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The Ms. Adventures of Co-parenting
Show Creators
- Faith Rackoff
- Cali Eder
- Lisa Kalivas
- Angela Manning
- Cody Breuler
Co-parenting Information
The Premise...
The Ms. Adventures of Co-parenting is the situation comedy about two best friends who decide to live and raise their six kids together after they both find themselves divorced and unable to make it on their own.
The key to a situation comedy is to take an old concept change it up and make it new. Vande Berg, Wenner and Gronbeck mention on p. 112 of their book Critical Approaches to Television how the task for television show creators and distributors "is how to balance the tension between convention and innovation." They note now Cawelti explains, "Interesting, popular, quality genre texts must clearly have both the essential features of the genre and something new: 'To be a work of any quality or interest, the individual version of a [genre] formula must have some unique special characteristic of its own, yet these characteristics must ultimately work toward the fulfillment of the conventional form.' (2004)
A twist on the traditional situation comedy, this show is part Kate and Allie, part Step by Step and part Reba. Similar to the Kate and Allie, which ran from 1984-1989 on CBS, the show is about two best friends who agree to live and raise their children together. However in this show each comes to the table with three children whereas in Kate and Allie there were three kids total. While the show Step by Step had each party bringing three kids a piece to the story it had a man and a woman getting married and raising their blended families together. We add a bit of Reba into the story because Ann's ex-husband, Chris and new wife, Amanda also play an active role.
The show will focus on the development of the characters. Each character is flawed. Yet as Mary Ann Watson mentions in her book Defining Visions: Television and the American Experience Since 1945 charcters are not always meant to be perfect. In fact, E. Jack Neuman, the executive producer of the television show Mr. Novak, explained that the main character John Novak “ is not a perfect man… didn’t want him to be perfect and I didn’t want him surrounded by perfection. But I wanted him to try for perfection and to keep trying, week in and week out.” (2003, p146) In The Ms. Adventures our lead characters are divorced women who are trying to put their lives together again. Ann Russell is a career-oriented journalist and domestically stupid. Theresa Jones on the other hand is a domestic genius but has no motivation on working in the world, she is weighting for her Prince Charming.
The growth the group will experience as a family will be an essential aspect of drawing and retaining an audience. Watson highlightes how show creator Gary David Goldberg explained, "Three things have to happen for Family Ties to be successful,” he said. “One is the audience has to want to be part of that family, Then, the second thing is, they have to see themselves in that family. And the third thing, and a very important thing, is the audience has to begin to want to watch because they think they can learn how to be a better family.” (p.70) With more and more women raising children on their own our show presents another option for women.
The key to a situation comedy is to take an old concept change it up and make it new. Vande Berg, Wenner and Gronbeck mention on p. 112 of their book Critical Approaches to Television how the task for television show creators and distributors "is how to balance the tension between convention and innovation." They note now Cawelti explains, "Interesting, popular, quality genre texts must clearly have both the essential features of the genre and something new: 'To be a work of any quality or interest, the individual version of a [genre] formula must have some unique special characteristic of its own, yet these characteristics must ultimately work toward the fulfillment of the conventional form.' (2004)
A twist on the traditional situation comedy, this show is part Kate and Allie, part Step by Step and part Reba. Similar to the Kate and Allie, which ran from 1984-1989 on CBS, the show is about two best friends who agree to live and raise their children together. However in this show each comes to the table with three children whereas in Kate and Allie there were three kids total. While the show Step by Step had each party bringing three kids a piece to the story it had a man and a woman getting married and raising their blended families together. We add a bit of Reba into the story because Ann's ex-husband, Chris and new wife, Amanda also play an active role.
The show will focus on the development of the characters. Each character is flawed. Yet as Mary Ann Watson mentions in her book Defining Visions: Television and the American Experience Since 1945 charcters are not always meant to be perfect. In fact, E. Jack Neuman, the executive producer of the television show Mr. Novak, explained that the main character John Novak “ is not a perfect man… didn’t want him to be perfect and I didn’t want him surrounded by perfection. But I wanted him to try for perfection and to keep trying, week in and week out.” (2003, p146) In The Ms. Adventures our lead characters are divorced women who are trying to put their lives together again. Ann Russell is a career-oriented journalist and domestically stupid. Theresa Jones on the other hand is a domestic genius but has no motivation on working in the world, she is weighting for her Prince Charming.
The growth the group will experience as a family will be an essential aspect of drawing and retaining an audience. Watson highlightes how show creator Gary David Goldberg explained, "Three things have to happen for Family Ties to be successful,” he said. “One is the audience has to want to be part of that family, Then, the second thing is, they have to see themselves in that family. And the third thing, and a very important thing, is the audience has to begin to want to watch because they think they can learn how to be a better family.” (p.70) With more and more women raising children on their own our show presents another option for women.
Potential Storylines
Exploring ways in which this family will grow together and be accepted as one family within society will be the focus of the show. With such an ensemble there are many different story lines we can develop.
For our pilot episode we have Theresa and Ann going to open school night at Maggie and Daniel's school. When Ann gets held up with Daniel's teacher she arrives late into Maggie's classroom. The teacher asks her who she is and when Ann announces that she is Maggie's "co-parent" the other parents believe that Theresa and Ann are gay. The following evening Theresa is out on a date and one of the parents see her and ask her how she can cheat on her "wife."
Another idea for an episode is to have Marissa and Grace be played against each other by a guy from school. When the boy breaks both of their hearts Mark stands up for his sisters and gets in a fight. Theresa and Ann have to go down to the principal's office to retrieve the Mark and get a lecture from the school officials.
Then in another episode Daniel is so excited about going to Comic Con with his dad over the weekend that it is all he can talk about. However with his constant reminder of how much fun he has with his dad, Maggie who longs for her father's attention becomes an emotional basket case.
Other story lines include:
1)Theresa and Ann having a home facial night with the girls when Marissa's boyfriend delivers the pizza and Ann's new guy decides to stop by.
2)As time progresses Theresa and Ann become at odds with each other and eventually end up in an all out food fight in the kitchen.
3) Feeling left out that Marissa and Grace are so close, Maggie tries to find a nook to call her own in the house.
For our pilot episode we have Theresa and Ann going to open school night at Maggie and Daniel's school. When Ann gets held up with Daniel's teacher she arrives late into Maggie's classroom. The teacher asks her who she is and when Ann announces that she is Maggie's "co-parent" the other parents believe that Theresa and Ann are gay. The following evening Theresa is out on a date and one of the parents see her and ask her how she can cheat on her "wife."
Another idea for an episode is to have Marissa and Grace be played against each other by a guy from school. When the boy breaks both of their hearts Mark stands up for his sisters and gets in a fight. Theresa and Ann have to go down to the principal's office to retrieve the Mark and get a lecture from the school officials.
Then in another episode Daniel is so excited about going to Comic Con with his dad over the weekend that it is all he can talk about. However with his constant reminder of how much fun he has with his dad, Maggie who longs for her father's attention becomes an emotional basket case.
Other story lines include:
1)Theresa and Ann having a home facial night with the girls when Marissa's boyfriend delivers the pizza and Ann's new guy decides to stop by.
2)As time progresses Theresa and Ann become at odds with each other and eventually end up in an all out food fight in the kitchen.
3) Feeling left out that Marissa and Grace are so close, Maggie tries to find a nook to call her own in the house.