Logline

Sarah, a 1st year medical resident, uses a near death experience,  flatlining, to escape her straining reality. In the near-death realm, she can live marvelous and unforgettable experiences, causing her to always come back for more. But things are about to change when her medical student rival, Maneesh, finds out that she is using medical equipment for selfish reasons.

Questions that Sony asked to be answered while I was developing the pitch:

What is the overall concept?

Sarah, a 1st year medical resident, uses a near death experience,  flatlining, to escape her straining reality. In the near-death realm, she can live marvelous and unforgettable experiences, causing her to always come back for more. But things are about to change when her medical student rival, Maneesh, finds out that she is using medical equipment for selfish reasons. 

What is the sticky concept that pulls us into your idea? Is there a twist?

Sarah and Maneesh, two people that hate each other, use flatlining to escape their reality. That experience will bring them closer and make them understand each other. 

Who are your characters and what do they want? 

-Sarah is trying her best to navigate her life with the resources she has but that’s proving to be quite difficult. She feels she is drowning with tons of obligations that life has imposed on her.  She also doesn’t let anyone help her.

-Maneesh wants to please everyone and mostly his parents, but at the same time he feels a lot of pressure in to do so. He also can’t be himself with his family!

How does that support the comedic tone?  

An unlikely pairing of characters drawn together by flatlining! Their fundamental and glaring differences often serve as the foundation for humor, drama and interpersonal conflict.

What are you trying to say? 

How quick we are to judge people’s life without realizing that in the core, we want the same things!  Both characters are trying their best to live their best life, but their circumstances are different. Using escapism doesn’t solve anyones problems. Just by opening up and understanding where each one is coming from, can brings us closer and get the help we need!  

Characters

Sarah Sabatella

Backstory: Sarah is a 1st year medical resident. She lives in the bay area with her little sister, she lost her parents in a car crash just a year ago and she has been the sole caregiver. Sarah has been feeling really down, but she tries very hard to be responsible and do everything she is supposed to do.

Personality: Sloppy, quirky and absent minded. But if you really don’t know Sarah, you would think she is selfish, lazy, and flaky. She seems indifferent to anyone’s problems but she is not. She is just very tired because of the responsibilities she has taken as a primary care giver for her sister and being a medical intern. She feels she doesn’t have time for any friendship, so she is indifferent to everyone in her residency program except to one person: Maneesh. She totally dislikes this resident; she thinks he is an attention seeker and a very annoying person. But the truth is that she is actually very jealous of his perfect life.  

Challenge: Staying on top of her life and connecting to other people ( with an exception of her little sister). She has no friends, she feels she can’t rely on anyone. But ironically, her biggest fear is to be alone (abandonment issues).   

Interests: Flatlining and sleeping!

Maneesh Davalath

Backstory: Maneesh is a 1st year medical resident. He lives in a beautiful home in the bay area with his parents. He is the best resident of his year, he is so competent on every single procedure he does and knows all the answers for all the questions that the attendees have.

Personality: Charismatic, refined, determined and a very sassy gay young man. He loves to be loved by everyone. He gets along with everyone in the hospital except Sarah. He finds her sloppy and inconsiderate. He always teases her or make jokes about her but deep inside he wishes he was a bit more like her, someone that doesn’t care that much for how they look and what people think of them. He also has a very competitive nature, he needs to feel he is the best in everything!

Challenge: Connecting with his family and not be bothered by what people think of him. Maneesh comes from a very traditional Indian family and he would hate to disappoint them. All the good grades that he has ever had in life was to please his parents and distract from the fact that their only son is gay. Maneesh doesn’t have a very good connection with them because he can’t be really himself in their presence. When Maneesh finds out that Sarah is almost killing herself in order to hang out in the near death realm, he is compelled to try that as well. He gets hooked on experiencing the near death experience just like Sarah. 

Interests: Being good at everything he tries, being liked and flatlining!

Danielle Liang 

Backstory: Danielle is also a 1st year resident. She lives with her family and she is in the autism spectrum. She loves science and her dream is to be a researcher in the medical field and push as many boundaries as possible. She doesn’t seem to care much about people, she sees them as lab rats waiting to be experimented on. 

