Other
Episodic Series
Squat!
by Bo Bennett, PhD · 220 pages
Logline
A desperate out-of-work marketing director takes a job at a dysfunctional Boston fitness center, navigating an absurd cast of trainers, a clueless owner, and growing feelings for his coworker while trying to save the gym.
Synopsis
With the help of a freakishly wise janitor, a newly-hired membership director struggles to keep a fitness center afloat while being given ridiculous tasks from an ethically-questionable owner.
Take an opinionated and all-around diverse group of fitness trainers, add a sketchy owner, a genius janitor, and throw in an endearing but largely incompetent general manager, and you have the perfect recipe for riotous, chaotic hilarity. You have Squat!
Set in a large fitness center in the Boston suburbs, the sitcom follows Scott Carter, a former big-shot marketing executive who takes a job at Squat Spot Fitness out of desperation. Carter quickly discovers that the place is run by an ethically-questionable owner willing to exploit staff and clients alike, and a general manager who’s in way over his head. With the help of a bright fitness director and a freakishly wise janitor, Carter manages to keep the gym open... for at least a bit longer.
Squat! features an interesting cast of characters who embody many of the social and political issues of the day. Rather than address these issues directly, they remain lightly veiled within seemingly petty arguments and conflicts. Each episode offers viewers the anticipation and fun of discovering the parallel “real world” political and social issues highlighted. Without taking sides, Squat! invites viewers to laugh at the absurdity of humanity while deepening understanding of those with differing beliefs.
The series presents an additional running theme of owner Jack Pemberton’s dubious assignment to Scott Carter. Carter struggles to satisfy his boss without compromising his values.
Squat! offers humor—of the smart, subtle, and laugh-out-loud varieties—along with lovable, fallible characters, and even an insight or two about creativity, understanding, and ethics.
The first season comprises ten fully-scripted episodes, rewritten as a comedic novel. Season One innocuously and hilariously provides a nod to such topics as COVID / mask-wearing, claims of election fraud, QAnon conspiracy theories, pronouns, “Karens,” defunding the police, multi-level marketing scams, cults, and even truth itself.
If Seinfeld had a threesome with Dodgeball and The Office, and miraculously conceived a lovechild, Squat! would be it.
AI Pitch Package
For producers, scouts & managers
Logline
A disgraced marketing exec takes a desperate job running membership at a chaotic Boston gym, and must outmaneuver a shady owner's unethical schemes without losing his soul or the girl in fitness.
Short synopsis
Scott Carter, once a big-shot marketing director, hits rock bottom and lands at Squat Spot Fitness, a Boston suburb gym barely held together by duct tape and denial. His boss, owner Jack Pemberton, is a walking ethics violation who hands Carter increasingly absurd, morally dubious assignments to keep the place profitable. Carter navigates a workplace ensemble of opinionated trainers, a well-meaning but overwhelmed general manager, and a janitor who dispenses more wisdom than anyone with an actual title. Along the way, he develops feelings for the gym's sharp fitness director, all while every episode's petty office squabble turns out to be a stealth allegory for the culture war raging outside the gym doors.
Extended synopsis
Scott Carter used to run marketing campaigns for real companies with real budgets. Now, jobless and humbled, he's the new membership director at Squat Spot Fitness, a struggling gym in the Boston suburbs held up mostly by the sheer stubbornness of its staff. His boss, owner Jack Pemberton, treats ethics as a suggestion, staff as expendable, and clients as marks — and he keeps handing Carter tasks that put Carter's conscience directly at odds with his paycheck.
Carter quickly falls in with an ensemble that reads like a workplace fun-house mirror: a general manager who's endearing precisely because he's in over his head, an eclectic and opinionated squad of trainers who each carry a strong worldview into every disagreement, and a janitor whose deadpan wisdom makes him the closest thing the gym has to a moral compass. Carter also starts falling for the gym's fitness director, a relationship that develops in the margins of the season while he's busy trying to keep Squat Spot's doors open and Pemberton's schemes from blowing up in everyone's face.
Each episode plays out as a self-contained gym-floor crisis — a viral video, a membership scandal, a trainer feud — that's really a Trojan horse for the social and political flashpoints of the moment: mask mandates, conspiracy theories, pronoun etiquette, defunding the police, MLM scams, cult-like fitness fads. Squat! never states its politics outright; it lets the ensemble argue past each other in increasingly ridiculous ways, inviting the audience to laugh at recognizable absurdity from every side of the aisle.
