- Chad: Hey, our show has a page on TV Tropes! But why is it on Darth Wiki, and who the hell is SpiriTsunami?—Season 6 premiere
Park Place is a (completely made-up from SpiriTsunami's subconscious and later expanded upon by his consciousness) television series taking place in the fictional city of Park Place, NJ, about 20 minutes from Atlantic City. The first season details a rather vicious Love Triangle, so nasty that one might wonder how either girl was supposed to win. Various methods were used to make the girls sympathetic, such as having one of them get a Promotion to Parent. Remember that.
Season 2 followed a very similar formula to season one, with a different triangle. This was not exactly a continuity-based series at the time. This is because Seasons 1 and 2 and the beginning of season 3 were culled from three separate dreams.
Season 3 flipped the entire thing on its head, allowing the series to move from summertime filler to a full-season premium prime-time series. It took the action to a private high school, where our protagonist is sort of unofficially on scholarship and officially having his tuition paid for by his father's rich boss—don't worry, the boss considers them to be part of the family. The boss has two children, a pair of fraternal twins the same age as the protagonist. Naturally, the protagonist is best friends with the boy, Mike, and has been secretly harboring a crush on the girl, Sami, for years. If you think this sounds like the set-up for an Eroge(h-game), well, you're on the right track—and you haven't seen anything yet. (And if you must have a name the main character, well, Meet The Tropers
has the author's real first name).
More characters enter, including one who is implied to have mild psychic powers and a fiercely competitive girl who immediately considers the new boy to be her rival. Seeing as how he was unofficially brought in to boost the math team (which is Serious Business in this world, another bit of blatant Author Appeal), he runs into his new rival, Kat, quite a bit. Given her Tsundere personality, multiple jokes were made that were in questionable taste, as in her case "Kat" is short for Katrina. Not that our hero takes to Kat terribly quickly, either. The acid banter between them was, if memory serves, quite hilarious, but it's been a while since that happened as this is still early season 3 we're talking about. Meanwhile, the hero finally gets up the nerve to confess to Sami, who unfortunately already has a boyfriend. Both the main character and Kat end up going to Homecoming without dates, and share a dance (still sniping at each other the whole time), but shortly after this, Sami catches her boyfriend cheating on her, and by the end of the night, Sami and the protagonist are together. And when Kat finally realizes her feelings...well, it turns out Sami's kind of a Clingy Jealous Girl, so she goes to the end—she proposes to him. (It's not until a later season that we find out just how long she had been in love with him—implied to actually be longer than he'd felt that way about her.)
This is the part where the resemblance to an h-game goes into high gear. Many gratuitous sex scenes, though nothing explicit enough to get the show kicked off the air, would follow over the next three seasons. Often rather kinky ones, much to the main character's dismay. The music (music plays a big part in this show, particularly in season 3—usually in the form of Suspiciously Apropos Ringtones) seems to signal that Sami has won—but not so fast! Why is the actress playing Kat still listed second in the credits, while Sami's is listed third? Yes, the love triangle, despite its clear resolution, is far from over. Some other new recurring characters enter, but only one that is worth mentioning: Nick Young, who to live a normal life has adopted a second persona for his acting career, Ricky Nichols (his full name is Nicholas Richard Young). As of yet, he's the only character whose last name has truly been identified by this author, although there are definitely moments where the others' last names would be learned. He becomes Kat's sort-of-boyfriend, not that this helps defuse the rampant UST between Kat and the protagonist. He also seems to have a Magic Security Camera on everything the main characters do, completely averting Incredibly Obvious Bug and has a few other strange technological abilities. Start your Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
Season 3 wraps up with the big math competition (loosely based on the American Regions Mathematics League, won in 2005 by a team that included the author—didn't I warn you it was blatant Author Appeal?), where the team has been much buzzed about on the internet and has thus been mobbed by something resembling the paparazzi. Cue what would be the first, but the last, time that the hero goes into a James Bond tribute. To make things interesting, the writers avoided having the team win it outright by having them back into the championship from their second-place finish when the top team was disqualified for using an ineligible player. This would also give the new co-captains—Kat and (oh, I give up, I'll use my name) Chad—something to strive for to keep improving next year. There is an overall feeling that something was resolved between the two, but no one quite knows what, as what happened on that bus, stayed on that bus.
Technically still part of season 3 is the arrival of Sami and Mike's cousin Olli, who is not a Cousin Oliver, partially because he pretty much disappears after the summer arc and partly because his name's not Oliver, it's Olivier, "like the actor." He's kind of a Kid A Nova or wants to be. We'll find him some cute girls to play with—next season, as the idiot made his debut 15 minutes before the end of the season finale!
