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Memorandum To: Leonard " The Lion" Asper Grand Fromage, Canwest Global From: The Think Tank Re: Emergency Replacement Programming Lenny: Just wanted to update you on a show we’re holding back for an emergency, mid-season – yea

Memorandum

To: Leonard " The Lion" Asper

Grand Fromage, Canwest Global

From: The Think Tank

Re: Emergency Replacement Programming

Lenny:

Just wanted to update you on a show we’re holding back for an emergency, mid-season – yeah, we know, more likely an early-season – replacement for whichever misguided idea tanks first this fall. You’ll love this, Boss.

Setting: Clearly the success of CTV’s Corner Gas has shown the country’s appetite for quirky, non-urban, slice o’ life settings peopled with an assortment of bumbling bumpkins. The only flaw in this current incarnation of Green Acres is that it’s not playing so well with the uber hip, tattooed, sexually-confused, urban youth.

Solution? Move the concept to the atmospherically cool, rarefied confines of Canada’s hippest, most self-absorbed small town: Whistler. What a combo, Lenny. You’ve got the beauty of British Columbia’s wilderness – or what seems like wilderness to most of the rest of the country – you’ve got a veritable hobo’s stew of beautiful people, fabulously wealthy dilettantes, idealistic youth, aging hippies, hard-scrabble opportunists and happily-oppressed worker drones all thrown together in what would be, sans ski hills, an unremarkable, remote mountain town.

You’ve got the upcoming Olympics hanging over the town, depending on your glass half-full, half-empty point of view, like the Sword of Damocles or the Golden Fleece.

You’ve got the conundrum of a town peopled largely by thrill seekers, who can barely afford to live there unless they work a couple of jobs and stuff themselves into rental housing with enough instant roommates to make the Little Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe look like an empty-nester, vilified by the rest of the province who think everyone residing there is indolent and filthy rich. You see the Animal House plotlines here, Lenny?

But best of all, I mean absolutely best of all, is the totally bizarre, absolutely wacky cast of characters seeking political office.

First off, you’ve got to understand that politics in Whistler – both the real town and the lightly fictionalized town around which we’ll build the show – is part contact sport, Rollerderby comes to mind, and part addiction-obsession.

Quick flashback for the opening episode: Whistler is thrown into chaos, a state with which it is more than passingly familiar, when its long-serving mayor, a former ski bum/patroller/chimney sweep just to add some colour, comes back from a Hawaiian vacation and drops a bombshell on the entire town. He’s decided not to run for re-election – it was universally assumed he would both run and be easily returned – but has decided to follow his dream, new dream, of selling resort condos in Maui for Intraborg, a thinly fictionalized company who just also happens to be the biggest employer/power in Whistler. Tanned, relaxed, and with a new jones for surfing as big as the waves they call Jaws in Maui surfspeak, Hizzonor announces he ain’t runnin’ and he ain’t quittin’; he’ll just happily tread water, so to speak, and telecommute from the beach for the remainder of his term.

Well, Lenny, the race is on. The floodgates are opened and a parade of unbelievable characters start to parade their political ambition in what can only be thought of as a Halloween freak parade.

First off the mark, in an almost hysterical Al "I’m in charge here" Haig impersonation, is the mayor’s preferred choice for successor, a sitting councillor and local lawyer – oh yeah, baby, we’re talking mondo lawyer jokes here – who seems to have an almost intrinsic ability to alienate whole constituencies whenever he opens his mouth and who seems to change positions as deftly as a runway model changes outfits.

He’s followed by a long-ago former mayor of the town – a polarizing, love him or hate him kind of guy who can be rational one moment and a steamroller bully the next – who’s only recently quit his post as the area’s MLA, a position in which he was, shall we say, somewhat comically ineffective. He’s running on his record as a ‘get things done’ mayor and praying for a collective case of selective amnesia on the part of the public, many of whom weren’t around when he terrorized staff and bullied anyone who got in his way the last time around.

The two are challenged by a youngish, colourful, dynamo of a woman, a long-serving local councillor who recently seems to have become a lightning rod fueling the great chasm between members of council, municipal staff and the community at large. This character’s a great dresser and seems always to live a lifestyle that, if nothing else, begs the question of how she manages to afford it. Oh yeah, she’s also a dynamite campaigner who, inexplicably, always seems to wake up the morning after elections with a bottomless case of amnesia, never remembering or at least never again bringing up any of the great ideas she campaigned so vigorously on.

Into this mix of pro-business, pro-growth candidates parachutes the lone outcast, also a sitting councillor. Another long serving politico, he’s a Mr. Crunchy Granola, Save the Whales, Green Crusader, a rabid environmentalist with an unblemished record of opposing virtually everything the rest of the power structure seems to hold sacred: the Olympics, trophy homes, trading righteous sustainability for a chance to be in a Seadoo commercial, unbridled property rights... you get the picture. You half expect him to bust out in a Rufus T. Firefly rendition of "Whatever It Is, I’m Against It." His struggle to temper his innate suspicion of development with a vital need to embrace the economic malaise affecting the funky ski town is a soul-searching episode in itself.

Joining these heavyish hitters, is a trio of Quixotic hopefuls: A down-on-his-luck businessman in need of a job when his pizzerias go bust; a Paralympian grocery store stocker who encourages people to come talk policy with him on his breaks; and a computer/internet whiz who calls on all his powers of self-control to keep from posting doctored pictures of his opponents engaging in sex acts with farm animals.

As if that’s not enough, and I think you’d agree Lenny it is, we’ve got the underlying drama of two-thirds of the lowly-thought of sitting council either running for mayor or not running at all. That opens up a universe of characters running for council that would be a supporting cast for three or four hit shows. I won’t overwhelm you with details but they include a deli owner known to not infrequently crossdress with a theatrical company, a colourful character who claims to know where all the skeletons are buried and who keeps a watchful eye out for the black helicopters, a restaurant reviewer, a rabid environmentalist to replace the one who will either become mayor or dissolve trying, and... oh hell, Lenny, you just won’t believe some of these characters.

All we need is a green light from you boss. This’ll knock ’em dead.