By season's end, Carter hasn't saved the gym so much as bought it a little more time, and he's inched closer to figuring out how to keep his integrity while surviving Pemberton's next terrible idea. The engine of the show — mismatched ensemble, absurd owner, moral janitor, slow-burn romance — is built to sustain multiple seasons of episodic, self-contained comedic crises.
Why it adapts
Squat! is built like a sitcom because it started as one — this isn't a novel straining to fit a TV structure, it's a scripted season translated into prose, which means the bones (contained gym setting, recurring ensemble, cold-open-worthy incidents, A/B plot rhythm) are already there. The gym floor, locker room, front desk, and janitor's closet give production a small number of redressable, budget-friendly standing sets, while the fitness-center setting offers built-in visual comedy: absurd workout classes, disastrous promotional stunts, trainer showdowns, and physical-comedy setpieces that read well on a poster and in a trailer.
The character engine is the real sell: a sketchy owner who's a goldmine of villain-you-love-to-hate material, a wise janitor who can deliver the show's thesis in a single line per episode, a hapless GM who's a built-in comic punching bag, and an opinionated, socially-diverse trainer ensemble that lets the show cast a wide range of standout comedic actors. Add a slow-burn workplace romance for the through-line, and you have a show that can run in a writers' room for multiple seasons off the fitness-industry-of-the-week premise alone.
What makes it timely rather than just another workplace comedy is the stealth-topical structure: each episode's petty office conflict is a Trojan horse for a real cultural flashpoint (masks, conspiracy theories, pronouns, defunding police, MLM culture), delivered without picking a side. That's a marketable hook for producers pitching to a streamer hungry for comedy that feels relevant without becoming a lecture — it's the kind of premise that generates press ('the sitcom that smuggles in the culture war') on top of the laughs.
Format recommendation
Episodic Series
The source material is literally a novelization of a 10-episode scripted first season, structured as self-contained workplace-comedy episodes with a sustaining ensemble and slow-burn subplot — this is a multi-camera/single-camera sitcom blueprint, not a feature. The premise (single contained location, renewable episodic conflict engine, hot-button-topic-of-the-week structure) is built for ongoing seasonal order, not a closed-ended limited series.
Comp titles
The Office (US)
Same DNA: a mundane, unglamorous workplace, an oblivious-to-terrible boss figure, and an ensemble whose petty conflicts carry real emotional and social weight.
Superstore
Directly comparable premise and structure — low-wage service workplace, a diverse blue-collar-adjacent ensemble, a will-they-won't-they at the center, and episodes that smuggle in real social commentary through workplace absurdity.
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
The author's own comp for the gym-culture satire and broad physical comedy tone; Squat! trades the underdog sports arc for episodic workplace chaos but shares the same targets of fitness-industry absurdity.
Abbott Elementary
Recent proof-of-concept that a single-location, ensemble-driven workplace comedy with a big-hearted center and a barely-competent authority figure can be both broadly funny and quietly topical.
Ted Lasso
Shares the fitness/sports-adjacent workplace setting and a personally invested newcomer navigating a dysfunctional institution, though Squat! is sharper-edged and more topically satirical.
Audience
Adult 25-54 broad-comedy viewers who watch workplace ensemble sitcoms — Superstore, Abbott Elementary, The Office, Brooklyn Nine-Nine fans, plus crossover appeal to fitness-culture-savvy streaming audiences; suited to a broadcast-adjacent or streaming comedy slate looking for a topical, low-budget-to-produce ensemble show.
Tone
ensemble-driven
satirical
workplace-absurdist
topical
warm-hearted
irreverent
Adaptation Readiness Score
74 / 100
Visual storytelling
66
Dialogue strength
78
Character distinctiveness
76
Hook strength
75
Format fit
88
Market timing
68
Strengths
- Already structured as a workplace-ensemble sitcom with a fully-scripted first season, which is about as adaptation-ready as source material gets
- Strong ensemble hook (Office/Seinfeld/Dodgeball comparison) with a clear castable lead and colorful supporting roles like the janitor and owner
- Built-in episodic engine (petty workplace conflicts standing in for hot-button social issues) gives writers' room a repeatable formula for a season order
Adaptation friction
- The 'ripped-from-headlines-but-veiled' conceit (COVID, QAnon, defunding police, pronouns) risks feeling dated or tonally risky depending on when it lands with buyers
- Synopsis leans on telling us the show is funny and insightful rather than demonstrating a killer signature bit, catchphrase, or scene that proves the tone
- Owner's 'dubious assignments' throughline and Carter's will-they-won't-they with a coworker are familiar sitcom chassis pieces that need a sharper unique wrinkle to stand out in a crowded workplace-comedy market
Listed on 2026-04-29
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