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The Everys
The Everys are a family just the same as any other. Bailey kisses corporate ass for a paycheck; Nicky does extracurriculars and feels wary of popularity; Reese and Val have marital issues. In fact, the four of them are so much like every other family that they have no specific race or gender. Their heads are also shaped like… well, shapes: circle, star, triangle, square. Or wait, does that last bit make them odd? And if it does (or at least we think it does?), what does sameness even mean?
A pilot episode in print, The Everys is both an ode to and a satirization of all the familial sitcoms saying the same thing: that our struggles are universally human and also totally unique, just like each of us (at least we think we are?).
"Cody Lee's screenplay, The Everys, is hilarious and sharp. What Lee understands is that the identity-neutral family television experience production studios sell to us is dangerous. Here, Lee exaggerates neutrality until it reveals all of its sharp edges in this masterful screenplay."
—José Olivarez, Author of Citizen Illegal
"'If anything’s a thing, it’s me. [Beat] But that all ends here,' writes Cody Lee in The Everys, brilliantly revealing the absurdities of our contemporary, so-called upward mobility, in which, if we are anything at all, really, we are nothing more than the labels and the inane tasks our human hands are made to perform for the benefit of an absurd theatre, which we mistake for reality, the backstage of which shields the horrors of what these labors actually do. With wit and charm, Lee reveals and elevates the Sisyphian struggle, the Bartlebian preference to prefer not, and lays bare our human predicament: our unending toils, our useless efforts, our cryptic labors, all stripping us of our names, our identities, even our flesh. Don’t press the button. Read this instead.
—Jenny Boully, Author of Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life
A pilot episode in print, The Everys is both an ode to and a satirization of all the familial sitcoms saying the same thing: that our struggles are universally human and also totally unique, just like each of us (at least we think we are?).
"Cody Lee's screenplay, The Everys, is hilarious and sharp. What Lee understands is that the identity-neutral family television experience production studios sell to us is dangerous. Here, Lee exaggerates neutrality until it reveals all of its sharp edges in this masterful screenplay."
—José Olivarez, Author of Citizen Illegal
"'If anything’s a thing, it’s me. [Beat] But that all ends here,' writes Cody Lee in The Everys, brilliantly revealing the absurdities of our contemporary, so-called upward mobility, in which, if we are anything at all, really, we are nothing more than the labels and the inane tasks our human hands are made to perform for the benefit of an absurd theatre, which we mistake for reality, the backstage of which shields the horrors of what these labors actually do. With wit and charm, Lee reveals and elevates the Sisyphian struggle, the Bartlebian preference to prefer not, and lays bare our human predicament: our unending toils, our useless efforts, our cryptic labors, all stripping us of our names, our identities, even our flesh. Don’t press the button. Read this instead.
—Jenny Boully, Author of Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life
64 pages, Hardcover
Published June 22, 2021
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