What's it like to live in a foster home?

And would you find the following insensitive:
1. As a joke of irony, the foster parent is a pedophile. (But he has a clear record, of course, so the state lets him be a foster parent.)
2. One of the characters dies and respawns all the time. His best friend is always in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the foster parent locks him in the basement.
3. In one of the episodes, the kids get interviewed by an aspiring adoptive couple. The couple consists of an abusive husband and passive wife.

And do kids get interviewed by an adoptive couple? (I know the couple gets interviewed, but do kids?)

@iwannamakemovies Holy cow what is up if there is something you know about then please express it so you can deal with it but honestly I have seen the foster care also do a lot of good and I have seen kids come around and make something of themselves…

I’m not saying that foster care is all about abuse, but foster kids would get upset if the show doesn’t let the world know what they’ve been through.

South Park has already been written. “They killed Kenny!”

Try not to be too too derivative.

I have never been in foster care but have known a lot of people who foster children so I will reply based on that experience. These people fostered because they felt they could offer a stable and calm environment for kids to live in while their home situation hopefully straightened out. They offered safety, a warm place to live, good food and willingness to interact.

I am sure there are bad people out there who foster, there are some bad people in almost every aspect of life. But in my life and travels, I have found that most people are good and honest, if you treat them fairly, you will get the same in return. I have seen a lot of older foster kids who are so jaded by their life experiences to date that they would be unhappy and find fault no matter who they were with, and that is very sad. But it is the parents who are to blame for that, not the foster parents.

The humorous moments arise with fosters the same as they would with biological children. I don’t see much difference in that area.

@WasCy It doesn’t have to be the only show with that concept. Plus Kenny respawns for no reason.. In this series, they have a reason every time.

I don’t think the foster parent being a pedophile is the least bit funny. It seems to me like you want a very dark comedy. And the respawning character is sort of like Kenny in South Park.. same idea?
I’m confused at what you are looking for. I was in a foster home for 2 years and it was mostly negative. I think most foster homes are good though. I think the dark and/or ironic aspect you are looking for may be too touchy for most.

Maybe my target audience should be people who don’t know the least bit about foster care. Because the comedy in this is too touchy for people like you. Well not all of it. All the dark comedy in season 1, so far is typed above. So maybe there would be moments where you laugh, but then you could get depressed at other moments.

First of all the show has got never been seen before angles ( if I’m not mistaken ) which I like. A dark comedy about a family in a foster home setting. That is one perfect cauldron of boiling plots and sub-plots about unpredictable characters undergoing emotional, physical and maybe even spiritual changes like meat and vegetables slowly being cooked all together and in the end might give either a delicious or vomit inducing taste.

I’m not so sure about the pedophile parent character. I would be impress with the tv producer who might try to develop such character with you the writer and have it approved by the powers that be. But I would very much like to see you try.

Also, if you don’t consider real sentiments of people who know something about foster homes and might feel uncomfortable with it, how in depth could your show be-?

Luckily, I just found someone online who I can email whenever I have questions. She has both good and bad backgrounds in foster care. So my show will be just as accurate as Law & Order is with government (which is about 80–90%). But it will be seen from a more positive angle. One of the characters actually likes to cook as a hobby, and he is pretty good at it.
I’m gonna go more into depth with the pedophile: His pedophilia makes him creepy, and his creepiness causes the comedy. The fact that he’s a pedophile isn’t the whole joke.
One of the bedrooms are above the dining room and it has a big window facing the dining room. In one scene, the pedophile (his name is Mr. Cox, by the way) is spying on all the kids through that window. This would be pretty F’d up if they were all like 5, but they’re teenagers, so it’s okay to laugh.
Now for the adoptive couple: The man is abusive. The wife is passive. The only hitting he does is when they are walking up to the foster home’s door and they argue about who gets to ring the doorbell. The wife reaches to ring it. The husband slaps her arm and says “I’m ringin’ it, btch!” The rest is just a love-hate relationship sorta deal with an over-the-top mean character.

One person’s perspective does not the whole story tell. I think your suggestion that your comedy will be as accurate as the Law & Order franchise because you have ONE person you can contact who has both positive and negative experiences, is quite a stretch. I also don’t think you can ‘pick’ your audience so precisely, i.e. people who know nothing about foster care. You may aim at those people but most adults will have some level of understanding about foster care, whether it is accurate or not.

I do think the topic has potential if done in a sort of Six Feet Under way, but I think you need to be very careful not to offend the majority of your audience. I have to say I am at a loss as to how you will make paedophilia amusing. For people or families who have been victims of this crime there is nothing funny about it. As has already been suggested, I would suggest the majority of foster parents are decent people but that truth can get lost in the myriad of stories about the horrible foster parents. The last thing those good foster parents need is a program that focuses only on the negatives. Child abuse and neglect are not humourous topics.

Good luck with creating a program that finds the funny side. Perhaps you should try to focus on the positives of foster care and find stories about the funny things that happen as foster parents and children try to find ways to come together. I am sure there are many funny, positive stories.

How can your show be that accurate when you are getting most of your information from one person? Law & Order is completely different and there is constant heavy research into shows like that. The fact that you are comparing your show to such a heavy franchise as Law & Order ..is, well, really odd.
As I was typing, @Mz_Lizzy said most of what I wanted to say. I don’t see how there is much demand for such a show. I think you’d have more luck with postive funny in regards to foster care.

@I think you guys are taking pedophilia the wrong way… He’s just creepy in a funny kind of way. Like when someone wrings the doorbell and asks to come in, he blandly says “What’s the password?” ..Would he be a more interesting character if he wasn’t creepy? I don’t think so.

And I’m comparing it to Law and Order cause I saw someone ask how accurate Law & Order is with government. Some one answered that it’s pretty accurate. There’s really not much to know about the foster system. I mean it’s one part of law I would have to study. And every experience and every home is different. Of course I’m gonna ask more people about their experiences. But I was just saying I have at least 1 reliable source now.
The ONLY dark comedy in the show has been listed above in the first answer. That’s it. The rest of the comedy is irony, bullsh*t, slapstick, love/hate relationships, banters, blunder, and burlesque. Okay, and there’s a few sexual innuendos (but a lot of comedies have them). The show also swears sometimes too.

Paedophilia, is paedophilia… there is no right way to take it and you said your character was a paedophile who just doesn’t have a record. Anyway, it sounds like you are still very much in the brainstorming stage and I hope it works out for you.

Well come to think of it now I’m reminded of that old man pedophile character in Family Guy. He is funny but I’m sure to victims he’s never that…

@mazingerz88 yeah, I’ve seen that guy in Family Guy (oddly enough, because I rarely watch it) ..but I think, for some reason, it is different with cartoon characters than a real person. I find that old guy icky but it would bother me alot if he was real.

we’re keeping the pedophile. if viewers request that he gets taken off the show, we’ll get him arrested and replace him.

Beforehand, we’ll survey a bunch of people, but using a script excerpt to explain it.