Let’s face it, movie and television dramas set in a workplace environment suffer from problems of believability. Legal dramas have lawyers who run around court rooms and law libraries, frenetically pursuing investigations for righteous reasons, and fornicating with their clients—lots and lots of fornication. Police dramas have detectives running around town chasing criminals for serious crimes that they solve in 24 hours, and screwing their partners—lots and lots of screwing. Medical dramas have doctors, residents, and interns running around hospitals discovering cures for children with cancer and rare diseases, and banging their patients’ moms—lots and lots of mom banging. In dramas with evil advertising executives, their aspirant assistants sit around their living room thinking of ideas to win over the singular big client, with post-it notes—lots and lots of post-it notes.
The problem is, these are all real occupations to real people, some of whom might be watching and thinking, Well, this contrived situation is dumb and unrealistic. That would certainly never happen in my office. As it turns out, lawyers are not actually very interesting, and their cases are either mundane or they take years to resolve, often both; police spend most of their day sitting around waiting for something to happen, and beating confessions out of innocent people (apparently); doctors are always trying to look in your bum hole, for keys or the entrance to Narnia; and the world of advertising isn’t as dramatic, classy, and swanky as it is often portrayed in movies and TV. What we need to do is develop fictional story lines based on completely made up occupations where everyone is well dressed, physically attractive, and ethics and gravity aren’t things to be concerned about.
Maybe something like a tree polisher or a fruit shiner, people who live and work on the edge everyday shining fruit and polishing trees. It’s a competitive and cut throat industry, with lots of wealth and glamor, but the daily grind takes its toll and makes for short careers. Fruit shiners underwrite the big risks so you don’t have to; hard bodies and soft fruit. Or, rock digglers, or dirt danglers. What do they do? They diggle and they dangle… rocks and dirt. Why? Who knows, which is why whatever happens can’t be called out for lacking in reality. Greg was vilified by his colleagues for frequently using the diggler in an unconventional manner, and in situations where protocol dictated otherwise. Sure, maybe you would do diggle-dangling differently, but these guys know what they are diggle-doing, and maybe they diggle differently in that other part of the world where they are, Made-up Pretend Land. Have you ever been? No? So, shut up already and just watch the show.
—DG.
Inside Doug's Head 