Combining the last two posts, suppose the U.S. decided it was too risky for Zelenskyy to fly to the U.S. for his meetings, and so they put him on a submarine to bring him over. Naturally the Russians will pursue in their own submarine, and the commanodes are pursuing the Russians in a third submarine.
As for how it all ends, how many of us saw The Hunt for Red October.
Andrei, you’ve lost another submarine?
Okay fellas, it’s looking great so far, genuine belly laughs from The Captain, but we need to work on the characters.
Here’s some notes on your basic archetypes:
The leader: Your basic master planner whose plans never survive their first contact with the enemy – mainly because the enemy is busy shooting themselves in the foot. A certain amount of macho swagger tempered not only by genuine concern for his team but also a growing self-awareness that he’s playing pro basketball against kindergarteners and it’s just gets more embarrassing as time goes on.
Loverboy: The real Casanova of the bunch. Almost never gets to use his charms to fight the good fight because the only Russian women he meets are eighty-year-old reservists who still think they’re fighting World War II.
The electronics experts: Constantly bemoans the fact that he creates ingenious devices for demolition or electronic surveillance but never gets to use them because the Russians routinely blow themselves up. “You know how long it took to make this? And I had to use a ham radio, two pounds of fertilizer and a box of Wheat Thins to make it work!”
The tough guy, who almost never gets to clean anybody’s clock…you know why. (Alternatively, we could have a character who does get to defeat Russians in combat – except he’s a Don Knotts/Jerry Lewis type who would be useless in any other scenario. The Russians are already half-dead, drunk or just waking up with massive hangovers before Don/Jerry karate-chops them into oblivion. He keeps getting medals for bravery, but only the rest of the team knows he’s a Casper Milquetoast).
Okay, you guys take it from here.
We could re-purpose John “Hannibal” Smith’s tag line from The A-Team, “I love it when a plan comes together.” Just said in an increasingly sarcastic tone as the series progresses.
And earlier I mentioned the two guys who keeping betting with each other about how the Russians are going to screw things up this time.
That could be the Hacker and Loverboy’s main running gag.
“C’mon, you got ‘accidently set themselves on fire’ last week!”
(Captain faceplams)
“I’d love it if the plan’d come together.”
Cut to random Russian soldier quietly spreading butter & herring on a Wheat Thin.
“Oh. THAT’S what these were for?”
They sell bingo cards and hand out prizes after a rake off.
If you go with a Mr. T type, he can get increasingly frustrated over the course of the episode/season that thee bad guys he’s trying to beat up keep hurting themselves before he ever gets to them. Maybe he can get some release by punching out Russian washing machines.
In an episode that is a stealth pilot for a possible spin-off series, The Leader is on leave in Kyiv, and runs into an old buddy from his training days. Over drinks, the old buddy tells a tale (shown in a series of flashbacks) of being part of a team trying to rescue Russian Oligarchs all over the world who are being threatened by Putin, in hopes that the oligarchs will betray Putin.
Every mission, the covert ops team manages to successfully intercept and destroy the Russian assassination squads. But just as the Ukrainian team is about to lay hands on the oligarch and offer them asylum, the oligarch manages to fall out of a window in an increasing comedic series of pratfalls.
Please tell me that one time an oligarch falls out of the window and lands on the assassination squad as they are fleeing.
I think this needs to be an animated series, in the style of someone who arts like Enki Bilal.
Archer style might work, too.
I think this relevant
Maybe a Three’s Company style “misunderstood overheard conversation”?
Two Generals are arguing about who gets to keep a basket of eggs they just looted from a local farmer. A drunk NCO overhears a comment about “Keeping all their eggs in one basket”, and decides that this is an order to move all troops and equipment into a single building.
Then he takes a smoke break, and decides to phone his mom. As Ukrainian missiles lock onto his phone signal, he panics, and tosses his cigarette into the ammo dump in the basement.
With the sudden loss of signal the missiles veer off and strike random targets.
Or lock onto signals they can find, which leads them to Russian army targets. As a sitcom, this show needs to obfuscate death while at the same time not making war seem palatable.
Even better. Some general in a car talking to his female tovarich.
Texting rude pictures of the two of them to a colonel in HQ, causing both locations to draw missiles.
As the season picks up for the second half, the Russians try a new tactic. They’re releasing various types of balloons with different payloads to drift into the Ukraine and disrupt communications, take close up pictures, possibly even drop gas cannisters. The team is tasked with stopping the threat, but before they can even get to the balloon base behind the lines, the Russians discover that prevailing winds go from west to east. All those balloons have drifted away from Ukraine, across Asia, and eventually gotten caught in the jetstream. At that point they’re carried into North American airspace where, after some initial confusion, the U.S. Air Force shoots them all down.
