...I have used the words "horror" and "ludicrous" too many times.
This is ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dancesontrains's fault: she said "crossover", "Charlie Brooker" and "Keith Olbermann" in the same comment.
I am never, ever going to write story that follows, because it is epic in both length and scope and I am not good enough at voice to pull off even half the characters in it, since it has in it pretty much anyone in either Pundit or BBC RPS fandoms. But since I appear to have accidentally written an outline of it anyway, I share! :D
Some news story breaks in Britain that is sufficiently big and/or sensational that US Cable News actually deigns to cover it.
Charlie Brooker uses this as an excuse to include a segment on the next Newswipe that has a montage mocking the distortedness and American-ness of America's coverage. It mocks both Glenn Beck's mention and Keith Olbermann's rather more substantial coverage, at rather greater length.
It's a slow news week in America, so Keith, unable as usual to resist gloating over it when he gets any sort of attention from anyone, mentions the Neswipe mention of him on his show. Probably on "Oddball." With a description something like "rather like the Daily Show, only with even lower production values."
Charlie, trying to drown out the internal voice that's jumping up and down squealing "omg he noticed me he noticed me", plays Keith's mention on the next Newswipe, with scathing commentary that includes a backhanded compliment along the lines of "actually this show is less like the Daily Show and more like what Countdown would be if Olbermann's keepers actually let him grow a spine."
Matters... escalate.
At some point, Andy Zaltzman ends up on the same episode of [choose a current events panel show] as Charlie. The Keith/Charlie utterly-ludicrous barely-disguised-flirting on-air bitchfight has become a running joke by this point anywhere Charlie appears, and when it, and the Daily Show comparisons, come up, Andy is forced to defend American punditry in order to save the honor of his comedy partner John Oliver. There is exceedingly sarky shouting involved and the entire show gets sidetracked.
This, of course, earns a full ten-minute monologue on the next week's Bugle, and John spends the entire time convulsed with hilarity. (And, of course, not-so-secretly giddy over Andy playing knight-in-shining-armor for him, even if it was unnecessary and completely over-the-top.) In fact, John finds it so hilarious that he tries to convince the Daily Show writers' room to do a bit on it on their show. This is about equally divided between the people who have no idea what's going on, and the people who do and are horrified at the idea of letting it slop over into TDS. (In the course of trying to explain to the others just exactly why Andy had to defend John, an attempt is also made to explain to the TDS crew what "comedy partner" means to British Comedians; John, having never had to actually articulate this before, is unable to be explain. So Hodgman tries, starting by talking about soulbonding, Temeraire, Treecats, and Valdemar, but is forced to descend to "Imagine our Jon and Stephen, only even more homosexual. And then imagine *everyone's* like that." John protests the homosexual part - well, obvs. Jon and Stephen, but him and Andy aren't like that (everybody who listens to the Bugle is incredulous at this point) and Keith and Rachel get mentioned as being a less homoerotic comparison. (K/R shippers: 500 word queer studies essay on the statement "Keith and Rachel are a less homoerotic partnership." :D )
Anyway, it is decided that something must be done to keep the Keith/Charlie feud from becoming a squamous tentacular mass that engulfs all pundits, presenters, and topical comedians on both sides of the Atlantic, so there is to be an Intervention - not to Keith (who most of the correspondents are terrified of anyway) but to Rachel, who as his "comedy partner" will be able to stop him, right? (Have not decided who is in this delegation, except def. Wyatt, because I <3 Wyatt. Further nominations welcome.)
Rachel laughs at them and asks them why on Earth they think she has any influence over what Keith does, and they explain to her about comedy partners, which she finds even more hilarious, but she is finally moved by their pleas and says, "okay, but it takes two men to carry on a trans-Atlantic pigtail-pulling contest, does Brooker have a "partner" to stop *him*?"
They have no idea but give her Andy's phone number, thinking he might know, and Rachel goes "Oh, it's *that* Andy Zaltzman! I knew him at Oxford!" (They were at Oxford for at least a year of overlap, I think. I know, I know, not everyone in Oxford knows each other, but if we can have an entire Rahm/Stephen fandom based on a year at Northwestern, I can have Rachel and Andy know each other in a ludicrous crackfic.)
