Eat the neighbourhood: a V spin-off

If there’s one thing that there’s not enough of in the world it’s entire episodes of V dedicated to Michael Ironside and Frank Ashmore as Ham Tyler and Martin eyeing each other warily and sniping at each other behind cupped hands. Because who doesn’t want to see two grown men who should know better engaging in playground insults and mostly consensual gun play?

Good news! The wait is (almost) over. Coming to a streaming service is a new V spin-off show: Eat the neighbourhood. Or there will be as soon as some studio exec happens upon this site and recognises the pure brilliance of my proposed outline below and makes it into a show. (It’s happened before, we wouldn’t have Fringe if it weren’t for my ”out there” unpublished Alias fan fiction which JJ Abrams would have had to to have broken into my house to access. I have no proof but I’m sure it happened.)

The premise of the show is this. Tyler and Martin find themselves trapped in an increasingly ridiculous and unlikely series of situations where they must spend hours of time together in very close quarters. As the series wears on, Tyler and Martin will find having spent so much time together will have absolutely no effect on how they feel about each other whatsoever. No grudging respect or mutual acceptance, they will hate each other to the very end. And what’s not to like about that!? Well I think it’s brilliant and I’m going to be the showrunner so what I say goes.

Much of the series has been carefully sketched out and a sample of episode summaries and AI generated art follow below. Ladies, gentlemen and lizards I present to you:

Eat the neighbourhood

A short time after Liberation Day Robert Maxwell invites the Resistance over to his new ranch for a party. But the femininity of a house full of girls, not to mention the rampant hormones of at least two of the three Maxwell daughters, are way too much for either Ham Tyler or Martin to cope with. Both hit upon the plan to hide out in young Katy Maxwell’s room, but somehow break the doorknob from the inside while arguing over whose masculinity is too fragile for exposure to another song from Robin’s copy of Beauty and the Beat by The Go-Gos. Trapped, Katy’s My Little Pony collection is quickly commandeered by both in an engagement most certainly not in the spirit of Ponyland. (The resulting equine carnage is so unspeakable both Polly and Katy have to leave the main series immediately.) Even though Martin and Tyler are mysteriously absent from the party for a considerable amount of time, nobody bothers to look for them because everyone dislikes Tyler and no one particularly wants to see Martin eat.

Martin and Tyler must sell Girl Guide biscuits to raise funds for the Resistance to buy a new Kenwood mini-chopper for Willie. They are not allowed to go home until they have sold all the packets of biscuits in the van. Everyone in their assigned neighbourhood are members of the same sect of Lutherans as the one featured in the film Babette’s Feast and let’s face it neither of these guys are particularly good salesmen so things don’t go well. Neither manage to sell a single packet and end up having to sleep in a van full of stale biscuits for the rest of their lives. Willie has to make do with a blunt paring knife from Target.

Diana’s latest diabolical weapon against the Resistance is the New Zealand national rugby team: the All Blacks. The Resistance are faced with the unenviable task of having to play the most successful sports team in history without being completely marmelised. Martin (No 10) has a great kicking game as fly half, converting two tries and making a (perhaps foolhardy but valiant) attempt at a drop goal from inside his own 22 which is only short by a metre or so. Tyler (No 8) at centre also plays well, playing right up to the edge of what’s allowed in the rule book in a way that would make Richie McCaw blush. Even though the score is 17:12 to the Resistance by the end of the first half, the All Blacks predictably open throttle at the 60 minute mark and score three tries in quick succession within seven minutes. At this point the Resistance loses its shit and starts incurring ridiculous penalties (Diana crows from the sidelines as she just knew they didn’t have an 80 minute game in them). The match never ends as Wayne Barnes is the referee and the game is mired in scrum resets for an eternity.