Season 4 picks up where season 3 left off, with the summer vacation arc. A couple of recurring characters (whose names escape me right now) introduced in season 3's winter break mini-arc return to give Olli something to do. However, it quickly appears that this arc may have just been spillover from season 3, as we quickly skip back to the start of the next school year, where the show gets new life from an old source—season 1's Token Mini-Moe, Ashley, who has developed into quite the lovely young lady and is starting high school (yes, the numbers really do add up—she was 11 when she first appeared, so if you assume that despite the apparent lack of continuity between the first three seasons, they really do take place a year apart, she should indeed be fourteen and starting 9th grade). The fact that her older sister Allie won season 1's Love Triangle helped to get her into the private school that serves as our setting, as the guy (who I can't remember if I gave a name to) is kind of wealthy. So about our shiny new toy—she's very charismatic and attracts an Instant Fan Club. She's also a bit of a rebel who leads her followers in promoting her agenda—female empowerment through sex appeal, which means frequently breaking the school's dress code. Um, yeah... Sami eventually ends up teaching her how to work around the school's rules so she won't get in trouble so much while still, well, providing looks. Other continuing themes with Ashley are a continual string of boyfriends who are star jocks, although this series being what it is, she eventually starts to develop a slight crush on Chad—something she insists is because he flirts with girls without even realizing he's doing it, something she'll call him out for a few times. Indeed, one of the continuing themes in season 4 is the fact that the Sami/Chad/Kat love triangle is far from resolved, in part because Chad admits that he still does love Kat, it's just that he loves Sami more. (Of course, most of the rest of the school thinks Chad and Kat are made for each other, particularly their fellow math team members. Yes, things can get kind of repetitive. Other things that are used to liven up season 4 are the core cast (well, season 3's core cast; Ashley is part of the core cast now as well) thinking about applying to colleges, and in late winter, another pair of characters that may be familiar to SpiriTsunami fans:note Rob and Lizzie from You Can't Spell Dream Without a D and an M—more or less an admission that said series is probably never going to get made. Lizzie, of course, was the Love Interest for the Author Avatar in that series, which is problematic here because he quite clearly has a love interest already—or, indeed, more than he knows what to do with. Despite another character already fulfilling this role in season 3, Lizzie becomes obsessed with Chad and led to the series' first Lampshade Hanging, in this case of the fact that "Nerds Are Sexy" only goes so far. Get used to it, because this series is quite ridiculous, and knows it. Right now, however, the style is mostly to point out all the things that would be different if this were a TV show, although they obliquely acknowledge Chad's status as a Marty Stu. Lizzie managed to get the money to come there because she has become a big international model (yes, I know she's much too young; just deal with it.) Since the juniors and seniors have separate proms, Chad and Kat are forcibly paired up as junior prom king and queen, something that would become somewhat of a Running Gag. (Chad and Sami also used the classic "date switch" trick to bring Ashley and her current boyfriend along, something they would not do with the senior prom in season 5.) Also of note was that in response to the way Kat and Chad had developed such a close friendship that they could seamlessly work off of each other in witty banter (and this is saying something, as most of the main characters, especially Chad, talk at Lorelai Gilmore speeds), Chad and Sami develop an ability to essentially know each others' thoughts, which confuses the others as Sami is more in tune with Chad than she is with Mike. This leads to some brief angsting about the possibility that they could actually be half-siblings (I swear, the premise of this show seems familiar...), but it is eventually decided that maybe it's more of a "nature vs. nurture" thing and that because they essentially grew up together, they developed the link the same way twins do. (This ignores the fact that even twins that are Separated at Birth often have Twin Telepathy.) Season 4 wraps up with another edition of the math competition, which they win in a blowout. Also, to keep him from becoming completely irrelevant, Mike starts a long-distance relationship with one of the two recurring characters from the various vacation arcs.
