Echadh

Max & Ruby was originally pitched to MTV, with a plot much more dissimilar to the product we have now. The early name for the series was “Shining Ruby” and it followed the character of the same name, hiding the corpse of her nonverbal autistic younger brother in her home, before eventually snapping and revealing her true colors. 
All that was made for the series was a five-minute pitch pilot by the name of “Echadh (אחד),” translated to “one” in Hebrew, and it was meant to show how the events of the series began. I know this because I was a test viewer for it, and I was tasked with giving my opinion on the idea alongside a group of other people. 
The projector turned on and the video started. The first thing I saw were lines of content giving the show’s title, run time, the test screening number, and the production code. A beep was heard once the slide disappeared from the screen.
A setting of a house, made entirely out of clay and wooden material, faded into view, with the camera slowly floating around it. The background music consisted of weird, avant-garde sounds coming from groups of women. The sounds continued as the view faded into the house, and other parts of it. It finally stopped once it reached a certain room, where Max was sitting at a desk.
He was playing with a train set, a desk lamp illuminating his space. He rolled them down the tracks, hit other trains, pushed them out of bounds, and so forth. Suddenly, a clunk caused Max to snap out of his fun time and look down to the floor. Cut to his wind-up lobster toy, pushed up against his instep. He sighed and stood up, before bringing the lobster over to where his toychest is. Before he put it away, he simply sat and stared at it for a moment, turning the lobster on its sides to inspect it. 
Another moment of Max playing with his train set ensued, before the lobster crawled out of its confinement and bumped into his foot again. Max, annoyed, looked down, about to take the lobster back to where he put it, but a jumpscare frame of the lobster with bulging fish eyes appeared for a split second, causing Max to yelp before jumping back in his chair, almost falling. 
A short jiff began, with a shot of Max looking at the lobster, then switching to the lobster looking at Max, and so on. After about half a minute of the scene switches increasing in speed, it stopped when the lobster turned around on its own and left the room. Max left his chair and followed along. 
Scenes changed from Max walking through the hall upstairs, to him making his way down to where the attic was. Downstairs where the staircase’s storage was stood Max, next to his lobster toy, repeatedly bumping into the small, wooden door before slowing down to a halt. Max, confused, assumed that this toy was trying to make him open the door, prompting him to turn the knob.
Inside were small toys strewn against the short walls and a dusty, wooden floor, along with a single cardboard box. Max stepped in and coughed from the dust bunnies, waving his hand around to shoo them off, before looking down at the box. The lobster toy sat behind him, as he sweated from the forehead, slightly worried about the outcome. Exhaling, he anxiously opened the box.
A shot from inside of the box showing Max opening its top showed up. After a few seconds of Max squinting and supposedly reading something he saw inside, his confused face slowly transformed into a traumatized, ghastly expression, with the sound of a heartbeat pounding like a drum. Max fumbled around the bottom of the box, with sounds of flipping paper hinting to what he had found. 
Voices of Ruby echoed in Max’s head. They started off with simple scolds, and then they turned into screaming rants. Soon enough, Ruby’s speech wasn’t even intelligible anymore, choked with bloviated sputters. Finally, Max spoke, saying the only two words he’s ever spoken throughout the pilot.
“Ruby... doctor?”
Max had trouble breathing, and the voices grew louder. He turned to his lobster, and found that it didn’t have fish eyes anymore. Its face was melting, mouth and eyes dripping with clumps of dark. Max bawled and cried, making his way over to the stairs and knocking over his lobster toy in the process. He rushed up the stairs as quickly as he could, but due to his lack of focus from how scared he was, he ended up slipping and falling.
He tumbled down the steps, a few cracks heard with each thump, before inevitably landing on his head. His lobster toy exploded into small pieces across the hardwood floor. The voices of Ruby and the heartbeat sounds slowed down to a stop, leaving Max’s unconscious body on the ground. 
The final shot of Max’s stiff carcass lasted a good chunk of seconds, before the episode faded to black, and the credits slide came on.
The overall reviews were mixed, with half of us liking the idea, while the other half thought it didn’t make sense. Nevertheless, it was eventually scrapped. From what I’ve heard, they rejected the series because it didn’t have enough “humor” as MTV was pretty much well-known for dark jokes, and not just dark shows overall. Only one person from the test screening that I kept in contact with bought a few cels and sent them back to me via email, but other than that, I don’t have anything else from the pilot, as he was told the pilot was for internal usage.
Kinda sucks, as we could’ve gotten a pretty interesting show if they let this outcome fly in, but hey, that’s corporate decisions for you. 
----Art by Vibebrush, Original Idea by dibbingsauce, Original Story by Diamond Pup
Category:Weird
Category:Lafawnda's Reading Hour
Category:Remake
Category:Max and Ruby