the pilot files: Clone High

I’m spending the month of July writing the pilot for a series I pitched at a June workshop in PEI. In preparation I am watching the pilots of various shows I am/have been a fan of and reporting back on how they set up the show, what was successful, what failed and what changed. It’s more of an exercise for me than for the general public, but here they will be.

Clone High
Premiere date: November 2, 2002 (MTV)
Network tagline: n/a

What goes down: The theme song, by Abandoned Pools, sets up the premise original-Degrassi-style:

Way, way back in the 1980s
Secret government employees
Dug up famous guys and ladies
And made amusing genetic copies

Now the clones are sexy teens now
They’re gonna make it if they try
Loving, learning, sharing, judging
Time to laugh and shiver at Clone High

Abe Lincoln (voice of Saturday Night Live’s Will Forte) and Mahatma Gandhi (voice of Michael James McDonald) walk down the street in a generic American suburb. “This year’s gonna be different,” declares Abe, our skinny, hapless hero. “I spent all summer on my high fives and finger snaps,” says Gandhi, firing finger guns, establishing himself as comic relief. “Joan of Arc, up top!” he says as Joan (voice of Mad TV’s Nicole Sullivan) stalks by in her combat boots and crop top, leaving him hanging. “Don’t touch me, Gandhi,” she mutters.

“Geez Abe, you grew, like, a foot,” says Joan in a completely different tone.

We meet other clones, some main characters, some just drive-bys. JFK (voice of Christopher Miller) leans on a tree. Marilyn Monroe slinks past. “Hi, Kennedy,” she breathes. Skinny Elvis and Fat Elvis compare lunches.

Just as Joan is telling Abe she plans to date a lot more this year, Cleopatra (voice of Scrubs’ Christa Miller) shows up and Abe announces he wants to go out with her by listing various synonyms for “hot.” “I guess what I’m saying,” he sums up, “is that I admire her commitment to community service.”

“You don’t think that dating an old friend might be better?” asks Joan, inching closer. “You know, maybe some you take for granted?”

“Nope, Cleo. ONLY Cleo.”

Cleo says hi to Abe, who can only reply in half-syllables. He puts his hand through the trophy case he’s leaning on. “Abe, you’re bleeding,” says Joan. “Not. NOW,” Abe stage-whispers. “Fine, I’ll wait for you by the gauze.”

And our main triangle is established before the three-minute mark.

Gandhi says hello to Cleo. “Do I know you?” Gandhi runs down their relationship: all the same classes, he gave her a kidney, and “I was your foster brother for 10 years, until you convinced our parents I wasn’t good enough for your image, and had me transferred to another home?”

“Benji?” Cleo guesses. She leaves, but not before telling Abe about a party at JFK’s.

In class, as a Dashboard Confessional song plays in the background, the teacher (voice of Andy Dick) announces, “I’m not just your kindly history teacher, I’m also the first mostly human clone.” He’s got human legs and a sheep torso. “Spliced in a little sheep DNA.”

“You can’t even tell, Mr. Sheepman,” Abe says as the teacher eats his cane.

Joan (“Ms. of Arc,” says Sheepman) gets up. “I don’t have to tell you how committed I am to community service,” she says, as Abe’s statement echoes in her mind. “That’s why I’m starting a teen crisis hotline.”

Cut to Principal Scudworth’s office. He’s watching Joan and Abe talk. “Oh young, unsuspecting clones,” he soap operas, “little do they know I control them, the greatest minds the world has ever known. For what is more powerful than a high school principal?”

The head of the Secret Board of Shadowy Figures enters (from the shadows, natch) and tells Scudworth (voice of Phil Lord) the Board is worried that he is nuts. “Blasphemy!” Scudworth yells. “Yeah, well you do have a robot butler named Mr. Butlertron,” the Figure offers.

Enter Mr. B (voice of Christopher Miller) with a tray of scones. “More tea, Wesley?” he says to the Figure.