Martin and Tyler are held in an underground bunker by a crazed film student who is making them work their way through the French nouvelle vague canon. Things actually started well, with quiet manful tears during Hiroshima mon amour. But it all went south when Martin didn’t understand the premise of La Jetée and then couldn’t ”stop flapping his damn trap” during Les Parapluies de Cherbourg which Ham had to concede doesn’t quite fit in the New Wave category but is still one of his favourite films of all time. Tyler and Martin are then locked in a recurring pattern of Martin asking an inane question during Les Quatre Cents Coups which means Tyler has to come up with increasingly cruel epithets before having to rewind the film back to before the bit that got talked over. This in turn infuriates Martin who becomes more and more recalcitrant about being force-fed this “superior culture” in such a patronising manner. They have been 12 minutes into the film for 19 days now. They have no hope of getting through the Dogma 95 movement.

Julie Parrish has had enough of the scrapping between Martin and Tyler and has arranged for them to attend a mediation session with a professional therapist. The therapist has encouraged both men to have an open discussion using statements like “I feel”. Martin feels that Tyler is extremely rude and abrasive, his behaviour is just unnecessary and it would be best for both of them if they spent as little time together as possible. Tyler feels that Martin is a big ugly lizard who should just FOAD. Neither man particularly approves of psychiatry and in a rare moment of unity they ambush the therapist like in that scene with the velociraptors from Jurassic Park. Suffering considerable flak from the ground after having the temerity to suggest the two have more in common than not, the therapist relents and says they can leave the session continuing to hate each other. Both leave feeling extremely happy and vindicated. See: therapy really does work!

Ham Tyler and Martin are stranded in a B&B in Brighton en route to their next big mission to an undisclosed location in Europe. It’s Tyler’s birthday and even though the rest of the Resistance has either forgotten or doesn’t actually give a damn, Julie has kindly arranged for a cheese hamper to be shipped from France (and signed the card from everyone). Unbeknownst to Julie, the cheese wheels in the hamper are extremely large and there’s a lot to get through, But being well brought up, Tyler insists that they cannot ship out until they have diligently finished all the cheese. Martin of course is unable to eat dairy products and is not refined enough to think the blue cheese smells and tastes like anything other than death. He is nevertheless forced at gunpoint by Tyler to eat the cheese and is copiously ill for days. The sight of a Visitor being violently sick into their pampas grass (and I urge you not to dwell too heavily on this mental image) horrifies the B&B owner who kicks them out and they must sleep on the beach with their sweaty festering cheese forever.

Tyler and Martin must dog-sled across Greenland to deliver blank video tapes to the Resistance in Sisimiut which will be used to bring down the European Union mothership through sheer inanity. The sled requires the weight of two people to operate meaning neither can leave the other behind. The journey is long and arduous, by the end of which Martin has eaten most of the dogs (although to be fair Tyler had at least one when no one was looking). The last 20 miles are completed on foot with numerous occasions where one suggests to the other that they “pull a Captain Oates”. The mission fails because when the two men finally reach their destination the Greenlanders have moved on to streaming services and no one owns a VCR anymore.

On the way back from their failed mission in Greenland, Tyler and Martin end up going for a night out in Birmingham, England. But what initially seemed like a good idea at the time turns into an interminable night, which is a succession of humiliations starting with an unfortunate run-in with a hen night on their way to a Magic Mike style male strip revue which neither man emerges from with their dignity intact. This is followed by a series of events which ultimately result in a completely unprovoked attack by a red kangaroo on Tyler’s rather nice kebab which ends up ignominiously in the Birmingham Old Line Canal, followed swiftly by Tyler. Martin only realises this night will never end after losing a long argument with the bar at Wetherspoons because for some odd reason he only has Scottish pound notes in his wallet which no one south of Berwick believes is actual money. All this and it’s only 10pm.