So she calls him, mostly just because she can, and he has no idea but finds her mission to be a worthy one (and also thinks she's a hottie, in a Florence Nightingale sort of way), so passes her along a chain of equally terrified British comedians until finally someone, trying to come up with anyone Brooker might listen to, points her at David Mitchell.
...pause to contemplate David and Rachel.
mmmmMMMMmmmmMMMM.
...where was I?
Oh, right. So Rachel and David basically bond immediately. Like superglue. In fact, from this point on I get distracted and the whole thing turns into the Mitchell and Maddow show. Neither of them actually care about the Keith/Charlie nonsense (other than being deeply entertained by it, of course) but they need some sort of excuse for spending hours on the phone being clever and adorably dorky at each other, so they concoct this ridiculous plan where Rachel convinces her people to let her go to London to be on an episode of The Bubble and drag Keith with her for publicity stuff, so that he can finally have it out with Charlie in person and stop smearing their issues all over television.
So they do.
And Keith does not realize until they are actually there that "Rachel appearing on The Bubble" does not mean spending a week exploring London with her, it means a week where he is in London alone and Rachel is incommunicado in a secure location, but luckily Rachel and David have arranged things thus that he *actually* spends the week being grumpily dragged around by (and photographed with) Charlie in an atmosphere of steadily thickening sexual tension. Until finally the show with Rachel is taped and all four of them somehow wind up, after celebrating, back at Charlie's flat just drunk enough to not be sensible. And there is sex.
(By which I mean. There is offscreen Keith and Charlie sex. Rachel and David just get giggly, and then extremely blitzed on silly cocktails, and end up falling asleep cuddled in a completely nonsexual way on Charlie's sitting room floor, whereupon they awake in confusion and awkwardness to find that the other two have covered them with a blanket, drawn mustaches on them in permanent marker and then left to get breakfast.)
The end!
(except also there is Fry/Hodgman at some point, I just don't know where.)
..and while I am on the topic of obscure RPS crossovers that maybe two people in existence actually know all the fandoms for, here is the other BBC/America RPS epic crossover that I shall never, never actually write.
I call it the Top Gear Pledge Week Special. It has Andy Wilman/Doug Berman slash in it. Among other bits of horrifyingness that haunt my dreams.
See, the Top Gear Three are informed by Andy that they will be doing another America special, whether they want to or not, only this time, partly due to budgetary reasons and partly due to fallout over some remarks Jeremy made about how Americans just don't understand Top Gear, they are teaming up with America's Public Broadcasting System, and also filming segments for some PBS shows to be used for PBS fundraising.
They protest this whole idea strongly but cannot prevail.
Only when they show up at the designated meeting spot for the beginning of the challenge, it isn't even in the US - it's at what appears to be a junkyard in a tiny town in Western Ontario called Possum Lake. And they are told that rather than being given a budget with which to buy a car, they've been given permission from the property owner to take any vehicle they find on the grounds of Possum Lake - providing they can get it road-legal enough to be licensed in Ontario (Red was initially hesitant to allow *any* vehicle, until he was reassured that there was no chance any of them would voluntarily get within ten feet of the Possum Van.) And to help them out in finding and preparing their car, they each have the assistance of one of the Lodge members. (Probably Dalton, Red, and Mike, who had basically become a trio by the time of the NRGS anyway, though I can't decide who would be funniest to pair up with whom. Or what sort of terrible patchwork cars exactly they'd wind up with...)
In the mean time, Red is filming an episode of his show (if you are unfamiliar with the Red Green Show: it's basically what Top Gear would be if it was filmed in a small town in Canada in the '90s with zero budget.) There is no Stig or Stig cousin in this excerpt, but Richard ends up helping out on a racing-themed segment of "Adventures With Bill," which is basically the same thing (in fact, I would believe that Bill *is* a Stig cousin, he just doesn't bother with the helmet when he can fog the cameras instead.) Red and Jeremy film the record-breaking most destructive ever episode of the Handyman Corner, and James goes on the Possum Lodge Word Game, where he wins a complimentary overnight stay at Ranger Gord's Forest Hideaway. (The winning word was "slow".) Jeremy and Richard are absolutely horrified that he actually uses it on their last night in Ontario, but that is before they realize that the alternative is staying in town and becoming inducted as honorary lodge members. (QUANDO OMNI FLUNKUS MORITATI is a very Top Gear sort of slogan, but somehow I can't make myself imagine Jeremy saying the man's oath without major coercion.)
