A Revenue Deferred

Bad point about banking #256: Despite still being sick, a fairness opinion waits for no one.
Good point about banking #3: Project oriented work .

So I've finally recovered from my cough/fever and my fairness opinion was issued, thereby allowing me to rejoin the ranks of the living. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to infect anyone at work.

In the meantime, I've discovered The OC, which is arguablly the greatest show ever made. It made me think that I want to write crappy TV shows for a living. My two ideas:

Idea #1: According to Bo, there are Cisco emergency teams that are called in to restore mission-critical systems when they go down. For instance, if the infrastructure of a hospital goes down. These Cisco teams are sorta like SWAT teams for major IT problems; they get flown in on jets, are on call 24/7, and have to deal with intense pressure packed situations. It would make a great show for nerds. You could have stressed out geeks screaming "I need the TCP/IP address now!" or "Ping that address!" It would combine crime elements with evil hackers, geek humor, and of course, important life lessons like "You may know routers inside and out, but you don't know the route to my heart." Good shit.

Challenges for mainstream popularity: Potentially too many Asian actors, and if the show is realistic, no cute chicks.

Idea #2: Obviously, an investment banking show. It would detail the story of an Asian American analyst as he learns important life lessons through investment banking. He joins the investment bank originally thinking that what he wants most in life is money and a sense of self-importance, but slowly he learns that maybe money isn't the answer. You would have exciting episodes where the MD asks where his books are, where the VP wants to change the comp set 12 hours before the meeting, and where the associate thinks that the figures in the presentation should be shown in millions instead of thousands. Gripping stuff. Imagine an episode where the MD realizes too late that his team forgot to write down the deferred revenue in an merger model, and, as a result, the acquisition is actually dilutive for his client. Better drama has rarely been seen on TV.

Example life lessons include: "You know the price of everything, but the value of nothing" or "It's not the revenue that's deferred, it's your life" or "Your heart is like a Section 338 (h) 10 election: a stock purchase treated like an asset purchase that allows the amortization of intangibles to be tax deductible." Ok, so that last one didn't make any sense, but you get the idea.

Challenges for mainstream popularity: Investment banking really doesn't make for exciting TV. If the show was anywhere halfway realistic, you'd have a show where the analyst did Excel models and Powerpoint/Word presentations all day long. But since TV shows don't have to approximate reality, the investment bank would be filled with attractive people who worked on exciting deals all the time.

And of course, the best part is that you could have the cross-over show where the Cisco team comes to restore the IT system of the investment bank, where a critical deal hangs in the balance of restoring the an accidentally deleted file.

So, who wants to move to Hollywood?

Hours spent at work: 15
Hours spent watching The OC over the weekend: 8
I'm a soldier, but I've got no soul.