Season 5 starts with the usual—have more harem drama, introduce new characters (including a Perky Goth Love Interest for math club member Kevin)—before remembering that Chad's younger sister celebrated becoming a Bat Mitzvah in season 3 and should therefore be a freshman now, and quickly reintroduced her by having one of Chad's classes being disrupted by a fight breaking out in a nearby class, which Chad initially wants to ignore (a radical departure from form for him) before being told that "you might want to rethink that"; this implied that she had been there all along and just hadn't been shown until that point. Luckily, it was still early in the season. (This initially being forgotten was perfectly justified, as my real-life sister is four years younger than me, not three. And no, you're not getting a name this time, no matter what. Giving my own name on the internet is one thing; giving her name is quite another. Besides, there is some serious Adaptation Decay from Real Life, and I'm afraid to put her name on the character—and even more afraid of what would happen if she ever found out about it.) The reason for this fight? Someone called her a lesbian. Chad insists on talking to her about her actions after school. Upon seeing her, Ashley says she should've figured it was time to add a new member to the harem. Chad's sister plays along and the others, who have all already met her, just laugh about this until someone finally fills Ashley in. Ashley, meanwhile, has secretly started seeing Mike, which is why she ends up in the area when the blizzard hits—though for some unexplained reason (probably plot contrivance), it's Chad's house she gets stuck at. Thus begins the blizzard arc, initially just starring Ashley, Sami, Chad, and his sister, though Mike eventually manages to get across the snow (with a rope between the second-story windows and snowshoes) after the actual snow stops and it's just a matter of being snowed in. This is a very important arc for many reasons, primarily this line, uttered right as the storm begins:
- Chad: In fiction, precipitation means something bad's about to happen, although light snow can also occasionally someone's going to fall in love. Here, rain and snow just mean it's another day in New Jersey. The weather's always shitty. Here, a nice day is an omen.
This signified the moment when the fourth wall finally broke and the series turned into Seinfeldian Conversational Widgeting. The fact that it did end up as Snow Means Love is never acknowledged, as Chad's sister ironically finds herself falling for Ashley, leaving her quite confused about her identity. (Sami comforts Chad's sister by pointing out that she is hardly the first girl to fall for Ashley, and she and Chad decide that Ashley has some supernatural ability to attract people of both genders. Now that's charisma. It would later be decided that Chad might have a lesser form of this) Ashley initially doesn't realize that Chad's sister has fallen for her, though everyone else learns about it before the snow-in is over, and the two young lovers' struggles to figure out their sexual identity—and Ashley's realization that she does care what other people think about her, as pointed out by her wannabe girlfriend in a beautiful rant (Yeah, that was good...it's getting hard to not refer to the character by name. Perhaps if I ever actually called my sister by her name, I would've had more trouble applying the name to the character...)— becomes a B story. The A Story, meanwhile, gets quite bizarre, as shortly after returning from the blizzard-extended winter break, Chad finds himself sneezing nonstop—a surefire sign that he's the topic of much gossiping. As it turns out, Lizzie is pregnant, and given her obsession with Chad, everyone assumes that he's the father—which he assumes is a rumor that she started, and chews her out for it, only to learn that she never said who the father is—and when Chad asks her, she refuses to say. Pull up a chair, as we're about to begin our most ambitious Story Arc yet.
The father is one of the male models that Lizzie works with, and he's in his early 20s. She's fifteen. Naturally, her parents want to charge this man, whoever he is, with statutory rape. They can't quite do this, as "consent" in the case of minors is defined by the legal guardian, and Rob and Lizzie got emancipated when their parents started taking the money from Lizzie's career, with Rob becoming Lizzie's legal guardian once he turned 18. However, they're trying to argue that since the pregnancy is preventing her from modeling and this was the cause of the emancipation being granted, it is now null and void. Does this resemble actual law in any way? Of course not, but the Rules of Drama and Awesome are applied. This leads Nick to hide Rob and Lizzie at his suite in NYC, and shortly thereafter, for the main cast to bring them up to Lake Ontario to send the two of them out on a houseboat owned by Sami's parents along with passports so they can dock in Toronto and wait outside the country until she turns 16, at which point she will marry the father of the baby. The wedding is to be held in Useful Notes/Paris, which is for some reason necessary even though for the time being, Lizzie still is emancipated, and besides the age of majority is no lower in France than it is in the United States. Sure enough, after a few short weeks (especially short because the show is only on once a week, although, for big arcs like this, the real-time ratio has to be thrown out), they sneak off to the wedding in Paris, only to find that the PI Nick hired to make sure Rob and Lizzie's parents didn't find out where or when this would be happening was in fact a double agent, and they show up at just the wrong time, sending Chad back into Bond Mode. Nick's job is to take care of the double agent, while Sami and Kat are to run interference and Chad takes Lizzie and her groom (who, in line with the "identity must not be known" thing, had not been seen on camera and had only been heard once on the phone before this episode) to a new location. Sami initially protests Chad going off with Lizzie, but he points out that Kat has to be on the team running