You, as a food cooker through and through, must have mixed feelings about the meal we call brunch. The cuisine, which you’ve dedicated your life to, plays secondary violin to the shared experience with friends for which the restaurant has little control.
I, as a constant brunch consumer, recognize the indeterminable value in this experience, and so I’ve created a series to laud and applaud this time of the weekend. Four episodes are written, six more well on the way, and countless ideas that will be saved until it gets picked up for a second season¹. I’ll give you an executive producer credit if you help me do a little whittling with these ideas, picking out the strongest ones that would best complement bennied eggs and caesared doubles and shipped friends:
- My Brunch with Andre: A two-person episode, that starts out with Nick supposed to be meeting Vince for brunch. Vince tells him his buddy Andre is meeting them, which is fine, but then Vince bails. Nick and Andre still decide to eat together, and Nick learns a lot about Andre, who is very interesting and wise and might have just come back from the jungle or something. This idea is entirely original in every way.
- Brunching Henry: An episolo. Most of it is a voice-over of what’s going on inside Hank’s head as he eats a meal by himself, with the camera being a POV shot. There’s some server talk but most of it is Hank examining his surroundings and his actions. There might be some stream of thought consciousness, but I doubt it.
- Tech Brunch: One character just gave up social media, so a lot of this one centres around the role of technology in their lives. They discuss how their phones are listening to them, how the grid is overrated, and et cetera.
- Broken Up: The first one whole title isn’t a brunch pun, which is refreshing. It takes place at Epstein’s Bar and is about how one of the characters just broke up with their partner. It’s a bit of a sister idea with another one about weddings.
- Making Plans: This will probably work better as a b-b-b-bonus episode. The whole thing is a text thread conversation from before the group goes to brunch. They’re trying to figure out where to go but also having a laugh talking about the night before and riffing and such.
- Dreams: One of them brings up this crazy dream they had, and the rest of the episode is them talking about nightmares and recurring dreams and lucid dreaming and what it all means, you know?
- The Kitchen: Another bonus episode, taking place in the kitchen during a different episode (Brunchkins), with all the characters being the cooks and servers and dishwasher doing what they do.
- Sideways: The title is mostly related to the set design, but is also not in the least about wine, and so we call it an non-ablaut-reduplicated flop-flip. All the props are bolted to the wall, the characters are tied to chairs sitting horizontal, cameras are on the ceiling, but it tries to look as normal as possible given all of that, so ideally the audience is confused and can tell something is off although they can’t exactly tell what.
- Waiting for the Brunch: Based on the title, you’d think this is too Portlandia-y, but it’s actually about how slow the service is, and they find out at some point, when one of them is starving beyond all recognition, that the server forgot to put in their orders.
- Away Game: One of our main characters ends up going to eat with his sister’s friends, who are all on the same page and that page he is not on. He’s clearly a secondary character and doesn’t feel like hisself. They have a lot of inside jokes and all he wants to do is go back with his own friends but they’re off doing something else.
Help me out, Em. I’m trying to make something beautiful here. Much like one of your famous gologneses!
¹ [which will presumably happen after a first season is made²]
² [which will presumably never happen]