“He calls everyone Wesley,” says Scudworth. “Don’t know why.”

“We’re paying you to monitor these clones as closely as possible,” exposits the Figure, “so if you want to keep your job you can either write a report proving you know what it’s like to be a student at Clone High” – no dice – “or I’m to kill you.”

“I’ll title it What It’s Like to Be a Teenage Clone Colon A Rope of Sand,” says Scudworth.

“Good title,” says Mr.B. “It draws the reader in without giving too much away. ... Wesley.”

JFK confronts Abe in the bathroom. (Non-high school, non-Ally McBeal shows do not have the luxury of big things going down in bathrooms.) Kennedy wants Cleo (“She’s numbers 1 and 2 on my list of 150 women to bang this year”).

And there’s the other triangle before the six-minute mark.

In an extended bit poached by everyone from Family Guy to The Simpsons, JFK tells Abe he is not invited to the party.
 

At the Grassy Knoll, Clone High’s Peach Pit, Abe is despondent as JFK and Cleo share a smoothie. We meet recurring clone George Washington Carver (voice of Scrubs’ Donald Faison), who’s spent his summer “bioengineering this anthropomorphic peanut” which he keeps in a jar. It has a monocle, a hat and talks.

Abe gets up to make a speech. “All I’m saying is, a girl is interested in me and I’m not going to ignore it!”

Joan bumps into him. “Abe, I want you.” “You want me to what?” “Um...” “Forgot what you were going to say? Happens to me all the time.”

Gandhi gives him a “Bitch, please” glare. “What?”

He tells JFK he’ll bring the beer to the party.

“Any ideas on how to get the beer?” asks Gandhi. Abe: “Nope.”

End of Act One. At 7:30 in, all the major characters and relationships have been defined and established, and there’s been enough of the trademark insanity humour and throwaway bits to ensure that they will also be part of the makeup. (If you watch this, then Scrubs, you’ll see where the latter series’ lapses into momentary craziness come from.)

Gym class. Taught by Eleanor Roosevelt, voiced by a man. Joan gets sent to Scudworth’s office for talking. Roosevelt ogles her ass.
 

Cleo slinks up to Abe and tells him how much she loves underage drinking. “OK, how am I gonna get that beer?” Abe asks Gandhi. (This is basically the plot of Superbad, except Gandhi is both McLovin and Jonah Hill.)

In front of the liquor store, we meet a galoot in the form of Genghis Khan, who Abe’s enlisted to get the beer with a fake ID. Extended bit about Khan being a moron – they flame out at the liquor store, gas station and another liquor store.

Scudworth’s office. He tells Joan he’ll overlook her offense if she will help him write his report. She refuses, so he sends her into a death maze then decides he needs to go undercover, Never Been Kissed-style, at JFK’s party.

We find out JFK’s foster parents are a gay couple.

Joan is stuck working the teen hotline, with Dashboard in the background. She thanks Gandhi for staying with her instead of going to the party. He’s got one leg out the window but tells her she can count on him.

Cut to Gandhi at the party helping teens via cell phone.

Abe arrives with a keg.

Joan shows up and congratulates Abe on giving the partygoers the means to make asses of themselves. He tells her it’s near-beer – non-alcoholic. “Joan, have you ever liked someone so much you’re afraid you’re going to blurt out something stupid?” Joan: “I have a rash on my back.”

Scudworth and Mr. B show up dressed as b-boys (Mr. B is wearing a Flava Flav clock). The students are not fooled.

Van Gogh calls the hotline from a room that looks like a mash-up of his most famous paintings, telling Gandhi, “Sometimes I just sit in my room and cry. The only way I can cling to my sanity is that nobody knows how truly lonely I am.” Cut to a shirtless Gandhi holding his phone aloft at the party. Everyone laughs and Van Gogh figures he’s on speakerphone. “Gandhi, how could you?” “Hey, Gandhi was anti-violence, not anti-comedy.”

