When ABC announced Selfie earlier his year, the country had a nice collective laugh at how dumb of a name it was, and then had another laugh when ABC cancelled it, knowing we’d never have to talk about it again. Little did we know that there was another ill-begotten series title being cooked up at another network. NBC has put into development the comedy #Winning, which already makes me want to never put myself in a position to say its name aloud. Though I sure hope it’s funny, because #comedy.
If there was a spectacular premise behind #Winning, I’d forgive the goofy, ultra-modern title, but this is just run of the mill fluff. The comedy, which received a script commitment from NBC, will focus on three friends whose fourth buddy suddenly found fame and cut all ties from the group, using a form letter as his Dear John. The three friends then combine their determination to become winners at life. That’s just a basic premise, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the style of humor or the depths the writers will plumb for laughs. But it’s not exactly making anybody so impressed that they forgot how dumb the name is. IMHO, anyway. :)
According to THR, #Winning is actually based on a true story shared by its three creators: Ben McMillan, Meredith Philpott and Josh Greenbaum. The former two created the pitch and will write the script, while the latter will presumably direct should it ever make it to the #Pilot stage.
Greenbaum is probably the most well-known at this point, having directed the acclaimed documentary The Short Game and the Hulu sports mascot series Behind the Mask. He worked on Atom TV with McMillan, who created Nickelodeon’s tween comedy Max and Shred and has the CBS comedy All In currently in development. Philpott, a former producer and writer on MTV’s Awkward., is part of the writer/producer team on VH1’s upcoming drama Hindsight. I’m perfectly fine with all of them coming together to make something amazing here, but I think they’re just looking for Twitter trouble in the long run.
Lest we all forget, “#Winning” first gained renowned fame in relation to Charlie Sheen, who went off the deep end during his dispute with Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre that climaxed in Sheen’s dismissal from the show. That’s when he started barking about tiger blood and other various bits of madness. I guess we can be lucky the show isn’t called #Warlock.
Universal Television is behind #Winning, with Will Gluck (Easy A, The Michael J. Fox Show) on as an executive producer. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what becomes of #Winning in the future, where someone will hopefully wipe that hash mark right out of there.
