^If you've never seen the show, it's kind of like this. But with 840 more characters.^
The new year brought with it subzero temperatures and a temptation to binge-watch popular shows I'd never seen. A friend's recommendation guided me to Game of Thrones. By the end of the first episode, with so much potential for episodic drama rife with good, evil, sex, and violence, I gazed out the window, saw two polar bears battling over dumpster scraps outside of Chinatown Kitchen, and realized I was indeed hooked on Game of Thrones.
The
most striking part of the HBO series is its enormity. Due to its ever-sprawling story arc, Game of Thrones
features roughly a dozen major
characters, scores of minor characters, numerous stunt doubles, and
countless extras—and that only covers the people who appear
on-screen, not the producers, writers, directors, editors, camera and
boom mic operators, wardrobe designers, set builders, stylists, key
grips and best boys (whatever it is they do), caterers, and dialect
coaches who constantly harp on the actors to British-up those
accents.
That
last job might be the easiest since many of the performers hail from
the United Kingdom. Although the program is certifiably huge in the
States and we can at least be proud the dwarf was born in Jersey, we
seem to be missing the full potential of HBO's pop-culture
juggernaut. Game of Thrones makes a staggering amount of money and generates a lot of industry, but that industry mostly profits Europeans, not Americans. And for
that reason, I declare that our president and Congress should unite
in a massive group-text effort with the show's producers.
We've got to let them know that
the average American has the potential to be yet another minor
character in a seemingly infinite realm.
We must demand that an already crowded, fictional universe be
expanded for the benefit of America.
Let's begin by giving our Thrones homeland a name: McDonaldsburgh. Devout fans have no reason to
suspect the rise of McDonaldsburgh will clash with author George RR
Martin's epic vision. The new land's inhabitants, the
McDonaldsburghers, will exist apart from Martin's multitude of
characters and their various adventures. If we can somehow tie together all the stories in the end just like they did on Seinfeld,
that'd be fantastic. If not, hey, we're just hoping to get paid
either way. As if that plea wasn't humble enough for the purists,
we're only asking for ten minutes of screen time per episode. Plus
we're Americans, so you don't have to worry about a drop-off when it
comes to sex and violence.
By introducing McDonaldsburgh
into the narrative, my hunch is that America's unemployment rate could be cut in half.
Filmed in the woods of northern Wisconsin—the Midwest's answer to
Hollywood if there ever was one—job-growth would commence with some
big-time deforestation efforts so we can build enormous sets to make
McDonaldsburgh come to life. For that endeavor, we're going to need thousands of
lumberers, construction workers, and engineers—and if any
of them fit the part, we also need someone
to play the parts of the rugged crusader Clutch Mountainside as well as the goateed schemer Fork Stansbury.
The most crucial set-piece is
the luxurious mayor's office. (Yes, mayor's office, the
others can have their silly monarchies, but we do things the McDonaldsburgh
way.) Mayor Plus Wonderpledge rules the land with a strong hand and
a charming smile, but you might remember him from a bunch of movies
in which he gets butchered, so don't get too attached to the
guy! His wife Fern is a paragon of virtue and his children Whiff and
Beige are spirited upstarts with bright futures, but Plus' longtime
rival Lance Wedgers and his cousinly lover Stemla Prickerbush are
dead-set on sabotaging the entire Wonderpledge family. They intend to
unseat Wonderpledge behind the hallowed mayor's desk and symbolically decimate his empire by using the over-sized key to the city to smash his “Realm's Best Mayor” mug.
Bare in mind, besides the
obvious acting jobs these characters create, every performer will
require makeup ladies (or lads), costume designers, fight
coordinators, acting coaches, personal trainers, personal assistants,
desperate hangers-on like that surfer dude who crashed at OJ's, and various
shoulder-to-cry-on specialists (a position which pays a respectable
$12/hour).
Elsewhere in McDonaldsburgh,
the area's finest horse-drawn carriage manufacturing barn is overseen
by Lord Fordsworth, who's constantly warning his rabble-rousing
blacksmiths Vanderley Cobbleport and Bloom Chesters to stop carousing
with his 19 irresistible daughters—each more scantily clad and born
out of wedlock than the last! (Hoping this one will get its own
spin-off, btw.)
Citizens can take refuge from
their troubles at the McDonaldsburgh Gladiator Arena. Therein, a
series of physical challenges pit contestants against Gladiators like
Clamp Superplex, Ore Flackington, Boom Merlin-Olsen, and my personal
favorites, the chesty Eliza Thundersnow and her bosomy friend Vivacity
Landolakes. All performers are clad in McDonaldsburgh's most wondrous
invention: spandex. Gladiator events like the Dwarf Catapult, the Rapunzel Climb, the Bastard Toss, and the Axe Fight to
the Death are sure to put even the best Gladiator, Indigo
Foxboro (whom I just made up to create another job) to the ultimate
test. Contestants include Remi Millimeter, who was sentenced to
compete after his newfangled system of measurement was deemed
straight-up witchcraft.
In more scandalous fashion,
citizens can also take refuge from their troubles, or perhaps add to their troubles, by patronizing Vice Everlast's
Burlesque-o-torium, where the bedazzling Marigold Minutia dances nightly.
Male dancers Fort Bravado and Leif Deciduous provide some eye candy
for the ladies. Also the gay men, I suppose. Anyway, they supply this
eye candy to the tunes of Clive Aerosmith and Sammi Redrocker,
McDonaldsburgh's most radical glockenspiel and lute combo. The villainous
Speck Crumbsteign and the complex yet also quite complicated Plate
Wightly vie to manage them.
Oh, and in closing, we'll come up with stuff to do for the following characters: Flea Highriser, Fanny Pebblekeg,
Zane Beedles, Ladybird Nippley, Wheely Stone, husband and wife DeAndre the Giant and Big Mama Cabbagepatch, and if possible, a part for me, Sir
Beardythins of the North.
The only cause for concern is that
these jobs are not going to create themselves. (Though Sir Beardythins would be capable of magically creating jobs if given the opportunity.) Our government needs to reach an agreement with Game of Thrones and its British contingency. So, however you
want to go about it, whether that means screaming out the window in
the general direction of the White House or sending your city counsel
a video cassette of you being super-pissed, or perhaps some
third, smarter form of political action, make your voice heard about the
Game of Thrones Stimulus Package. Let's let those British thespians
know they're not the only ones with castles and dragons, and we're proud of our bouncy castles and WWE Hall-of-Famer Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat!
And if they refuse us, we must usurp the British throne. Queen Elizabeth is 88 years old, so I gotta wonder, how hard could it be? It'd be such an easy usurping, we could arm a dwarf from Jersey with a crossbow to get the job done.
Only kidding about the regicide! Regicide is no joke. It's the best drama on TV.
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