As per this Mod Note, here’s the Sitcom Spinoff thread, now with titles!
The Story So Far:
Feel free to suggest an episode or scene!
Absolutely have to have a scene where the Russians try to blow up a bridge, but connect the wrong set of wires and blow up the truck carrying all the munitions.
I think one of the Ukrainian commandos should have a pet Shiba Inu named Nafo who has a recurring tendency to get loose and run around in Russian facilities, resulting in hilarious hijinks as the Russians try to catch the little fella.
No ideas yet, but I love it.
Past experience suggests a certain amount of time has to pass before ‘people’, wherever, can laugh about aspects of the war. After 1945 nobody wanted to think much about the war for some years, they were too busy rebuilding their lives and for those who had lost someone, maybe more than one, it was too near.
In one episode, the Russians are trying to blow up an ammunition depot before the Ukranian army can get to it. Our protagonists are kept away by a series of comical bad luck incidents. Luckily, the Russians are completely unable to blow up the depot, due to their own incompetence. (“lighter is not work! Sergie has drunk the fluid again!”) Zelinsky is once again impressed by the team’s ingenuity.
Yeah, but the Ukrainians are laughing about this war as it happens. It’s been noted several times that their propaganda team is utterly harsh in poking fun at the Russian’s incompetence. Their memes and videos are unparalleled in their black humor response to the war.
In one episode, the team has the bomb all prepared to plant at the munitions factory, but the saboteurs stop for a piss when a Russian counter-agent steals the bomb to prevent the attack, but it falls off the back of his motorcycle right as he is riding over a grade crossing and blows up, causing a train loaded with tanks to derail dramatically and the tanks were all ready to go directly into service at the front so they start shooting up the Russian town because of their hair triggers.
I think an episode where they go to sabotage a Tank factory, then realize that all the tanks are coming off the line and being sent to the front with non of the barrels being drilled.
The team is congratulated on managing to divert an entire column of vehicles from an invasion route into Ukraine.
It turns out the Russians installed their compasses backwards, so they thought they were driving southwest, but were actually driving northeast. None of them realize this, and eventually they all run out of gas, so they just leave the vehicles there and hope no one notices.
It seems to me each of these ideas would only take up 2 minutes of screen time. The Ukrainians don’t have to do anything to upset the Russians’ plans. All they have to do is show up after the self-inflicted disaster and point and laugh.
Oh, a good screenwriter could flesh these out into 22 minutes episodes. I mean, most of the Gilligan’s Island screw-ups were basically one idea.
Yup. Now Seinfeld always had about 4 things going on that all sort of intertwined. I could see that happening here too. But the Gilligan’s island approach should work too.
You could add in Travel stories, like the car breaking down, and a Military convoy coming along and give the Saboteurs a ride. Or the locals thinking they are Russian soldiers and paying for train tickets.
Buying explosives from the Local oligarch?
You know, I could see Matt Groening doing this. He/his writers have a lot of skill with taking a story line and ricochetting it all off in another tangent so you forget how it got to where it is. And the idea of Russians in Ukrama drawn by Groening has a lot of appeal.
The commandoes are getting tired of Russian vodka, so they install a still in an abandoned boat. They put an outboard on it so the boat can be hidden from sight if need be. One night Sergei bends over to check a run and his butt hits the start button on the motor. The boat takes off, Sergei goes overboard and the runaway still explodes directly under a Russian bridge.
More medals, but they’re back to drinking Gorlovka vodka.
Our Ukrainian protagonist would be named “Sergiy”, or so my Ukrainian and Russian colleagues tell me.
Better still! (sorry)
Sergei is one of the Russians tasked with running Our Heroes to ground. He finds the boat, tastes the output, backs into button…
The Russians blow up their own bridge.
Hehe, it can’t blow up a missile cruiser instead?
…just as the cruiser is going under the bridge.