5 Geeky TV Shows I Wish Were Real

I’ll admit it: some­times I sit around and dream up fan­tasy TV show con­cepts. When you con­sume as much tele­vi­sion as I do, it takes a lot for a show to really grab you. ‘Course, it doesn’t help that I grow more cyn­i­cal and jaded with each pass­ing year, but I digress.

Now, I’m not a pro­ducer or any­thing, and I’ve never pitched a tele­vi­sion show in my life, but I’m pretty sure that if any of the fol­low­ing show ideas were to sud­denly exist tomor­row, it would be an instant success.

Here are five geeky TV show con­cepts that I wish were real:

“Pick­ers” for Gamers

You know the show Amer­i­can Pick­ers on the His­tory chan­nel? Well this would be  pretty much the same thing except a pair of nerds–the less socially skilled and more awk­ward, the better–would go around to yard sales, liq­ui­da­tions, pri­vate col­lec­tors’ homes, maybe even Craigslist and Ebay in search of rare and valu­able video games and gam­ing col­lectibles. You know, stuff like the Medieval Mad­ness pin­ball table, Air Raid for Atari 2600, or the Vir­tual Boy  (just kid­ding about that last one–nobody really wants one of those things).

On the real Pick­ers, the two hosts nego­ti­ate to the point of high­way rob­bery. This show would be the oppo­site because gamers are sen­ti­men­tal fan­boys who are known to put things like rare, ridonku­lously expen­sive Neo Geo car­tridges ahead of their finan­cial future–which is part of the appeal too, so that we at home can all have a good laugh about it.

Work­ing Titles:

• Epic Looters
• Shit Gamers Will Pay Obscene Amounts of Money For

Project Photoshop

Think Project Run­way , except replace the wannabe fash­ion design­ers for wannabe graphic design­ers. Actu­ally, the con­tes­tants don’t even need to be skilled graphic design­ers at all–the show would be fun­nier with ran­domly selected neti­zens with ama­teur Pho­to­shop skills. The con­tes­tants would face off against each other in extreme Pho­to­shop chal­lenges, timed of course, in cat­e­gories such as Meme Gen­er­a­tion , Fat Celebrity Makeovers, Moti­va­tional Posters , Fake Prod­ucts, Movie Poster Mashups , and the other highly cre­ative but ulti­mately use­less art forms that Pho­to­shop has become infa­mous for. It goes with­out say­ing that use of Comic Sans would result in an instant elimination.

In keep­ing with the spirit of the orig­i­nal show, the design­ers could still present their mas­ter­pieces on the runway–except it would be a vir­tual run­way where home view­ers would be able to par­tic­i­pate in the elim­i­na­tions via live social media-based vot­ing. Holy shit this show sounds awesome.

Work­ing Titles:

• Pho­to­shop­ping with the Tards
• Clone Stamp for the Win

Hip Service

Remem­ber that show Lip Ser­vice that used to be on MTV in the early ‘90s? If you’re too young (or too old) to remem­ber it, Lip Ser­vice was a game show where the con­tes­tants  divided up into teams and had to lip sync their way through a grab bag of ran­domly selected pop­u­lar songs of the day. The in-house DJ (who was Spin­derella of Salt ‘N Pepa, by the way) would mix the music live. You could get Ice Ice Baby, Vogue and Unskinny Bop back to back, or it could be Come Baby Come , I Touch Myself, and Blame It on the Rain–it was anyone’s guess! The team that lip synced the most con­vinc­ingly is the team that won.

Sim­i­larly, Hip Ser­vice would fol­low the same for­mat except all the con­tes­tants would be hip­sters and all the music would be from obscure bands that you’ve prob­a­bly never heard of, like St. Agnes Charm School, Crotch Mit­tens  and Zebra­pants (and don’t bother Googling those bands because I just made them up). See, hip­sters take their music very seri­ously and there is noth­ing fun­nier than some fuck­ing hip­ster who doesn’t know the words to obscure, shitty music that only hip­sters are sup­posed to like. Isn’t it deli­ciously ironic?

