Yes, it’s that time again : time for me to combine blogging and schoolwork. But my pitches will hardly be 500 words each, so there will be other stuff too.

Pitch One : Bob’s Burgers

The A plot : Louise makes friends with the new girl in school and hangs out with her before realizing that the other kids find the new kid weird and gross for being into the exact sort of things Louise is into (blood, guts, death), only is way more open about it. Louise is torn between staying friends with this person she thinks is awesome (and the feeling is mutual) and preserving her own social status. After rather brutally distancing herself from her new friend in a loud and public way, Louise is plagued by guilt, which gives her nightmares of the same thing being done to her. Finally, she goes back to her new friend, apologizes thoroughly, and then very publicly associates herself with her new friend, and says that anyone who has a problem with that had better seriously consider how wise it is to piss off the two creepiest girls in school.

The B plot : Gene meets a girl who is basically a female version of him. At first, they get along great and Gene feels the stirring of love. But then he starts finding everything she does to irritating and gross, and their relationship ends with him shouting “You aren’t nearly as funny as you think you are!”, and in the process, he learns a lot about himself.

The C plot : Tina follows Jimmy Junior into joining a square dancing group, and finds she really loves the precision and order of it. When Zeke convinces JJ that it’s lame and stupid, Tina has to decide whether she likes her new hobby enough when JJ is leaving and tells her she should leave too. Ultimately, she leaves the group to be with him… but not without regrets.

Well that was fairly painless. But I have been developing those notions for weeks. Now I have to come up with another one.

Here goes nuthin’.

Pitch Two : Brooklyn 99

The A Plot : The whole precinct is activated when a lovable old uniformed officer named Rex who’s been there forever disappears. The trail twists and turns, first looking like a criminal’s revenge, then seeming like maybe an ex-partner getting even, but eventually Rex is found on the roof of his apartment building, contemplating jumping off. Turns out he has been suffering from depression ever since his wife died a year ago that day, and he can’t see any reason to keep going. The team all try to help him, but what saves him is a very surprising confession from Gina that she was a suicidal teen and that what stopped her was wanting to know what happened next in the story of her life.

The B plot : While accompanying Captain Holt to an ex-lover’s wedding, Jake is hit on by a very attractive person and flirts rather outrageously with them, thinking nothing of it. But when he tells the people back at the precinct about it, a jealous-but-hiding-it Amy points out that said person could have been a dude. This launches Jake on a quest to find out the gender of this person he was attracted to when he doesn’t even know their name. Eventually, he finds the person, and sees them go into the lady’s room, and thinks that’s it, case closed. But then Amy reminds him about transsexuals, and then he has to track the person down again to find out if he was attracted to a dude or not. Turns out, he was not. It was a chick. But she’s a lesbian, and married.

The C plot : Hitchcock and Scully try to save their all time favorite pizza place from the wrecking ball before realizing the guy who owns it just wants to retire.

Well that wasn’t too bad. Turns out that once I get going, the ideas come pretty fast. I can’t afford to get too smug about it – have to retain my edge, after all – but I am beginning to think I might just be good at this whole writing thing. and it’s so much fun when nobody is forcing you to writing boring bullshit.

Went to see The Secret Life Of Pets with William yesterday. It was fab. The plot is highly original – I seriously had no idea what was going to happen next in the best possible way. The script was full of wit and warmth and wonder, and of course, oodles and oodles of cuteness and charm. The voice acting is great and the cast of characters is huge without ever feeling like there’s just too many people to keep track of. There were times when the 3D was used to great effect without it seeming blatant. Even the soundtrack was great.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, I enjoyed it almost as much as Zootopia, and coming from me, that’s high praise indeed. I really feel like we might just be entering a golden era of animated features where the ones that are good are also doing really well at the box office, and so for a magical time, the money people may just leave the artists who know what they’re doing alone.

It’s especially amazing to jaded old me that they are making movies I love today. I try my best to be future-oriented (after all, the future is the only thing we have control over) but there is a part of me that still feels like all the really great stuff is in my past now and everything new will always seem a little off and wrong to me.

I could like it just fine, but always with a hint of patronizing indulgence. Oh yes, that’s very good… considering.

But not any more! And I could not be more pleased about that. I have seen some movies lately that have been awesome without any qualifiers. And that gives me hope.

And hope is a very precious thing for me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.