Or maybe Diplomatz?

You know, I was serious about my earlier comment about what a sad hash Fox made of The American Embassy: DoS is such a mother lode of material (how often, indeed, I’ve spontaneously remarked “DoS is such a mother!”), it’s hard to believe they messed it up. The flaw, of course, is that they played it for a romantic drama, whereas – trust me – this material has “farce” written all over it.

At the (slight) risk of giving away an idea, I’m thinking one part Scrubs to one part Yes, Minister, with a dash of Hitchhiker’s thrown in.

K and I would like to take a crack at writing a pilot. The title, though, has us stumped. K rightly made fun of me for the cornball Foreign Affairs. However, we have a real disagreement over – and bear in mind, this show would liberally sample pop culture – Diplomacy!

Personally, I think Diplomacy! is hilarious. Because, y’know, “diplomacy” is not a word that would ordinarily ever take an exclamation point. So doing so, I think, quotes the entire farcical tradition of the misplaced exclamation point, from Emergency! (the apparently non-satirical source), through to updated musicals (Oliver!) – and, more importantly, a whole string of jokes about updating musicals by adding an exclamation point – to the reigning champs, Airplane!

K – who has the slight edge of having actually written for TV shows – thinks I’m certifiable.