hsbhighschoolbound-blog

[hsbhighschoolbound-blog]

heteromilk.com

[hsbhighschoolbound-blog]

"High School Bound": New Show Pitch for TruTV Big Deal Contest

Video Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz-pZabjIDlnRW9QUmlGaWQ2MW8/view?usp=sharing

“High School Bound”

Genre:

Comedy/Drama

Characters:

Alex Harper; A freshman in college used to coasting his way through classes and life, always acing all his classes and being the most popular kid in school. When the series starts he has just been arrested for petty theft. He is able to avoid jail time but must complete 200 hours of community service in the next year. He chooses to tutor struggling students at a local high school, Mountain Pointe.

Rishab (Rish) Kosuri; A bright junior at Mountain Pointe, Rish is used to acing all of his classes. However, he had a mental breakdown last year from the stress at school, which is only amplified by his mother’s death to cancer. In order to catch up he must attend tutoring and is assigned to Alex. With Alex and the others, Rish is able to learn that life doesn’t have to revolve around school and that there’s more to life than studying.

Taylor McCoy; A freshman at Mountain Pointe who was born mute. Her parents are not rich enough to send her to a private school; she attends tutoring to help keep her on course. Because Alex is taking ASL (American Sign Language) in college he is assigned as her tutor, although in reality he has never attended the ASL classes. By teaching Alex how to communicate with her, Taylor becomes one of the most expressive characters in the show.

Rachel Nguyen; A senior at Mountain Pointe who was held back due to her flunking out American history. She has ADHD and a rather interesting view on the world that everyone is capable of changing the world. In a school where everyone follows the status quo, she is an outsider to the majority of the other students. She is assigned to Alex because of their similar age; the administration hoped that they would be able to connect better.

Leelah (Ethan) Summers; Ethan is a popular sophomore at Mountain Pointe, dating many girls and starring in many school productions. What most of the student body doesn’t realize is that Ethan is transgender (female-to-male), a secret he holds close to his chest. Ethan serves as the example of the popular student that actually struggles in school outside of the typical dramas of dating and having a social life.

Cody Martinez; A sophomore who plays curling religiously. When his grades start to threaten his sport career, Cody submits to going to tutoring. Cody has devoted his entire life to doing sports, always worrying about what others think of him. He is a slow reader and takes a tremendous time understanding information, but his persistence to become better really helps Alex understand him.

Sharon Kim: The dean of Mountain Pointe High School. Being a strict administrator, she keeps Alex and the kids in check for tutoring. Dean Kim threatens Alex throughout the series, making sure that he is able to help all the kids pass their classes by the end of the year. Although dark-humored and ruthless, she wants the best for her students and to help them succeed.

Plot Summary (Season One):

Facing either jail time or community service after committing a petty theft, Alex is forced to tutor at the worst school in the city: Mountain Pointe. There he meets his five pupils (Rish, Taylor, Rachel, Ethan, and Cody), and being the lazy individual he has always been, does nothing for the first few days. His distaste is felt by the students, who start ditching tutoring or using it to surf the internet and not really work.

Although Alex is initially confronted by Rish, Taylor, and Ethan, he continues to brush them off until all of the students report him to Dean Kim, who forces him to teach them something new for every tutoring session. Being forced to attend tutoring, Alex begins to learn more and more from the students — study devices from Rish, sign language from Taylor, music exercises from Rachel, the importance of understanding from Ethan, and persistence from Cody).

Developing feelings for Rachel and learning about Ethan being a transgender student, Alex learns more about himself and the reality of high school itself. Alex learns that teaching students from textbooks and just lecturing won’t be enough to help them; he explores different learning styles and unconventional methods to teaching, from teaching concepts through karaoke or going off campus to teach students in different environments. At the end of the school year (and season), Alex is faced with the choice to continue tutoring the kids or returning to his carefree lifestyle.

Format:

The show could follow the format of being 30-minutes long or just short clips, where in each episode Alex has to fill out an evaluation sheet about what he taught the kids, including evidence and results from the students. The topics that he can teach can range from different subjects, from geometry and biology to foreign policy and nuclear warfare. This element will definitely add the humor to the show, forcing all the characters to have to learn new concepts in unconventional ways. For example, they could go on field studies to learn about sexual activity by interviewing random people on being sexually active (instead, they would just end up asking a bunch of middle schoolers and senior citizens). Or to learn about the ecosystems of their nearby polluted lakes, they could all go underwater to gather evidence of pollution and see what organism live underwater (while finding several condoms, garbage, and even a skeleton.

Purpose:

We came up with this show to really show people realistic problems that high school students and teenagers in general face. On television, teens either end up having all their problems solved by falling in love, and if they do face adversity, it’s usually over petty things like dating or popularity. We want to take this opportunity to show audience members the complexity of high school teenagers, like our academics or our anxieties about the future and finding a job.

With a diverse cast, “High School Bound” embodies what teens want to see: people that actually they can actually relate to and understand. We want teenagers, and to a greater extent, everyone, to realize that the ideas of learning and facing realistic problems can be something worth watching.