This past weekend, several friends and I got to talking about the King Arthur police precedural
that Fox is allegedly developing. I only mention this because over the
course of this conversation we realized that the ONLY modern-King-Arthur
television show that Fox should really be developing is a
hilarious reincarnation-based office sitcom, and now I can’t stop
thinking about it, so I am going to tell you all about this imaginary
sitcom in EXCRUCIATING DETAIL.
My imaginary workplace sitcom is about a struggling nonprofit organization and is probably written by the people who wrote Parks and Rec and Brooklyn 99. Accordingly, it stars Retta and Melissa Fumero:
as Alice and Pam, OFFICE NEMESIS battling nonprofit burnout! and each other!
….UNTIL,
in the first episode, they start having flashbacks and eventually
realize: they are the reincarnations of, respectively, King Arthur and
Lancelot, they are destined to fight evil while being devoted to each
other in an epic and legendary way, and weekly budget meetings just got
really weird!
Every episode alternates between flashbacks to
Round Table efforts to fight evil, provide justice, build a better and
more stable society, etc., and current-day office hijinks as the
nonprofit attempts to do the same, but with much more paperwork.
As
a sidenote, all the flashbacks initially have placeholder white guy
actors doing ye olde British accents and speaking forsoothly, except for
the person having the flashback, who plays themselves. Once Alice and
Pam recognize each other at the end of the first episode, however, every
flashback features Retta and Melissa Fumero talking exactly like they
would in the office while wearing shining armor.
The rest of the placeholder actors gradually get replaced by actual cast members as further reincarnation reveals occur,
including:
-
Donald Glover as the reincarnation of Sir Gawain, ladies’ man and
too-cool-for-school tech bro, who’s the only person who knows how to
keep the website running!
-
Rahul Kohli as the noble reincarnation of King Pellinore, the
development manager who is constantly questing after very worthy but
COMPLETELY UNATTAINABLE grants!
-
Yael Grobglas as the reincarnation of Sir Kay, the long-suffering and
sarcastic office business manager who must always be the one to point
out they don’t have enough money for their pet project!
-
Sandra Oh as the director’s PA, the only person who knows where
everything is and keeps the office running and everybody from murdering
each other; she of course turns out to be Guinevere!
-
and, of course, Jaime Camil as Merlin, the director of the nonprofit,
who has been gathering all the Round Table reincarnations together for
world-saving purposes all this while!
Merlin
is not reincarnated, for the record. Merlin is just Merlin. This is why
Merlin is very good at magic and WILDLY INCOMPETENT at being the
director of a nonprofit organization.
Sample episodes include:
- the episode where everyone is rushing to meet a grant deadline, with flashbacks to PREPARING FOR BATTLE AGAINST THE ROMANS
-
the team retreat episode in which Merlin insists everybody do trust falls;
in flashbacks, Merlin also insists everybody do trust falls
- the
episode in which Donald Glover has to go through ludicrous hoops to
install a new open-source software, intercut with the story of Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight
- the mid-season love triangle episode,
in which a.) the reveal of who is Guinevere, b.) the reveal that
Lancelot and Arthur were way more than good buddies, and c.) THE MOST
AWKWARD OFFICE MEETINGS YET, FOR EVERYONE
ok so who wants to fund my sitcom now
