Out of Bounds 2003:

Underground Lair

Revision Notes

Here's the script for The Underground Lair.

What Needs Fixing, and How Badly Does It Need to Be Fixed?

The Peter sez:

This is a lot better than I remember it being.

Mainly, it needs narrative arc. We need to start the EO 1? in one place and have him move to another place by the end of the sketch. I love the ending, FWIW. I love having him excited about his job and being cheered on by the audience. Perhaps we start him at the opposite end, bitter, and not believing in himself, and berating his employees. (We're already kind of structured like that; we just need to bring it out more.)

The other issue is characterization. I think just adding a dash of characterization would help tremendously -- maybe something as simple as one line that starts "What nobody knows about me is...."

Another thought: for this monolog to mean anything at all, at some "tilt point" in the speech, the EO has to go 'off book' and speak spontaneously (within the fictional milieu -- of course it will be scripted like all the other sketches) and from the heart. That way, he can spontaneously discover some way to get excited about his job, he can change, and we can have real narrative.


The Bob sez:

Maybe make him like Steve Ballmer but sympathetic. Ballmer's evil and pumped up about his job; he may be the perfect model.

My brain keeps saying VH-1: Behind The Evil but my better judgment says to leave scope alone.

Motivation

(N.B.: This is is mostly internal motivation & monologue that morphs into external monologue)

I'm a busy man. I don't feel successful so I need to try really hard. I'm grumpy about past failures. I worry that we're not all committed to world domination. I think we've had some setbacks and while I could blame people, I'd rather solve the root cause of the problem. I don't want to dwell on failures because that just hurts morale'. Let's talk about the things we're doing right. We're sponsoring a contest with Mountain Dew to get some new faces around the place. We did that minor evil thing (put radioactive dye in that shipment of Big Red.)

C'mon guys. Who's the most evil genius you know? That's right! I'm not doing this just for me. Dr. Totenkopf, who put your head in a jar so you could continue your work breeding the perfect devil monkey? Miss Goodenplenty, who nearly destroyed Vancouver just to help you get back at your ex-boyfried? Ray, who deep-fried six southern towns just to help you win a bar bet? Do I ask for anything besides absolute loyalty and a dedication to world domination? No. We're all in this together. We're like family.

You know what I never told anybody that I didn't kill later? I love this job because of the people. All of you. And if I throw one of you into the tank of lampreys, it's out of love. It's also probably because you betrayed me or you're incompetent or I was in a bad mood, but it's mostly ... mostly out of love.

(sniffling) I'm sorry. I get sentimental sometimes.

Now, I feel like everybody's a bit down. So, the last thing is: we're going to destroy Kansas. No extortion, no 'demonstrating our ultimate weapon,' we're just wiping it off the planet.

How do we feel about that? ...

Also:

Grab Bag of Material to Add

Footnotes

1? EO = "Evil Overlord"