Anyway, with segment one over, they nurse their cars out of Possum Lodge, through US Customs, and across the border, taking U.S. 3 straight across Vermont toward Our Fair City, Cambridge, MA. While US 3 is - with a little bit of fudging - actually on the most direct route from rural Ontario to Boston, it is also the location of the most famous UFO abduction in history, which you can still re-enact on any night you want, because it is a deeply creepy stretch of road. They are challenged to cover that stretch in the wee hours of the morning while exhausted, and they end up panicking themselves a little, especially after all three cars break down one after another. And then they get rescued by three extremely strange men in a Volkswagen van, because if you're going to go looking for America you might as well find it. :D
The next challenge involves meeting at the law offices of Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe, Harvard Square, Our Fair City, Cambridge, Massachusetts. But first they have to navigate Boston to get there, because driving in Boston is a class of its own. When they get there, they discover that they're to guest-host an episode of Car Talk, of course. I need to get my hands on an actual celebrity host episode of Car Talk to figure out how this will actually work (and to get my hands on a taping of the last time Top Gear did live radio) but it starts with the five of them just cocking about, and then it is revealed that Tom and Ray are going to abandon them to the phone lines after the first half of the show, while they go out and try to diagnose everything that's wrong with the challenge cars for points. Jeremy points out that they don't actually know anything about how to repair cars, and Ray points out *they* don't, either, they just spend an hour every week mocking each other, mocking other people, and wasting time and the taxpayers' money while not actually saying anything informative about cars. So it's basically the same Top Gear really.
They try to find the producers to protest, but Berman has taken Wilman out for a congratulations-on-putting-up-with-them dinner and they've both turned off their cell phones. (ps if I actually write any of this it will be the Esteemed Producer slash bits because they both deserve someone who understands the hardship that is being them and no-one else could.) And since the calls have been pre-screened to be things they actually can answer - "I offered to buy my 16-year-old son any car he wants, and he wants a diesel-electric Smartcar; where did I go wrong as a parent?" "Help! My seat cushions are infested with centipedes!" - it actually doesn't go to terribly wrong, although James spends the entire third half of the show distracted by trying to solve the Puzzler.
Anyway, then they head right down 1-90 and I-95, through Connecticut and past New York City (though they do stop for about an hour at some nondescript exit in New Jersey, where Wilman has apologized by arranging to let them test drive a car that can't *actually* be the real Batmobile, but is still possibly *the most wonderful car in the world*, even maybe better than the Veyron. (It's incredible fun, but the whole time this strange dark-haired kid is doing handstands on the Jersey wall and laughing at them, which is weird.)
They wind up in Owings Mills, Maryland, at the MotorWeek Test Track, which is full of Serious Automotive Journalism, and John H. Davis somehow finds a way to remind them of this about every thirty seconds, and also that MotorWeek has been on air longer than both Top Gears combined. And had their own test track first. But he respects them, really, Top Gear has a role to play even if Jeremy wasn't good enough to keep his show on the air with real journalism instead of empty sensationalism. Like John H. Davis did. Also, MotorWeek has more exciting facial hair, so there. The challenge here is for each of the three Top Gear presenters to do a car review that meets MotorWeek's responsible journalistic standards but isn't so boring it puts the other two to sleep; it would be an incredibly dull way to end the special, except that instead of getting a Stig cousin in to drive the cars around the MotorWeek test track in the final challenge, they have instead borrowed Snuffleupagus.
dancesontrains's fault: she said "crossover", "Charlie Brooker" and "Keith Olbermann" in the same comment.I am never, ever going to write story that follows, because it is epic in both length and scope and I am not good enough at voice to pull off even half the characters in it, since it has in it pretty much anyone in either Pundit or BBC RPS fandoms. But since I appear to have accidentally written an outline of it anyway, I share! :D
Some news story breaks in Britain that is sufficiently big and/or sensational that US Cable News actually deigns to cover it.