interference because she's the only one that knows the gadgets as well as Nick, so the alternative is for Sami to go with Lizzie and Chad to stay with Kat, and as Lizzie is getting married... Sami agrees. (The reasons why Nick's job required him to separate from the others is never adequately explored.) This turns out to be great for Sami and Kat's friendship, which had become increasingly strained over time. As Kat displays some improbable driving skills, Sami calls back Stateside to update Ashley on how things are going; meanwhile, Chad calls his sister at the same moment—and, after a few minutes, asks to talk to Sami through the two phones, prompting everyone to wonder just how the hell he knew that the two of them had finally hooked up. (There was also a lot of confusion as to the time zones and stuff; it is implied that it would be pretty late in the Eastern Time Zone and that had the two girls not hooked up, they would otherwise be asleep; yet it's starting to get dark where Chad is as well, which is flying eastward, to Japan, where he has a friend that is helping them out. (He also lampshades Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe while averting it, bringing them to Kyoto, "the second-most cliched city in Japan", and as a result of this being the source of his contact with Japan speaks Japanese with Kyoto-ben, using Honorifics like "-han" and such.) Yes, as anyone who remembers how quick I was to get off of [[Literature/Dream Hakachicayokiyoki]], time zones make my head spin.) However, just when Kat and Sami think they've kept the parents away, they get tricked, and they end up being followed onto the plane. This leads to everyone getting a Spy Catsuit and going in every Air-Vent Passageway followed by an escape from the airport in a helicopter that was parked on the roof. Yes, they are just that awesome. (Rob, Lizzie, her groom, and Nick were all already at the location—Chad just went back to the airport to pick up Sami and Kat). They are then all guests and have a lovely ceremony, which also meant dressing up all the girls in kimonos. Yes, they are worn "properly"—Sami, who has apparently been a Cosplay Otaku Girl this entire time without anyone really knowing.
They somehow manage to get back home before the weekend ends, with Lizzie and her new husband being dropped off in Hawaii for their honeymoon (and so they can get a "Hawaiian wedding", which will probably be a good thing to have just in case, Hawaii being part of the United States and all), and the Seinfeldian Conversation portion of the series begins proper—with Sami turning poor Ashley into her own personal dress-up doll, much to the delight of her new girlfriend. The first step? Invoking Grade S Zettai Ryouiki (Chad mentions that Kat is even more of a Tsundere than Ashley, though they both certainly qualify, he and Sami agree that she wouldn't look good in pigtails, so they drop it.) She then explains the whole concept to Ashley using this very wiki! Come to think of it, the creation of this page brings up some interesting questions in that regard...but they've acknowledged their status as a TV series by this point anyway (eventually pointing out the aforementioned credits ordering, although Sami would take the #2 spot in the credits before the season's end), so it's all good. While unable to "generate enough Moe energy to vaporize the planet", it does start a new trend around the school, which the school allows even though such short skirts wouldn't normally be allowed because there still isn't that much skin showing—proving that most Americans are totally clueless. Eventually, Sami allows Ashley to go back to her regular hairstyle, as this was the only part of the Grade S that she really had a problem with. Another mindless sexual filler episode, but now that the fourth wall is gone, they stop to ask how this show still manages to get away with a 10:00 slot (which was originally 9:00 but got moved around the start of the third season), as well as a rather bizarre filler episode involving the most extreme Truce Zone ever, where the need for fake IDs is replaced with plausible deniability. Then it's time for senior prom, and surprisingly, everyone bows to Chad's wishes, as every ballot on which he is named king also has Sami as queen. Not surprisingly, however, is that Kat wins prom queen with a majority, while the votes for prom king among those who voted her in were split evenly enough that Chad was able to take the plurality. With prom over, they gear up for graduation (and Sami prepares to take the West Coast by storm with her newfound ZR-powers), and Chad and Kat name their successors as captains of the math team for when they leave. Despite their highest score yet, the team only finishes in third place, and then season 5 continues on a bit later than previous seasons to account for Chad and Sami's upcoming wedding which will finish up the season.
Well, actually, you guys have the advantage of the creator here—season 5is in progress now, and Season 6 isn't due to start airing until the fall. You know, on the network that, like everything else here, does not actually exist. And mind you, many of the other shows on that network are even weirder. I can't give every show pages here, however, as many of them are either too fractured or weren't actually scripted by me, merely conceived and then turned over to my fictional team of writers. The only other series besides Dream and its semi-related series The Chaos Chronicles that received any extended amount of scripting from me was Räg Adventures, and even that was turned over to the other scribes midway through season 6 (of 8). Well, okay, and the since-canceled The Life Enchanted, and one other series whose mere name is not mentionable in public (for copyright reasons). Occasionally I'd also do a script for Hotel California, Pleased As Punch, The Maine Event, or Almost Legal—usually a first-season episode or a season finale—and many of the early episodes of Take Five! were done by me back when that series still had stand-alone episodes. And with it finally concluding in June 2009 after seven long years, I naturally took care of the series finale for Hellspawn Angel.
