part of the writing, as well as your own biases. The fact that you’re drawing your bottom line before you start also has a sort of gravitational pull on the quality of your story. There will always be a temptation to present normal people as extra irrational and the solutions of your “rational” main cast will work much better than they might in reality. Even if every situation is drawn from real life examples of rationalists and their households, they can still come off as preachy and unrealistic. I don’t think you can make this show with this intent and have it be good entertainment, as opposed to a blatant after-school special style program.
“Upgraded normality” is a neat name.
I am going to try to work out how to put the first few steps into creating a plot/script for an episode and see how it goes. (when I get around to it—it will be posted somewhere online)