Genre: TV Pilot – Half-Hour Comedy “Documentary”
Winning Logline: A parody of ‘makeover’ reality shows, Beyond Help with Handy Andy follows overconfident yet completely incompetent “Handy Andy” Cornwall as he travels the country documenting his attempts to fix everything from failing restaurants to broken marriages, in the hopes of selling his half-assed reality show to a network. Look out, America. He’s helping!
About: Today’s pilot script won the TV Pilot Script Showdown, a rare opportunity for TV writers to battle it out on the, otherwise, feature-focused Scriptshadow. It comes from Scriptshadow vet, Colin O’Brien (CJob).
Writer: Colin O’Brien
Details: 36 pages
Adam Devine for Andy?
The half-hour comedy, once the cornerstone of the TV industry, has fallen on tough times.
They say that feature film comedies have become non-existent and that’s because everyone can get their comedy fix on TV. But where is that comedy show that’s giving us earth-shattering knee-slappers these days?
A lot of today’s comedies seem to want just as much drama in them as humor. Succession. Barry. Shrinking. The last bona fide “everyone watched it” TV comedy was The Office. Ted Lasso was pretty big but I don’t know if it got anywhere near “Office” level.
The most interesting half-hour comedy show I’ve seen lately was Jury Duty. It follows a fake jury during a fake Los Angeles court case where one of the jury members is a real person who has no idea that he’s participating in a facade.
It was fascinating, kind of messed up, and doing something different with the struggling comedy genre.
Let’s see if Handy Andy can carve out its own slice of the comedy pie!
Andy is a 40-year-old dude who just decides, out of nowhere, that he’s going to start one of those “fix it” reality shows. He only has one employee, the non-English speaking Miguel, who holds the camera for him. It’s not clear how Andy gets production sound for his shoots.
Andy’s first fix-it job is the Carters, a family living in a slightly dilapidated house that the city may tear down if it doesn’t start looking nicer soon. Simon, the father, Vanna, the wife, Sandra, the teenage daughter, and Kevin, the young son, are reasonably happy to have someone who’s going to take care of this issue for them.
The problem is, Andy has no idea what he’s doing. Nor does he listen. So despite the outside of the house being the part that needs to be fixed, Andy focuses on the inside. For example, he buys a slightly better couch for the living room.
Also, Andy doesn’t really have a production plan, so he just sleeps at the houses of his clients, which is the first sign to the Carter family that they may have signed up for something they shouldn’t have.
After Andy does several pointless things around the house, he finally decides to work on the outside, and when the Carters are gone, he re-does their driveway. The only problem is, he places their car on that driveway before the wet concrete has set. Which means the car is now stuck in the driveway.
That’s it for the Carters, who not only fire Andy immediately, but warn everyone in the community about this scam reality show host. Problem is, Andy is so clueless that he doesn’t care. A few days later, he’s on to his next assignment: a restaurant. What ever trouble is Andy going to get into there?
Beyond Help is an amusing pilot.
But, if I’m being honest, I was hoping for more laughs.
Every 15 pages or so, Andy would say something that made me chuckle. For example, Andy has this wife who’s left him. And he still thinks they’re going to be together. So he shows a picture of her to the camera. But, of course, because she hates him, he has to blur her face out.
This is my beautiful wife, Jan. You can’t actually tell she’s beautiful because we had to blur her face for legal reasons. You know how that is. (shrugs) Anyway, her loss. I’m sure once the show’s a hit she’ll come crawling back. (sad smile) Because I’ll tell you one thing, they can’t blur her out of my heart.
Little jokes like that always make me smile.
But I’m not watching a show like this to chuckle or smile. I’m watching a show like this to laugh. And I don’t think there was a single LOL moment for me in the cleverly titled, Beyond Help.
The problem, in my opinion, was that the execution of the comedy was too safe and predictable. You don’t want to hear either of those critiques in comedy feedback. But I’d ask Colin, where are you pushing the envelope with the comedy? Where are you giving us that unexpected joke or doing comedy we haven’t seen before or pushing the limits of the “documentary format” half-hour comedy? Or just giving us a genuinely fresh joke?