Charlie Brooker uses this as an excuse to include a segment on the next Newswipe that has a montage mocking the distortedness and American-ness of America's coverage. It mocks both Glenn Beck's mention and Keith Olbermann's rather more substantial coverage, at rather greater length.
It's a slow news week in America, so Keith, unable as usual to resist gloating over it when he gets any sort of attention from anyone, mentions the Neswipe mention of him on his show. Probably on "Oddball." With a description something like "rather like the Daily Show, only with even lower production values."
Charlie, trying to drown out the internal voice that's jumping up and down squealing "omg he noticed me he noticed me", plays Keith's mention on the next Newswipe, with scathing commentary that includes a backhanded compliment along the lines of "actually this show is less like the Daily Show and more like what Countdown would be if Olbermann's keepers actually let him grow a spine."
Matters... escalate.
At some point, Andy Zaltzman ends up on the same episode of [choose a current events panel show] as Charlie. The Keith/Charlie utterly-ludicrous barely-disguised-flirting on-air bitchfight has become a running joke by this point anywhere Charlie appears, and when it, and the Daily Show comparisons, come up, Andy is forced to defend American punditry in order to save the honor of his comedy partner John Oliver. There is exceedingly sarky shouting involved and the entire show gets sidetracked.
This, of course, earns a full ten-minute monologue on the next week's Bugle, and John spends the entire time convulsed with hilarity. (And, of course, not-so-secretly giddy over Andy playing knight-in-shining-armor for him, even if it was unnecessary and completely over-the-top.) In fact, John finds it so hilarious that he tries to convince the Daily Show writers' room to do a bit on it on their show. This is about equally divided between the people who have no idea what's going on, and the people who do and are horrified at the idea of letting it slop over into TDS. (In the course of trying to explain to the others just exactly why Andy had to defend John, an attempt is also made to explain to the TDS crew what "comedy partner" means to British Comedians; John, having never had to actually articulate this before, is unable to be explain. So Hodgman tries, starting by talking about soulbonding, Temeraire, Treecats, and Valdemar, but is forced to descend to "Imagine our Jon and Stephen, only even more homosexual. And then imagine *everyone's* like that." John protests the homosexual part - well, obvs. Jon and Stephen, but him and Andy aren't like that (everybody who listens to the Bugle is incredulous at this point) and Keith and Rachel get mentioned as being a less homoerotic comparison. (K/R shippers: 500 word queer studies essay on the statement "Keith and Rachel are a less homoerotic partnership." :D )
Anyway, it is decided that something must be done to keep the Keith/Charlie feud from becoming a squamous tentacular mass that engulfs all pundits, presenters, and topical comedians on both sides of the Atlantic, so there is to be an Intervention - not to Keith (who most of the correspondents are terrified of anyway) but to Rachel, who as his "comedy partner" will be able to stop him, right? (Have not decided who is in this delegation, except def. Wyatt, because I <3 Wyatt. Further nominations welcome.)
Rachel laughs at them and asks them why on Earth they think she has any influence over what Keith does, and they explain to her about comedy partners, which she finds even more hilarious, but she is finally moved by their pleas and says, "okay, but it takes two men to carry on a trans-Atlantic pigtail-pulling contest, does Brooker have a "partner" to stop *him*?"
They have no idea but give her Andy's phone number, thinking he might know, and Rachel goes "Oh, it's *that* Andy Zaltzman! I knew him at Oxford!" (They were at Oxford for at least a year of overlap, I think. I know, I know, not everyone in Oxford knows each other, but if we can have an entire Rahm/Stephen fandom based on a year at Northwestern, I can have Rachel and Andy know each other in a ludicrous crackfic.)
