Crackerjack: The Pitch, Annotated

Military action and espionage is my go-to genre, so you might not be surprised that I played a ton of Call of Duty during COVID lockdown. I even went to YouTube chasing pro-gamer tips.

The algorithm sent me down a rabbit hole of channels where military veterans were candidly discussing their experiences in the Global War on Terror.

We hear a lot about post-traumatic stress disorder. But what I was seeing is called post-traumatic growth. That’s the positive transformation that comes after surviving a challenge you once considered insurmountable.

These vets were filled with gratitude, improved empathy, deeper personal relationships, hard-won wisdom, and a commitment to helping others.

Though I’ve never been to war, I could relate. Shortly after my wife and I were married, we set off to New York City. Where after arriving via red eye, we got into a cab, and it became clear the driver had been up all night and was on drugs. He took us on a road rage chase with another car.

We were helpless as the cab rear-ended a parked bus at 70 miles an hour. Seatbelts saved our lives, but we were pretty messed up, said goodbye to each other, and were dragged from the cab as it caught fire and exploded.

As horrible as that experience was, it was also a gift. Coming so close to death reshaped how my wife and I saw the world and made our bond even stronger. In time, our initial PTSD developed into our version of post-traumatic growth.1

Feeling this connection got me excited about creating a show that would highlight the inspiring warriors who turn their scars into strengths – illustrating how they find belonging, purpose, meaning, and community by overcoming challenges together.

Not only did YouTube give me authentic models for all the characters you’re about to meet, it gave me the real-world arena where I could put them to the test.2

The Warrior Games is an annual event where the best Special Forces units from around the world compete in scenarios that test their fighting skills.

Not many people outside the community know about this Olympic Games of combat. It spans ten days outside Amman, Jordan, at a high-tech facility where teams compete in simulated hostage rescues, sabotage, intel grabs, hand-to-hand combat, and live-fire drills.

The U.S. is always the underdog. The Chinese Snow Leopards are the favorites with Russia’s Spetsnaz always in the running. Other contenders include the Fuerzas Especiales from Mexico, the British SAS, Norway’s all-female Jergertroppen, and Nigeria’s resilient Shuku Shuku force.

The diverse tactics the teams employ to engage identical challenges are connected to their experiences and national identities, making their head-to-head encounters all the more intense.

Just as kinetic are the personal encounters go down at their version of the Olympic Village: the BBQs, booze brawls, gambling, hook-ups, and forging of both lifelong friendships and forever animosities.

I’m calling my show “Crackerjack,” - that’s the name of my fictional warrior games. It’s eight to ten episodes of high-stakes action, serialized mystery, competitive survival, and found family character drama. It’s set in a unique location, a tropical paradise from hell run by a brutal dictator.

We’ll be following the American team at the games as they compete in week-to-week challenges against their counterparts from around the world, all of them vying to see who’s the best ass kicker in adrenaline-fueled Top Gun style.

On top of that, the CIA has tasked our heroes with running a covert op against the dictator’s regime. So we’ve got serialized espionage missions where the stakes are life or death, running alongside the procedural energy of the Crackerjack challenge of each episode.

Our unique group of characters, each with their own strengths and stretches, will need to put aside their interpersonal conflicts and help each other reach a state of post-traumatic growth, developing into a synchronized unit that can overcome impossible odds.3

It’s the door-kicking hop and pop of SEAL TEAM 6, the sneak and peak takedowns of JACK RYAN, with a scoop of survive or die HUNGER GAMES and top off that sundae with the aspirational hero vibes of TOP GUN.

So let’s stack up at the door of the C130 and jump right into Episode One, “Ghosts of Syria.”

The teaser kicks off with an intense flashback as a special ops extraction mission goes awry.

Capt. Elijah Drake (aged 38-42) watches helplessly as his team is decimated and the high-value target they were chasing, Omar Hassan, escapes.

In the present, two years later, we find Eli’s out of the military, living in his truck and moving from one Wal-Mart parking lot to the next. Adrift and alone.

Eli grew up on a Texas ranch, all this guy ever wanted to do was join the Army. ROTC. West Point. The elite 75th Ranger Regiment. Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Eli put his personal life on hold to serve his country. No family. No kids. Just the flag and the uniform.

During that Syria Op, he sustained a TBI and was medically discharged. He’s in denial about his condition, presenting a confident and relaxed demeanor to the outside world. But under that facade, he grapples with ghosts of what went down in the desert of a distant land.