Personality: She is driven, intellectual and she shows no emotions to anyone with the exception when she is excited about a scientific endeavor : “No flatlining for me, I am hooked on collecting data only!”. She is also autistic.

Challenge: Connecting with people’s emotions (being emotional). 

Interests: Science!

Plot

ACT 01

Sarah accidentally shocks herself while doing a cardioversion procedure in a patient. She goes into shock and she flatlines. While she is flatlining, she has a near death experience and she goes to this ethereal place that is not heaven or hell. It’s a place that only people in the edge of dying goes to. This place is super fun, everyone there is having the time of their lives. She hasn't felt that much alive while she was alive! She is brought back to life but now Sarah wants to go back to that wonderful place again. She asks Danielle for help and of course she agrees, “Everything for Science”. Danielle uses the medical equipment and resources to make Sarah’s heart stop and flatline. And of course, Sarah gets addicted to the near death experience life! Now Sarah flatlines to cope with her life and now she is actually doing better in the residency program. She is able to concentrate and being more focused.

ACT 02

Maneesh realizes that Sarah is acting different and he follows her around to see what’s going on. He finds out that Danielle is helping Sarah flatline. They beg him not to tell anyone otherwise they will be expelled. He tells them he won’t say anything but he also wants to experience flatlining! He goes to the near-death realm and loves it as much as Sarah does. Now they are both addicted to it. Eventually, they start to fight over for who will flatline next. Danielle tells them they don’t need to fight.  She will be able to make them flatline at the same time! She succeeds on this task. When they arrive at the near-death realm, they start to having pesky fights instead of enjoying themselves. Danielle brings them back at the same time, their essences come back but they enter the wrong bodies. 

Sarah wakes up in Maneesh’s body and he wakes up in hers. They find out that the OR room is booked for the next few hours and they can’t swap bodies until later. Maneesh’s parents have scheduled to have dinner with him and Sarah has a date with the third year student, Chad. Maneesh, in Sarah’s body, goes to the date super excited to lock lips with Chad. But he gets a call from Sarah’s sister and he decides to finish his date at Sara’s home.  When he gets there, his sister had tons of sugar and she is being extremely hyper. He tries to keep up with her and he gets exhausted. He sees that Sarah was always late and sloppy for a reason. But when he sees all the drawings that Sarah sister’s made for her, he becomes a bit jealous of their connection. That’s something he has never had with his parents.

When Sarah as Maneesh goes to have dinner with his parents, she realizes that Maneesh has not of an easy life either. He has a lot of pressure from his Indian parents to be the perfect son and they are clueless that he is gay! Danielle finally text them to come back to the hospital so they can swap back their bodies.  Danielle tells them that she thinks their bodies were swapped because they were brought to life at the same time. She won’t repeat that mistake again. They flatline and arrive at the near-death realm but the creature in charge of this realm realizes that Sarah and Maneesh have been more than a hundred times and that’s really out of the norm! They are thrown out of the near-death realm and they land in another realm, it looks like a desert. This place actually brings all your nightmares and traumas to life.

ACT 03

Danielle is having a hard time bringing them back to life, they have been flatlining for almost 2 minutes. While she is trying CPR on Maneesh, she has no idea of the perils that the two are going through. Maneesh’s trauma comes to life in this realm. He is back in 5th grade being made fun at by his whole class. Sarah helps him overcome his trauma telling him he should not care about what others think of him! Maneesh is finally brought back to life by Danielle and Sarah’s insecurity manifests on the other side: Maneesh abandoned her, everyone has left her, she is all alone. Sarah has been out for almost 8 minutes, but when Danielle is about to give up on bringing Sarah to life, Maneesh grabs her hand he tells her she is not alone! Sarah hears is voice and she wakes up! For the first time ever, Danielle becomes emotional, she hugs both of her peers. She finds it that emotion amusing! Maybe she is excited because they are back to life with no brain damage! Well, maybe they have, because for the first time ever, she sees them getting along. After this experience, Maneesh comes out to his parents. They tell him that being gay is fine but if he ever brings a boy home, he needs to be Indian and they also want grandkids. Sarah doesn’t feel alone anymore. She has her Maneesh at her side now and she can cope with her life a little bit better with the help of her BFF!