Again, Jury Duty gave you a character who didn’t realize he was in a comedy. Which created some highly interesting moments.
Even the 15 year old Office was pushing the envelope. One of their most famous episodes was titled “Gay Witch Hunt” and you watched Michael try to find out if anyone else in the office was gay after finding out the shocking truth that Oscar was gay.
Leslie Knope’s defining characteristic in Parks and Rec was her undying optimism for improving the community despite the fact that her department was created specifically to do nothing.
I don’t know what Andy’s primary comedic characteristic is. He just seems to be clueless. I’m not sure that’s enough. Note how with The Office and Parks and Rec, the main character’s defining comedic characteristic was in direct opposition to what needed to be done. Michael wants to be every employee’s friend. But if you do that, employees aren’t going to be incentivized to work hard. Leslie Knope wants so badly to help the community. But the government doesn’t want her to work at all.
I suppose, once people meet Andy and realize he’s an idiot, they don’t want his help anymore. And I guess that’s the primary obstacle creating comedic conflict? But just as I wrote that, I’m not convinced we’re getting enough out of this character.
Also, some of the comedy feels dated. Miguel is a clueless non-English speaking Mexican who never understands what Andy says to him. This feels like Napoleon Dynamite humor circa 2004.
On top of that, the world-building here has a lot of holes in it. Andy is broke yet he still has enough money to buy a new couch for the family. Andy is broke yet he can afford to re-do someone’s driveway. The rules were confusing. And while you may think that it doesn’t matter in a comedy as long as it’s funny, that logic only works when the rest of the script is firing on all cylinders.
When it’s all said and done, Beyond Help reads like a lot comedies that come across my desk. Which is that the overall concept makes you laugh. But when get into the nitty-gritty – the execution – nothing is elevating above the page.
It’s a reminder of how hard comedy is. Once you come up with a funny idea, a lot of writers think the work is over. But the real work has only begun. You gotta go through every scene and honestly ask yourself how funny it is on a 1-10 scale. And then keep rewriting until every one of those scenes is at least at a 7 out of 10 on the funny scale, but preferably at an 8 out of 10 or higher.
The majority of the current scenes here were at a 4 or 5 out of 10 on the funny scale. That’s not good enough. Especially for a pilot. Producers and audiences will give you leeway on season 3 episode 4. But the pilot has to sing. It’s got to be next level. And when I read this pilot, I didn’t feel like Colin was giving me everything he was capable of.
Moving forward, it would help if we got to know Andy’s real life a bit. The thing with comedy is that the audience needs to know who the character is in their real life so they understand the dynamic of what they’ve been thrust into.
I couldn’t place who Andy was in his real life. Was he just some dimwitted idiot who decided to do this job one day? Or was there a progression that led him to this point? For us to understand the comedy, I think we need some insight into that, either through 5-10 pages of main character setup or, if you wanted to be more artsy, you could intercut flashbacks of how Andy came upon this idea throughout the pilot.
I’ll now call upon the comedy experts of this site to give Colin some funnier prompts to work with. What scenarios can we explore in the Handy Andy universe that are going to give us more laughs? Cause I still think there’s something to this idea. But it definitely needs a jolt to the comedic heart. It’s way too casually executed.
Pilot Link: Beyond Help
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I need to first see that Jim Carrey obsessively lies in Liar Liar for the comedy in that movie to work. It’s only once I see his dependence on telling lies that I’m able to laugh when he can no longer tell them. This pilot needed that. I need to know who Andy is in the real world before I can appreciate who he is in the fix-it world. Cause he can’t just be a generic moron. That’s not funny enough.
SUPER SCRIPT CONSULTATION DEAL!!! – If you e-mail me and mention today’s pilot script, “Beyond Help,” I will give you 200 DOLLARS off a feature screenplay consult (4 pages of notes) and 100 DOLLARS off a pilot script consult. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com by the end of the weekend!