Joan sits alone. Mr. B rolls up. “Maybe you should tell Abe how you really feel,” he suggests. “Maybe one of us just needs to make the first move,” Joan deludes herself. “I love you,” she says, hugging the robot. “Don’t mention it. ... Wesley.”

“I used to see you as this honest guy,” Cleo slurs to Abe. “But now I see you as this cool guy who just happens to be honest.”

“Honest Abe,” Abe murmurs, thinking about the fake beer. Cleo pulls him in for a kiss just as Joan walks up determinedly. She sees them and Chris Carrabba comes wailing in with a couplet from “Standard Lines”: “But your taste still lingers on my lips as if I’ve just placed them upon yours/and I starve, I starve for you.” JFK pops up from his own makeout session to call Cleo a tramp. End of Act 2.

Cleo and Abe make out to the strains of “The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most.” JFK tells Cleo to choose. She leaves dramatically.

In the kitchen, Scudworth is hanging from the ceiling while Gengis Khan plays pinata. “It’s me, your memorable school chum, Cloney McStudent,” Scudworth insists.

Cleo calls the hotline about her boy problem and Joan advises her, neither realizing it’s the other (you can see Cleo’s silouhette through the window of the room Joan’s in). “Choosing between the jerk who’s good for your image and the nice, sensitive guy is not really much of a problem,” Joan says wistfully. Then she realizes it’s Cleo. “Go for the jerk,” she says. “And sleep with him right away, because it’s never too early for your first time. And also? Don’t floss your teeth.”

Then she sees Abe sitting sadly across the way. “Dammit,” she breathes. “You know what? Go with the nice guy,” she tells Cleo.

“Did you just screw yourself,” Gandhi says. She pantses him.

Cleo officially chooses Abe. JFK hits on Joan, who roundhouse kicks him. (This will be important later.)
 

The cops bust up the party and arrest Joan and Gandhi. “Come on Abe,” says Cleo. “Leave your friends behind and come back to my soundproof basement.”

Dashboard re-amps as Joan sadly watches Abe from the squad car. He drops Cleo’s hand and makes the right decision: he tells the cop to let them go, it was non-alcoholic beer. Everyone laughs at him.

Post-party, Scudworth has a leg cast and a sling. The Shadowy Figure demands his report. Scudworth goes fetal and says he spent the weekend being judged and humiliated. The Figure disappears. “I guess you proved to him what it’s like to be a teenager...and a pinata,” says Mr. B.

“Well, from now on I’ll be more sensitive,” declares Scudworth, “to the awakwardness and emotional insecurity of today’s youth.” He walks past a row of lockers: “Out of my way, fatty! You too, bad skin.”

Outside, Abe, Joan and Gandhi walk to school. Gandhi reassures Abe that soon someone will do something stupider and be a bigger loser than him. Cut to Van Gogh, who’s painted a naked picture of Gandhi on a nearby wall. Headline: Teen Crisis Hotline. A thought bubble has Gandhi saying “No problem too SMALL.”

“I hate this school,” says Gandhi.

JFK walks by with an arm slung around Cleo, who passes Abe a note that says “Sorry.” And his hope grew three sizes that day.

Choice review quote: “The characters are intriguing in a lightweight way but could lose their appeal fast. Remember when Austin Powers was a brilliant comedy creation, the thawed-out ’90s secret agent who still operated by ’60s social standards? The joke just wasn't good enough to hold up three (and probably more) films, although that hasn't hurt the films at the box office. The clones, like Austin, may turn out to be a one-joke invention.” [Anita Gates, New York Times]

Where we are now: Cruelly cancelled after a single season – the cliffhanger ending has the gang at the prom with Abe, about to sleep with Cleo, realizing he loves Joan. He finds her in bed with JFK just as Scudworth freezes everyone in order to stop the Board of Shadowy Figures from taking the clones back. Apparently the Gandhi people didn’t appreciate his depiction and had the whole thing shut down. At least Bill Lawrence went on to create Scrubs. STAMOS!