Memo from Arachnid Productions,
                      Purveyors of Family Teletainment® Since 2003
                                         "Who Will Eat My Food?"
                                 (treatment for a reality TV show)

          "Who Will Eat My Food?" is a high-stakes competition combining elements of family drama and fine cooking. Five families facing bankruptcy will cook and serve a meal to be judged by a panel of their creditors. The winning family will be awarded the sum necessary to relieve all debts and restore their financial security.

          We are fortunate to be living in an era when foreclosures on single-family homes are at an all-time high. Statistics warn that financial difficulty is the single greatest reason that marriages dissolve. Competing families may in fact be near the breaking point. Yet despite the stress and tension, they must band together as a unit if they are to win the competition.

          Interviews with participants, friends, relatives, co-workers and business associates will explore the sordid details of each family’s impending disaster. Examples of the types of questions are: How did you feel when your husband splurged for Big Macs and Super Big Gulps even as you bounced checks to the electric company? Do you suspect that your wife spent too much time watching soap operas during the day instead of putting more effort into finding a job? What comforts will you no longer be able to provide to your children once you declare bankruptcy?

          Cooking duties will likely fall upon the wives, thus creating a story-line where the women have the principle burden of rescuing their families from financial problems that may be largely because of their husbands’ failings. Husbands and children must assist their wives in the kitchen, as well as act as their creditors’ waiters. All meals will be prepared under time constraints. There shall be winners and losers.

          Now here’s the catch: as the participants cook, their possessions are being liquidated at auction. Participants will be forced to watch, via video monitors stationed above their cooking stations, as their automobiles and sofas, their cats and dogs (we checked: the auctioning of live animals is legal in all fifty states), and underwear are sold for pitifully low prices. The women will be asked to forfeit whatever wedding rings they happen to be wearing so that they, too, can be sold off.

          Should participants object, they shall be informed that they consented to the auctions in the binding legal agreement they signed when agreeing to appear on “Who Will Eat My Food?” The poor are always responsible for their misfortunes. Contracts shall be waved under their noses. Cannot they read the fine print?

          Should the participants object further, law enforcement officers will be called upon to forcibly remove the spoilsports from our studios. Live television cameras will follow the participants as they are booked, interrogated and otherwise manhandled by the law enforcement officers. Needless to say, these participants will be officially disqualified from the cooking competition (see Article VI, subsection 13a of their signed contracts).

          Several times throughout the competition, participants shall be carted off for random drug testing. Security cameras will record, in grainy black-and-white detail, the participants passing water into clear plastic vials to satisfy the testing requirements. (Note: in keeping with the show’s family values, our video editors will judiciously obscure the display of participants’ private parts by utilizing industry-standard fuzzy black dot techniques). Drug Enforcement Agency officials shall be on-hand to take whatever corrective actions are required, pending the results of these tests. During sweeps months, drug testers shall be encouraged to lower the accuracy thresholds of their testing ("false positives") to maximize each show’s dramatic potential; advertisers will be assured that under no circumstances will all participants’ samples be declared "clean."

          While the participants prepare, cook, and serve food, they shall be called upon to justify why, despite their indebtedness and financially imprudent (if not reckless) behavior, they are worthy parents. Children will confront parents with the embarrassments they’ve suffered among their peers for being poor. We will ask the children what toys they would buy if they were rich (note: toy manufacturers whose wares are mentioned are likely candidates to purchase 30- and 60-second spots). We will ask parents, pointedly, if their children deserve to be happy rather than poor.

          Unbeknownst to the contestants, their cooking equipment will be programmed to malfunction. While the stoves and Cuisanarts allotted to the most telephotogenic family will be flawless, others will be not as lucky (see: "there shall be winners and losers"). Ovens will burn at two hundred degrees higher than they ought to. Some contestants will be given raw meat that has begun to spoil. Knives will be too dull to chop tomatoes. Faucets will discharge water that has the greenish tint and stench of a stagnant pond. Ventilation systems will spew carbon smoke.

          We will ask the losers just why they are incapable of producing a lasagna as nicely browned and tasty as the winners. Though they may shed ample tears that can be captured vividly for our audience, we suspect that most will be unable to pinpoint the source of their failings. Oversized bank checks will be presented Ed McMahon-style to the telephotogenic winning family while armed security guards unleash Dobermans on the losers. Each episode’s concluding shot will feature the soundtrack of those growling dogs as the camera pans over the scorched soufflés, and credits scroll down the screen.






Click here to listen to Nick Kocz reading "Memo from Arachnid Productions, Purveyors of Family Teletainment® Since 2003"






Nick Kocz’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Keyhole, Mid-American Review, The Normal School, PANK, and Waccamaw. Last year, he graduated from Virginia Tech’s MFA program and was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship. “Memo from Arachnid Productions” is taken from his novel, Handwriting in Amerika. He currently resides with his wife and three awesome children in Blacksburg, VA.