Work­ing Titles:

• Music Is Too Mainstream
• I Was Into Lip Sync­ing Before It Was Cool

Win Mark Zuckerberg’s Money

You’re famil­iar with Win Ben Stein’s Money , right? Well, since Mark Zucker­berg has more money than God, I fig­ure he could stand to give a lit­tle bit of it away. And just like Ben Stein, Mark would be a con­tes­tant on his own show in a sport­ing attempt to pro­tect his assets and ward off com­peti­tors. Here’s the fun part, though: all ques­tions will be related to Facebook’s murky pri­vacy poli­cies, sketchy terms of ser­vice, and barely-there tech­ni­cal sup­port that even The Zuck him­self doesn’t get. So pretty much every­one stands a good chance of winning.

Work­ing Titles:

• “Like” Mark Zucker­berg On Face­book to Win
• Win The Winklevii’s Money

The Biggest Loser: Zom­bie Edition

I don’t watch The Biggest Loser , mostly because it depresses the hell out of me, but I can tell you for a fact I’d watch the shit out of The Biggest Loser if the show was any­thing like the pic above. I got this idea after hear­ing about Run For Your Lives , a zombie-themed 5K event/obstacle course that is as every bit as bitchin’ as it sounds. Get­ting in shape is much more effec­tive when your very life depends upon it, say, when you’re run­ning from a horde of brain-lusting zom­bies. It doesn’t even mat­ter that zom­bies aren’t real (…yet). I’m run­ning the hell away from any­thing that looks like that. By the way, don’t for­get it’s Zom­bie Aware­ness Month !

Work­ing Title:

• The Run­ning Dead
• The Biggest Meal

 Just for fun…

If any of these show con­cepts had any shot in hell of becom­ing a real­ity, which one would you want to watch the most?

Moonlight: Well this really sucks…

Par­don the vam­pire pun, but there’s noth­ing worse than get­ting sucked into an awe­some new TV show only to find out it has already been can­celed.  My lat­est let­down was over the CBS series Moon­light , a show about a vam­pire P.I.  liv­ing in modern-day Los Ange­les who strug­gles with life, love and his oft-challeneged quest for redemp­tion.  Sounds cheesy, I know, and there’s no short­age of awful vam­pire shows—even some with strik­ingly sim­i­lar premises—but Moon­light was one of the best I’ve ever seen.  I typ­i­cally don’t watch many TV shows (at least not while they’re still air­ing), I guess because I hate com­mer­cials, wait­ing a week to find out what hap­pens next, and spoiler-happy ass­clowns online.  So most of my TV show con­sump­tion is done all at once in the form of down­loads, DVD, or Hulu, even though watch­ing shows all at once usu­ally means I’m unfash­ion­ably late to most fan­doms.  Which brings me back to Moon­light …

For­get for a moment that the name of the show is Moon­light , which is a bad idea for sev­eral rea­sons, the most obvi­ous being con­fu­sion with Stephe­nie Meyer’s much lamer Twi­light .  Also look past the fact that main char­ac­ter Mick St. John (Alex O’Loughlin) is bru­tally hot, which much of this show’s pop­u­lar­ity with a rabid female fan­base can be attrib­uted to.  Under­neath you’ll find an intel­li­gent, action-packed, funny, and yes, roman­tic super­nat­ural drama with high pro­duc­tion value, great direc­tion, and a kick­ass sound­track.  As far as vam­pire lore goes, Moon­light doesn’t devi­ate too much from con­ven­tional mythol­ogy, but does throw a few unique and inter­est­ing twists into the mix, like sil­ver as a lethal sub­stance, sun­light caus­ing pro­gres­sive degen­er­a­tion, and my per­sonal favorite, sleep­ing in freez­ers. For the geeks, there’s even a geek vam­pire with plenty of video game and World of War­craft references—even a full-blown Leeroy Jenk­ins bat­tle charge.

Crit­i­cally it seems Moon­light didn’t fare too well, with many hav­ing dis­missed the show as silly, or per­haps more detri­men­tal, com­par­ing it to Angel. But it was an obvi­ous hit with fans, hav­ing won a People’s Choice Award for Best New Drama, and its rat­ings were noth­ing to scoff at. So it’s beyond me why CBS would choose to can­cel a good show, espe­cially after claim­ing there were plans for a sec­ond sea­son.  I’m just bit­ter I started watch­ing it with­out know­ing it was already over.

Fans of the show can sign the online peti­tion to save Moon­light , even though most online peti­tions are like pisisng into the wind.  As for me, I’ll just have to be con­tent with re-watching the first and only sea­son and mourn­ing the loss of yet another good show that’s gone too soon.