Tyler and Martin are being held hostage by the Feminist Resistance. They will only be released once they have finished a postgraduate women’s studies course and produced an Equality and Diversity policy for the Resistance and Fifth Column. Ham and Martin are at a loggerheads over Liberal (Tyler) vs Radical (Martin) feminism. Neither has attended any of their lectures or actually done any of the readings, and things devolve quickly into a series of increasingly unhinged threats of sexual violence sent to each other over Twitter DM. Both fail their course, can’t get a job (because: hostage) and have crippling student loan debt for the rest of their lives.

Ham and Martin both score roles as zombies in the television show The Walking Dead. Unlike much of the main cast their roles are very secure as they enjoy the guarantee of recurring roles as Mean Grabby Zombie and Pensive Bitey Zombie respectively. (So, okay neither Ham nor Martin have a lot of range but they’re playing to their strengths here.) The plan is to get to the end of the show which will reveal the much needed resolution that the Resistance needs to win the war. But with each passing week it becomes increasingly apparent that there is no end to this show. It just goes on and on with no relent and no hope, like Gilligan’s Island but with more decay and demoralisation. Surely a tv show can’t go on like this, can it?

[For spurious reasons] Ham and Martin must re-enact that scene from Twilight: Eclipse where Jacob has to get his kit off and spoon with Bella to prevent her from dying of hypothermia. Hostilities break out early when the two argue about who gets to be Bella and who gets to be Jacob in this reenactment. Things escalate from there as it becomes apparent both men are on opposite ends of the Team Edward (Martin) /Team Jacob (Ham) spectrum. Further ‘heated discussion’ ensues via an exchange of hand grenades and laser fire. We end this cliffhanger episode with no danger of either of them tiring out and collapsing into the other’s arms gasping for breath on the ground.

We open on the morning after the intense Twilight: Eclipse debate from the day before in Spooning: Part One. The mountainside where the waiting pup tent is pitched now resembles The Somme in 1916. Things did slow down at about 3am when Ham ran out of ammo and Martin got distracted by a squirrel but the fighting goes on. Finally at about 4:45am intervention is deemed necessary when the two resort to throwing flaming loo rolls at each other, which the rest of the Resistance agrees is very short-term thinking. Mike Donovan enters the fray and manages to broker a détente as he gets Martin and Ham to watch all the RPatz seagull memes from The Lighthouse on Youtube, which all agree are “fucking hilarious”. The mission fails because nobody gets their kit off, and there is most certainly no spooning.

Ham and Martin must man a lighthouse on a small uninhabited island off the coast of New England. Conditions are exceedingly filthy and cramped and there is no potable water meaning both men must resort to drinking copious amounts of pure ethanol to survive. A raging storm traps them on the island, and things quickly slide into alcohol and testosterone fuelled madness.*

*Episode note: After the producers were hit by an avalanche of enraged tweets following the airing of Spooning Parts One and Two both actors must now disrobe and deliver their performances completely naked for the majority of the episode. The fans however have been firmly told that there will be no spooning because: ”What do they think this is? Outlander?”

Having successfully completed their mission at the lighthouse with no lingering trauma at all, Martin and Ham must drive cross-country from New England to California to get home. Despite the fact they are both in complete agreement about what route to take, who gets to drive and when, what make and model of car to drive, whether the car should be a manual or automatic transmission, what temperature the car should be, what radio stations to listen to and what scent of deodoriser to hang from the rearview mirror they both still end up at each others throats before they even leave Massachusetts. The episode ends with each back in LA separately complaining to Mike Donovan bitterly ”I just hate that guy, he’s an unreasonable cunt”

After a phenomenal run the now well-loved show is given a *very special* truncated last season and this the final episode must hurriedly tie everything up in a neat little bow.

After several years of attempts to escape each other’s company Martin and Ham are now resigned to the idea that the universe is perversely intent on constantly throwing them together. Even though they still despise each other they realise they have no choice but to change their personal pronouns and enter into a sexual relationship. Viewers are surprised to learn that Eat the neighbourhood was a metaphor for a stable long-term marriage all along.