TV Writers Answer: How Would You Script the 2024 Election?

Writers from "Sex and the City," "Parks and Recreation," "Boston Legal," "Supergirl," "Friends," and "10 Things I Hate About You" pitch us their dream Harris v. Trump twists.

No doubt it has been a wild 2024 election season, with surprises worthy of the most binge-able political shows and films. Vice president Kamala Harris has stolen the main character energy that former president and reality TV star Donald Trump has so expertly wielded in election cycles past, embracing memes like a seasoned pop star. The guy whose life inspired the major Hollywood film Hillbilly Elegy turned out to have negative star power. And a high school coach straight out of Friday Night Lights became Harris’s running mate, and a social media darling.

With less than a month to go before the election, we asked some of our favorite TV writers to imagine the plot twists that could be yet to come. Here are their hilarious, insightful, and daring pitches.

Melania and Usha Go Rogue

You’re Welcome is a new buddy comedy in which Melania Trump and Usha Vance star as themselves, living together in the immigrant-friendly bed-and-breakfast they now run out of Trump Tower after they famously left their husbands (a la Thelma and Louise) on the eve of the 2024 election and went on a cross-country trip stumping for Kamala Harris that ignited the historic bipartisan election of the first female president, and marked the end of two very unhappy marriages and one very embarrassing chapter in American History.  

—Cindy Chupack (who has probably written some of your favorite episodes of Sex and the City, Modern Family, and Everybody Loves Raymond) is online at cindychupack.net

The Election Becomes … a Sci-Fi Epic Involving Taylor Swift?

It’s November 5, 2024, and the nation awaits the election results on pins and needles when UFOs appear over every major U.S. city.  It turns out aliens ARE eating our cats, they’re just not from Haiti.  Apparently our domestic felines are a delicacy more exquisite than caviar back on their home planet (and Alf, like Baby Reindeer, was a true story). Republicans and Democrats are unable to rise to the occasion and unite to confront these invaders, so Taylor Swift leads an army of Childless Cat Ladies on a mission to save their fur babies in the action drama Herding Cats.

—Carter Covington (Faking It, 10 Things I Hate About You, Greek), a writer who can be found bingeing snack size candy bars and practicing lamaze breathing while googling how he can buy his way into Portuguese citizenship despite being unemployed

The REAL Russian Conspiracy

It’s the end of this tumultuous, seemingly endless battle of a rhetorical contest.

The ballots have been counted. Recounted. Contested, recontested.

Kamala Harris is sworn in as President of the United States of America.

Cut to: Donald Trump is trampled to death by his own screaming masses as they attack the capital.

Fade to Black.

***

Fade In:

A cigarette speedboat slices against the Tiffany blue water of the warm Indian Ocean towards the enormous yacht anchored in the Seychelles.

A BRUNETTE wearing a white dress and hat is on the bow. We only see her from behind.

The tender docks. She boards the yacht and walks to a stateroom, moves a GUARD aside.

He won’t let anyone pass, until he sees her face, recognizes her, immediately lets her in with apologies.

The woman enters the stateroom, tosses her hat and purse on the bed with familiarity.

She hears the sounds of the shower running, boldly opens the shower door where she finds VLADIMIR PUTIN, naked and dripping wet.

REVERSE TO REVEAL MELANIA TRUMP.

She unzips her dress and climbs in next to him. She says to him in Russian: "I told you it would work, Vlad.”

As they kiss, we:

FADE OUT.

—Ali Adler, co-creator of Supergirl and The New Normal and author of How to F*ck a Woman

“Modern Family” (But Voters)

Because there've been shows about politicians, and I wrote on one, it'd be hard for me to explore it in a fresh way. So I'd do a limited comedy series about the voters, following two families or sets of characters, leading up to election day.  I like the documentary feel and would use that as a tool to help get to some truth about human behavior and voters and maybe get context on why they may or may not vote a certain way. Kind of a flip on Tanner '88. Although there's a split in terms of the country, it'd be fun to expose possible splits within couples, families, work mates, etc. 

—Norm Hiscock, writer for Parks and Recreation, The Kids in the Hall, and King of the Hill

Revisiting the Doughnut Incident

Don’t Donuts is a hysterical new sitcom where JD Vance (Zach Galifinakis) moves to a small town—no, not in Ohio, he's not welcome there anymore—and opens a doughnut shop. Hilarity ensues as Vance awkwardly interviews real humans for positions in the bakery.  Regular customers played by Dianne Wiest, Hugo Weaving, and Jim Gaffigan get constantly irritated as they just try and order donuts and get the hell out of the store before things get really strange and weird as Vance attempts uncomfortable small talk: “Those round baked pieces of dough are said to be yum-yum.” “Will that be Apple Pay, charge, or Earth money?” “I hear there's weather outside.” If you wonder how this can be described as “hysterical,” we have a high-volume laugh track borrowed from Mama's Family to ensure that it is. And every episode ends with JD Vance saying “I love you guys” to absolute silence.

—Mark Jordan Legan, TV Writer (Dave’s World, Grace Under Fire, Chesapeake Shores)/Co-Host of Film Freaks Forever podcast

The Election Becomes … a Rom Com?

Against all odds, the election ends in an electoral tie.  Instead of the decision going to the states, the Supreme Court makes the Solomon-esque choice to make the candidates co-presidents, each living in the White House. 

Sparks fly immediately. And not just politically.  Their romantic chemistry is palpable. 

This May-December romance will culminate in the couple finally publicly declaring their love for each other at a joint press conference under the big tree at Rockefeller Center on Christmas Day 2027. 

Of course they’ve both been so obsessed with their on-again, off-again relationship they neglect their official duties and America totally falls to shit. 

—Greg Malins, writer for Friends, How I Met Your Mother, and Will & Grace

“Boston Legal” Gets Involved

An episode of Boston Legal, “I Am Your Protector”: Denny Crane (William Shatner) takes on the job of defending Donald Trump in a class-action suit filed by 200 women who claim that Trump grabbed them by the pussy. Trump maintains that he was protecting them from feeling abandoned, lonely and scared. After a rambling, nonsensical, and long-winded closing argument by Denny Crane, which is interrupted by Trump with his own rambling, nonsensical, and long-winded comments, the judge (who was appointed by Trump) rules in Trump’s favor, of course. 

—Phoef Sutton, writer for Newhart, Cheers, Boston Legal, and Chesapeake Shores, as well as the co-host of Film Freaks Forever