This was a pitch presentation that I made on spec in order to convince FOX that “The Paloni Family” would be the ideal late night show for their saturday night block. It was 2009, and they had just cancelled Mad TV and there was a perfect little slice of heaven that I was hoping to turn into my playground. I brought this in, and was able to sell them on it. We started moving forward with this as late night for a few weeks, when suddenly, BOOM. The president of FOX (Kevin Reilly) shifted gears on the animated idea for that Saturday night slot. He still loved this project, and decided that it was strong enough/ interesting enough to be developed for prime time. So that’s what we did. And the original idea began to buckle once subjected to the scrutiny of the prime time development process.

The Paloni “packaging” was supposed to be a really simple narrative that took up at most 25% of the total episode. Instead we ended up writing a pilot script that was about 95% Paloni story packaging and 5% sketch comedy. I will say that the final script is pretty good, and I was lucky enough to work with the legendary writing team Tom Gammil and Max Pross on it, who I absolutely love. I ultimately learned that trying to do something this experimental on FOX primetime was a mistake. A simple narrative would have had a MUCH better chance of making it on the air. So my advice is to stick with a traditional family, or interesting workplace/ co-workers who also have families. Maybe a family that runs an insane asylum? Or a show that takes place at a dentist’s office/ the dentists homes with their families? Or maybe a family of acrobats? Or a family that’s also in a band together? Just make sure it’s a narrative. And features some family aspects. Preferably with some sort of Mom, Dad, Sister, Brother, and bonus points for including an interesting twist on a baby, and family pet.