So she calls him, mostly just because she can, and he has no idea but finds her mission to be a worthy one (and also thinks she's a hottie, in a Florence Nightingale sort of way), so passes her along a chain of equally terrified British comedians until finally someone, trying to come up with anyone Brooker might listen to, points her at David Mitchell.
...pause to contemplate David and Rachel.
mmmmMMMMmmmmMMMM.
...where was I?
Oh, right. So Rachel and David basically bond immediately. Like superglue. In fact, from this point on I get distracted and the whole thing turns into the Mitchell and Maddow show. Neither of them actually care about the Keith/Charlie nonsense (other than being deeply entertained by it, of course) but they need some sort of excuse for spending hours on the phone being clever and adorably dorky at each other, so they concoct this ridiculous plan where Rachel convinces her people to let her go to London to be on an episode of The Bubble and drag Keith with her for publicity stuff, so that he can finally have it out with Charlie in person and stop smearing their issues all over television.
So they do.
And Keith does not realize until they are actually there that "Rachel appearing on The Bubble" does not mean spending a week exploring London with her, it means a week where he is in London alone and Rachel is incommunicado in a secure location, but luckily Rachel and David have arranged things thus that he *actually* spends the week being grumpily dragged around by (and photographed with) Charlie in an atmosphere of steadily thickening sexual tension. Until finally the show with Rachel is taped and all four of them somehow wind up, after celebrating, back at Charlie's flat just drunk enough to not be sensible. And there is sex.
(By which I mean. There is offscreen Keith and Charlie sex. Rachel and David just get giggly, and then extremely blitzed on silly cocktails, and end up falling asleep cuddled in a completely nonsexual way on Charlie's sitting room floor, whereupon they awake in confusion and awkwardness to find that the other two have covered them with a blanket, drawn mustaches on them in permanent marker and then left to get breakfast.)
The end!
(except also there is Fry/Hodgman at some point, I just don't know where.)
..and while I am on the topic of obscure RPS crossovers that maybe two people in existence actually know all the fandoms for, here is the other BBC/America RPS epic crossover that I shall never, never actually write.
I call it the Top Gear Pledge Week Special. It has Andy Wilman/Doug Berman slash in it. Among other bits of horrifyingness that haunt my dreams.
See, the Top Gear Three are informed by Andy that they will be doing another America special, whether they want to or not, only this time, partly due to budgetary reasons and partly due to fallout over some remarks Jeremy made about how Americans just don't understand Top Gear, they are teaming up with America's Public Broadcasting System, and also filming segments for some PBS shows to be used for PBS fundraising.
They protest this whole idea strongly but cannot prevail.
Only when they show up at the designated meeting spot for the beginning of the challenge, it isn't even in the US - it's at what appears to be a junkyard in a tiny town in Western Ontario called Possum Lake. And they are told that rather than being given a budget with which to buy a car, they've been given permission from the property owner to take any vehicle they find on the grounds of Possum Lake - providing they can get it road-legal enough to be licensed in Ontario (Red was initially hesitant to allow *any* vehicle, until he was reassured that there was no chance any of them would voluntarily get within ten feet of the Possum Van.) And to help them out in finding and preparing their car, they each have the assistance of one of the Lodge members. (Probably Dalton, Red, and Mike, who had basically become a trio by the time of the NRGS anyway, though I can't decide who would be funniest to pair up with whom. Or what sort of terrible patchwork cars exactly they'd wind up with...)
In the mean time, Red is filming an episode of his show (if you are unfamiliar with the Red Green Show: it's basically what Top Gear would be if it was filmed in a small town in Canada in the '90s with zero budget.) There is no Stig or Stig cousin in this excerpt, but Richard ends up helping out on a racing-themed segment of "Adventures With Bill," which is basically the same thing (in fact, I would believe that Bill *is* a Stig cousin, he just doesn't bother with the helmet when he can fog the cameras instead.) Red and Jeremy film the record-breaking most destructive ever episode of the Handyman Corner, and James goes on the Possum Lodge Word Game, where he wins a complimentary overnight stay at Ranger Gord's Forest Hideaway. (The winning word was "slow".) Jeremy and Richard are absolutely horrified that he actually uses it on their last night in Ontario, but that is before they realize that the alternative is staying in town and becoming inducted as honorary lodge members. (QUANDO OMNI FLUNKUS MORITATI is a very Top Gear sort of slogan, but somehow I can't make myself imagine Jeremy saying the man's oath without major coercion.)
