Don't Tread on She
Half-Hour Comedy Pilot [ Historical ]
I win family Thanksgivings by memorizing embarrassing facts about the Founding Fathers to use against relatives who try to idolize them. No, I have never been cool.
Logline: Let's re-examine the absurd way in which a bunch of colonists stumbled their way into making a democracy, especially if these figureheads are gender-bent to be women wearing the pantaloons in this new society.
Ever since I was young, I've been fascinated by American history. Not for some sort of overt patriotism, but rather because these men let their sewage run down the streets and died from a paper cut, yet thought that they could establish a high-functioning democratic government. To say the least, it was a shit show. My AP American History textbook, if read aloud, would bring the house down at a stand-up club.
Thus, this revisionist history passion project highlights just how messy a country's birthing process can be. It's "Drunk History" meets the exciting, genre-bending of "Community."
It's 1776. The thirteen colonies are on the brink of warfare. And is that... a camera? Following... Samantha Adams? The Founding Mothers' mocumentary gives us an insight to our country's amalgamation, though perhaps not as we remember it from our U.S. History classes. Beth Franklin wants a gathering of the colonists, to deliberate this issue of "The Great British Empire." Ideas range from just paying the damn taxes to steeping the largest cup of salty tea in Boston Harbor. The two main culprits of conflict are Samantha Adams, a modern Bostonian woman trapped in pantaloons, and Joan Jay, who marches to the toot of her own fife. They're each other's greatest foils: constantly in disagreement, constantly at odds, and constantly...gazing into each other's eyes?
The first season will follow the American Revolution, and the series' longevity extends to the collapse of society as we know it in the Jacksonian Era. Again, this is a revisionist satire, though perhaps the total destruction of civilization once Andrew Jackson was president was the right idea.
Example episodes include: Sam accidentally sleeping with one of Beth's French girlfriends but she can't remember which one, and the Continental Congress trying to find out which side fired first, only for it to have been the backfire of a carriage that needs work done at their local Lincoln dealership.
The overall theme of the show revolves around a community uniting in order to and in spite of creating something very flawed. For all women are created equal, and yet it took 27 amendments to get it right.