Kickass Screenplay Ideas (TV Edition): Jihad Dad

We're talking a "back-to-basics" classic sitcom setup: nuclear family, manufactured crises, loving japes and sniping over a raucous laugh-track, every episode a lesson learned, you know the drill. Suit-and-tie hard-working engineer dad Ismal, doting yet caustic mom Talmah, smartass ten-year-old son Rueb, fifteen-year-old cool-girl daughter Reisa.

The kicker is that dad Ismal is in fact a sleeper agent for Al Queda who will at some point be called upon to perform his part in an already planned-to-the-nth-degree suicide mission which will kill many, many Americans.

It's called "Jihad Dad."

Now stay with me on this one. This is going to require a bit of a "light touch." You need an ace writing staff who know how to walk a fine line lightly but with great audacity. Because on the surface, the whole thing plays as if it's saying "hey, you know those terrorists? They're just people like us!" And that aspect is going to be played very straight-faced. As if it were any other pious hard-sell didactic moral platitude! That's the magic that makes it work. The atrociousness of the very idea will serve as a base from which to ridicule, nay, pillory that whole...what should I call it...the "infinite tolerance of every morality" mentality.

The show has to work on two levels: at face-value level, it's funny because of the crack comic writing and performances, dialogue and situations - these people have to come across as a first-rank, All-American traditional "wholesome sitcom family" but with smarts and verve to spare. But beneath the surface, the sick premise informs a whole other level of blackly comic satire and social commentary. Because Ismal's an okay enough guy, isn't he? As he plays poker with his gay pals Jim and Bob from work and his good buddy Greg Sturmbo, who works for the NSA and is constantly holding Ismal up as an example of a "Good Islamic" - well he is, isn't he? He's warm and open with his buds, and loving and rambunctious with his family isn't he? Surely he's been won over by our warm and open, loving and rambunctious freedoms - hasn't he? Surely he's not actually going to GO THROUGH WITH IT, is he?!!?

Well, not until the 3rd season finale he isn't at least. That's for damn sure!

Done well, this could be a sitcom everyone can hate. For different reasons.