Anyway, with segment one over, they nurse their cars out of Possum Lodge, through US Customs, and across the border, taking U.S. 3 straight across Vermont toward Our Fair City, Cambridge, MA. While US 3 is - with a little bit of fudging - actually on the most direct route from rural Ontario to Boston, it is also the location of the most famous UFO abduction in history, which you can still re-enact on any night you want, because it is a deeply creepy stretch of road. They are challenged to cover that stretch in the wee hours of the morning while exhausted, and they end up panicking themselves a little, especially after all three cars break down one after another. And then they get rescued by three extremely strange men in a Volkswagen van, because if you're going to go looking for America you might as well find it. :D
The next challenge involves meeting at the law offices of Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe, Harvard Square, Our Fair City, Cambridge, Massachusetts. But first they have to navigate Boston to get there, because driving in Boston is a class of its own. When they get there, they discover that they're to guest-host an episode of Car Talk, of course. I need to get my hands on an actual celebrity host episode of Car Talk to figure out how this will actually work (and to get my hands on a taping of the last time Top Gear did live radio) but it starts with the five of them just cocking about, and then it is revealed that Tom and Ray are going to abandon them to the phone lines after the first half of the show, while they go out and try to diagnose everything that's wrong with the challenge cars for points. Jeremy points out that they don't actually know anything about how to repair cars, and Ray points out *they* don't, either, they just spend an hour every week mocking each other, mocking other people, and wasting time and the taxpayers' money while not actually saying anything informative about cars. So it's basically the same Top Gear really.
They try to find the producers to protest, but Berman has taken Wilman out for a congratulations-on-putting-up-with-them dinner and they've both turned off their cell phones. (ps if I actually write any of this it will be the Esteemed Producer slash bits because they both deserve someone who understands the hardship that is being them and no-one else could.) And since the calls have been pre-screened to be things they actually can answer - "I offered to buy my 16-year-old son any car he wants, and he wants a diesel-electric Smartcar; where did I go wrong as a parent?" "Help! My seat cushions are infested with centipedes!" - it actually doesn't go to terribly wrong, although James spends the entire third half of the show distracted by trying to solve the Puzzler.
Anyway, then they head right down 1-90 and I-95, through Connecticut and past New York City (though they do stop for about an hour at some nondescript exit in New Jersey, where Wilman has apologized by arranging to let them test drive a car that can't *actually* be the real Batmobile, but is still possibly *the most wonderful car in the world*, even maybe better than the Veyron. (It's incredible fun, but the whole time this strange dark-haired kid is doing handstands on the Jersey wall and laughing at them, which is weird.)
They wind up in Owings Mills, Maryland, at the MotorWeek Test Track, which is full of Serious Automotive Journalism, and John H. Davis somehow finds a way to remind them of this about every thirty seconds, and also that MotorWeek has been on air longer than both Top Gears combined. And had their own test track first. But he respects them, really, Top Gear has a role to play even if Jeremy wasn't good enough to keep his show on the air with real journalism instead of empty sensationalism. Like John H. Davis did. Also, MotorWeek has more exciting facial hair, so there. The challenge here is for each of the three Top Gear presenters to do a car review that meets MotorWeek's responsible journalistic standards but isn't so boring it puts the other two to sleep; it would be an incredibly dull way to end the special, except that instead of getting a Stig cousin in to drive the cars around the MotorWeek test track in the final challenge, they have instead borrowed Snuffleupagus.
no subject
I would read either of these and I'm not even interested in RPF or slash in general.
no subject
no subject
no subject
(If you would like the basics on these people, here is Charlie Brooker discussing American Cable News, here is Charlie and David Mitchell on Charlie's other show, mocking Glen Beck some more, and here is the Bugle, in which John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman are comedy OTP 4ever. That's really all you need to know.)
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
I think I love you. Can't. Stop. Giggling.
no subject