A list of (mostly faux) series that was in part inspired by my sleeping mind:
- Dream (naturally)
- Park Place (three times)
- Space Con 6 (twice, once to create it and once to have it
Un-Canceled it—the six refers to the fact that the initial one was the sixth dream to inspire a piece of media, be it a TV show, movie, or video game—Video Game/Dreams being the first) - News Channel 11 (again, the number signifies the placement)
- Love Edge
- Sand Stream
Hmm...you know, maybe I should make some kind of Unpublished Works page for News Channel 11. A short one, not a long one like this.
Due to the significance of the ramblings there, they shall be left in, though Season 5 would now be airing, and "production" on season 6 has begun. We'll take it from the end of season 5, which is followed up by the Honeymoon Special (in classic CCX "there is no such thing as pure filler" form, a new character is introduced midway through this—a Cuban defector named Marco, who stows away on the ship). Before the start of the first episode of Season 6, Kat comes to complain about having demoted all the way out of the opening credits. Then we get started and immediately begin adding on cast members, both out west with Sami and Chad, and back in Park Place, where (as usual) incoming freshmen spice up the cast. The fact that the only two major characters returning in Park Place are bisexuals in a lesbian relationship will of course make this rather interesting, and when our new duo is asked if they also "swing both ways", they reply, "Only at cons." That's the type of crowd-pleaser we need on this show!And yes, the aforementioned revolution will be televised. On ESPN. In an event that I couldn't have possibly planned better, as when I'd picked the school that Chad and Sami would attend, they weren't the type of team that would be ranked—not in football, anyway. Guess where they are now? Smack dab in the midst of a resurgence. (All game footage appears courtesy of ESPN.) Goes viral as soon as a conference rival picks it up as a threat to their reputation as having the best-looking cheerleaders in the country, as proven by anonymous player polls. ...You were expecting a California University? Please; this show prides itself on being relevant, albeit irreverent. Right now, we've just had a two-parter so cute, I had to do an episode review.
Squee!Unfortunately, this is pretty much the only good part of season 6, and before we even hit winter break we've already resorted to coming out of a commercial break with Chad and Sami seemingly Breaking the Fourth Wall with a complaint about how bad this show's gotten and how they should've ended the show after high school graduation...only to have the camera pan around to reveal that they're watching a rerun of Saved by the Bell: The College Years. Crude, yes, but undeniable—California University might have been better, as Kat is sorely missed. (To a lesser extent, so is Nick, but he is both less necessary and makes more guest appearances.
Thankfully, another boost comes from Chronicles of Park Place, a pseudo-season running concurrent to the end of season 5 and into the summer block. It skews slightly younger, but it's nevertheless a perfect fit for the Tuesday night block that used to feature the aforementioned Hellspawn Angel at 10 PM and still features Park Place (moved from 9 to 10) and the ultra-grim You Are Here (at 9). Well, it's running concurrent; it actually takes place a year before season 3. It introduces a new group of characters whose plot will then be spun into the second half of season 6, though exactly where the old characters come into play is unknown. Either way, it brings the type of drama that the show had been lacking recently—and if it ain't dark, it ain't Tuesday. (At its current romantic comedy pace, it was just a few steps away from getting bumped to "Hot and Sexy Fridays", except there wasn't much material for "grim, dark Tuesdays" anyway so it was kind of stuck there. Presumably, this would bump Almost Legal to Thursday, Mala-Mutt back to Animated Saturdays where it belongs, Six of One into Mala-mutt's spot on "Family-Friendly Mondays", the Thursday episode of Good Morning Texas into the first half of Take Five!'s slot on "Wacky Wednesdays", to be twinned with having boh of the "filler" shows running concurrently instead of alternating, and Take Five! would end up on Tuesdays. Though I cannot imagine a stranger move than going from Wednesday to Tuesday; the former is mostly filled with laugh tracks and the latter is gray to black. New arcs are attempting to be created and possibly Mixed, and there will probably be references to Conn A&M. (If memory served, these characters will be college freshmen next year...and 18-1* was two years ago...So yeah, they'd be fourth-yeat seniors as our coure crue reaches college age.
