TV Sitcom Treatment

Working towards the dream, one derivative idea at a time.

Working Title – The DiNotto Boys/The Second Family

Treatment, Jan. 2021

Boris C.

The ragtag staff of mafia wannabes at Di Notto’s, an Italian restaurant in Boston, find themselves at odds with their customers, the general public and the actual mafia.

The show is an Its Always Sunny style sitcom – no audience, no laugh track, and dialogue that’s open to improvisation. It takes the popular FX series’ small ensemble cast, single episode plot arcs and off-color comedy and resets it in Boston (or a fictitious New England city) with a Mafia twist. The little gang of teenagers, drunken dope addicts and glue-sniffers like to pretend that they’re the Mafia and commit a multitude of small-time crimes, which often bring them at odds with the people around them, including the real Mafia. Like many sitcoms, each episode will present a conflict for the gang and we will see them stumble and scam their way to a resolution by the end of the 30 minute episode.

Like It’s Always Sunny or Trailer Park Boys, the show will attract a relatively young and largely male audience on the basis of its crude humor. However, this show will offer something that Sunny does not – lots more making fun of Italians. With everything going on today, many people need something to take their frustrations out on. Research shows that being racist is out, but being racist against Italians is in. And if that’s not good enough, Boston accents and New-England style comedy are abound for those of us who are tired of everything funny apparently happening in New York.

Sometimes things get so bad that we have to laugh; the same goes for people. T.V. shows in which the audience tags along on the exploits of some of the worlds most horrible, despicable people are more popular than ever as real evil shows its face daily.

Series Main Characters:

Dom – 35-45/Male/Mediterranean White/Restaurant owner, former weed dealer, jackass.

Tommy – 25/Male/White/Manager. An Irish-Catholic Boston Guy who looks like he would call you a homophobic slur.

Al – 50’s/Male/Any Race/Dirty Cop. Sometimes they call him “Juice” for short. He’s a dirty, drunken Boston police veteran who is supposed to be working the neighborhood beat, but is at the restaurant bar instead.

Jess – 21/Female/White or Hispanic/Hostess. A loud, crass and confident lady who tends to fumble most of the schemes the gang concocts. Lives in her car with Tommy. Also the smartest one in the group. Possibly a lesbian but no one knows for sure.

Jumbo (Ronnie) – 23-28/Male/White/Server. Jumbo is the nice guy of the group, but that’s not saying much. He’s huge, he likes to (try to) rap, and he gets the baloney sweats. He looks like the kind of guy you’d see in a GameStop wearing a trench coat and checking the prices of Marvel Funko-Pops.

Cody – 20-21/Male/White and Small/Line Cook. Cody is the youngest and craziest member of the crew. He hoovers up whatever drug is in front of him and will generally do anything the gang tells him to do when it comes to their criminal exploits. He’s a constant source of energy for the group, and often the catalyst that leads to the resolution of the gang’s conflicts.

Minor Recurring Characters:

Valentino DiNotto – 70-80/Male/Italian/Mob Boss. Valentino is the leader of the actual mob in town. He’s really, really old and so are his crew of Made Men. He looks and acts like your stereotypical mafia don.

Bartender – 40-80 but really fucked up looking/Male/Any Race/Bartender. He remains nameless and largely silent but occasionally grumbles or grunts drunkenly when the gang is around.

Dishwasher – 15-19/Male/White/Dishwasher. He also remains nameless, but the other characters say they “think his name is Kyle or something?”

Shop Owner – A constantly changing character who rents the space next door to the restaurant, opens a store, and always ends up the victim to the staff of DiNotto’s; they might be around for a few episodes, or just one. The shop owner is usually genuine and acts as a foil to the personalities of the gang.

PILOT

The pilot episode Meet the Mafia exemplifies a typical episode of the show.

Meet the Mafia begins with the staff sitting around a large table in the restaurant talking when their meat delivery arrives. Upon inspection of the strange looking delivery, they find a brick of fentanyl-laced heroin inside one of the packages. Realizing this is probably intended for the mafia-run restaurant of the same name on the north side of town, the gang decides they are going to sell it all to pay off the restaurant’s debt. However, they must do it quickly before the mob finds them out. As the gang sells the dope at various places around town, including the local high school, they keep encountering old Italian men and botching nearly every drug deal they try to make – Tommy gets a swirly, an old guy pays for heroin with a check, Cody pees on a drunk guy and Jess drops some heroin in the school lunch. As the gang returns from their street corners, pockets empty, to retrieve more heroin to sell, the real mafia confronts them in their restaurant. The boss, Valentino DiNotto, is so busy loudly demanding his heroin back from the gang that he fails to notice the police officer that has just walked out of the bathroom. The cop instantly arrests Valentino after his boisterous admission of guilt and the gang have gotten off scot-free. As for their debts? Well, Cody quietly sold the majority of the stash to the unnamed dishwasher’s drug-dealing dad for $120,000. Now, the gang has the money to pay off their debts and fund their future wise-guy schemes.

Other series have been made about running a restaurant – or bar – but where this show differs is in the way that the bar serves as more of a background element, rather than the main focus of plot lines. The show aims to be more focused on the gang’s exploits outside of DiNotto’s rather than inside of it. The restaurant, bar and primarily the large round table serve as the gang’s home bass, mostly being used to set up their schemes which are enacted out in the city of Boston and surrounding areas. This show aims to capitalize on the distinct humor of New England (Boston in particular) culture and add in an Italian-American element, something which other series fail to do without being overbearing. The world that the show inhabits will be rich, surreal and present new humorous situations and conflicts to resolve that are unique to the region. Most importantly, the wide array of interactions to be had by our main characters only serve to increase the show’s longevity.

Future Episodes

On The Day of My Niece’s Murder – The staff attempt to whack a customer who left them a bad review online, but fail to do so. They think they can get away with attempted murder, until they discover that the customer is the niece of Don Valentino DiNotto.

Acquittal Party – DiNotto’s receives a contract to cater the Mayor’s re-election fundraiser gala and the crew spends the entire night schmoozing with local officials and trying to get themselves acquitted of their various crimes.

High Stakes – DiNotto’s hosts a shady high-stakes poker game and Dom bets and loses the months payroll. In dire need of money to pay the staff, Dom organizes a heist of a local convenience store, which ends up being a money laundering front for the Mob.

Food Shelf – The gang discovers that their lettuce is infested with E-Coli, so they decide to bring it to the local food shelf. After patrons of the food shelf begin falling sick, the staff of DiNotto’s has to find a way to fix this catastrophe of their creation.

Night School – With hours being cut, Tommy gets a side job teaching culinary arts at a local night college. Short on cash again, Dom thinks he’s the perfect person to make it back – selling Xanax to his classmates.

Jumbo Fumbles the Beat – Jumbo is recorded rapping for a crowd outside of Faneuil hall downtown and much to his dismay, later finds that a video of himself performing has gone viral. Dom decides to take advantage of Jumbo’s brief flit with fame and hires him to perform in the restaurant.

Che Cazzo Fai? – Walking down the street in the North End’s Little Italy, Cody and Jumbo are confronted by two espresso-drinking Italian men who think that Cody has called one of them a “Stinky Bitch”. Chaos ensues as Cody and Jumbo prod the old men, eventually resulting in yet another feud with the DiNotto mafia family.

Traffic – After discovering that the train back into the city is broken down, Al and Jumbo decide they’re going to walk back to the restaurant – through the worst neighborhood in town. Finding their way home gets even harder when they are snatched up by the world’s strangest gang of sex traffickers.