One of the more bizarre Kickstarter projects is attempting to raise $100,000 to shoot a pilot for a proposed animated series called “Barry and Joe.” The show will be a kind of buddy cop series with heavy overtones of “Quantum Leap” featuring the former president and vice president of the United States, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. The concept, while intriguing, has clearly not been thought through.
The premise of the proposed show
The idea is that immediately after the swearing-in of Donald Trump as president of the United States, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden are escorted to a secret government facility where they are stripped naked, forced to assume a fetal position, and then being teleported to sometime in their past selves.
Guided by the augmented reality version of Neil Degrasse Tyson, they are charged with saving the future by changing the past. They will be fought for control of the space-time continuum by Donald Trump and his Russian masters.
The problem with the proposed show
One wonders if Adam Reid, the creator of this series and a former writer for Comedy Central, is a closet conservative so absurd this concept is. The idea is permeated with potentials for humor and satire. Plausibility, however, leaves much to be desired.
Obama and Biden were not able to “save the future” even when they were the two most powerful people in the world. Indeed, they seem to have done their best to muck things up. Sending them into their younger selves would appear to be futile.
Neither gentleman possesses the skill set or experience necessary to become operatives doing battle with super villains and trying to alter the space time continuum. Neither Obama nor Biden has been in the military, law enforcement, or intelligence agencies. They have been politicians all of their adult lives.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist, media personality, and professional egomaniac, but he had demonstrated on numerous occasions an ignorance of history that would put an Antifa millennial to shame.
Having him as a guide to change the past would seem to be a sure-fire way to start the apocalypse.
An alternate premise for a show
Of course vamping back two contemporary politicians to the past to save the future is an interesting concept. Reid just got the wrong two characters. He should have chosen John McCain and Sarah Palin and place the date of their “quantum leap” the day that Obama was sworn into office.
McCain is a former naval aviator who endured torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese, and a graduate of the Naval Academy. Palin is an outdoorswoman who knows the use of firearms, is athletic, and has proven herself to be a quick study in a host of disciplines. They could become an American version of “The Avengers” (1960s British version) attempting to save the future by changing the past. And let’s face it, Palin of any age would look great in an Emma Peel style cat suit. I sense both comedic and dramatic possibilities here.
