Welcome to a new Wildcard Wednesday! This week, I’m sharing — with subscribers who comment below to alert me of their private, non-commercial interest — access to a Chuck Lorre rarity: a pilot script for a half-hour FOX comedy called Nathan’s Choice. Produced in April 2001 and featuring such names as Alison La Placa, Ashley Tisdale, and Kaley Cuoco — with star J.D. Walsh, who would pop up as Gordon on Two And A Half Men — Nathan’s Choice was ostensibly about a recent college grad trying to figure out the rest of his life. Except, it wasn’t really about that. It was actually about its chosen gimmick — of having the viewing audience vote at the midpoint of every episode for which of two possible courses of action the title character should follow. For example, in the pilot, the audience is asked to choose whether Nathan should hook up with the boss’ daughter or pursue a romance with the girl next door. The selected version would immediately follow, while the alternate version would air the next night on FX. Well, that was the conceit as pitched and written. The pilot was shot with a single-camera setup, except for inserted multi-cam scenes where two hosts introduced the concept of the show, asked viewers to vote on the “sliding doors,” and then revealed what was chosen.

Apparently, FOX picked up Nathan’s Choice for six episodes on the condition that it be all multi-cam (against Lorre’s judgment), but by the fall of 2001, the project was entirely shelved. Having read the pilot, I have to say — I’m glad. Although it’s appropriately jokey and the “choose your own adventure” audience participation element is a novel approach that encourages live viewing (which in an emergent on-demand culture would have been appealing to a broadcast network), it’s also a gimmick that removes crucial agency from the central character. That is, by having the audience decide what big decision he makes every week, Nathan’s Choice is deliberately setting itself up to deny its lead a consistent pattern of behavior and a characterization that can be revealed to us through believable, motivated action — instead, he’s victim to the demands of not only story, but of story as chosen by a popular vote. This renders him merely an excuse for plot, which is central to the gimmick that upholds this “situation,” and not actually a character who is both driving the narrative suggestions and earning the intended consequences. Now, I suppose someone involved might argue that both scenarios could be driven by his personality in different ways, but there’s another aspect of the concept that proves this all to be self-negating: the notion that, as the pilot states, the comedic results of a chosen scenario, especially anything ridiculous, will not be relevant outside the individual episode.

In other words, it’s not just forcing the storytelling to be episodic (which is fine), it’s that it’s intentionally telling us not to expect narrative continuity, or rather, not to expect Nathan’s choices (our choices) to have any long-term impact on the character beyond the bounds of a specific half hour. That’s bad, for while the general maintenance of any “situation” is necessary for all sitcoms, the emotional realism implied for reality-set characters in low-concept sitcoms post-MTM (even those with high-concept gimmicks) suggests that what they do and experience within the weekly storytelling will shape their depiction going forward, however elementally. So, if both Nathan’s free will and his capacity to evolve are removed, we’re definitely not following a character… we’re following a plot device. And in a sitcom, that’s very unsatisfying. Accordingly, I think Nathan’s Choice was flawed from the jump, and while its inherent novelty may have given it some initial success, I don’t think we’d ever be talking about it as a great example of the genre. However, subscribers who comment below to alert me of their private, non-commercial interest can see for themselves. In the meantime, here’s a brief sample.

Come back next week for a new Wildcard! And stay tuned Monday for another musical rarity!