It’s a burden he can’t shake or share. So it’ll take time for Eli to get over the past, moving from his state of Post Traumatic Stress to Post Traumatic Growth.

He’s approached out of the blue by an old friend from the Army. Disgusted by how DC politics affected the GWOT, his battle brother got elected to Congress to make a difference. Now, he wants Eli to lead the U.S. team at Crackerjack. For the first time, the annual event will be held on the rogue island nation of Serenique.

Ruled by an aging Sultan, it’s been a renegade state for generations, a haven for money laundering and international criminals at the expense of it’s population.

But the Sultan’s progressive daughter has convinced her dad to host Crackerjack, seeing it as a first step toward ending her country’s pariah status and connecting them to the international community.

She understands the geopolitical significance of Serenique’s location on the global battlespace. Going legit will provide money and security to safeguard the island’s future.

But Eli doesn’t want to play games. He wants to go downrange. To make a difference.

That’s when his friend unwraps the birthday present. The game is a unique opportunity to get a Tier One unit of spec warriors into denied territory.

The CIA wants to use participation at Crackerjack as a cover for a covert mission for one of their singletons to capture a High-Value Target hiding on the island – That guy is Omar Hassan. The demon haunting Eli’s nightmares.

You can bet our hero is good to go. Or we wouldn’t have a show. He meets his team on the flight to Serenique. Four of America’s best Tier One operators, each with their own strengths, stretches, and traumatic baggage. Lone Wolf operators not used to running as a pack.5

Zoe Turner (28-32) is among the few women to graduate Army Sniper School. Getting it done with a prosthetic left leg. She’d enlisted right out of High School to escape Alabama poverty. But in Iraq, she was yanked from the motor pool to be a “Lioness” and help de-escalate encounters with indigenous females.4

During a firefight, Zoe was injured by the enemy and abandoned by her Marine counterparts. She survived but lost her leg in the chaos. Sick of being a victim, she pushed through a brutal recovery to return to active duty. Determined to prove there’s nothing in the world that can ever hurt her again.

Sergeant Myles Jackson (aged 42-46) was in Ramadi when Zoe lost her leg, so you can bet these two will have beef. A Marine Raider from Pittsburgh, he thinks the Corps is spending too much time going woke and not training hard enough to be warfighters. He wants to make the Marines great again. And that means no women allowed.

Petty Officer 1st Class Jason Matthews (age 32-36) is a charismatic Navy SEAL with multiple combat deployments. Jason shares war stories, training tips, and mil-spec humor online.

His homemade music videos include “Leather and Lead” and “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (Where’s My Bourbon?).” He’s an accomplished MMA fighter. Even a playable character in Call of Duty. He’s chasing his own version of the American Dream – getting filthy rich and influencer famous.

2nd Lt. Katy Park (age 22-25) is the team’s youngest. A vibrant and bubbly Space Force officer specializing in surveillance, drones, and cyber warfare. Running remote ops for JSOC around the world. She has a neurodiverse trait that lets her taste words and see numbers as colors, giving her a unique edge when mapping complex data patterns.

When the U.S. Team arrive in Serenique, they’re taken to a Luxury Hotel where the competitors are staying. A place where these rivals will get drunk, break stuff, and hook up after curfew. Like I alluded to earlier some interactions are not as friendly as others.

Eli and the Russian Spetsnaz leader fought each other in Syria, so their competition is personal.

The teams go to a lavish welcome ceremony and first event. We meet Sultan Abdul Karim Al-Mansour, the charismatic yet ruthless ruler of Serenique, known for his eccentric policies and lavish lifestyle. By his side is Princess Amina, poised and diplomatic. Serenique’s heir apparent, a spoiled young Prince, leads the Royal Guard as the Crackerjack Opposing Force.

The first challenge begins with the U.S. Team facing off against the Russians. The objective is to plant explosive charges at critical structural points and extract.

Eli takes charge; but unable to trust or delegate, he micromanages his new team, putting them on the back foot. It doesn’t help that Zoe and Myles argue over tactics, revealing their contentious history. And Jason showboats for the cameras – and the Princess. While Katy, on remote comms, struggles to feed the team intel they can use, overwhelming them with data.

The U.S. team gets the charges planted, but their lack of coordination costs them valuable time. And then the Russians cheat, dropping an obstacle to block U.S. exfil and take the lead.

At the last moment, Ely calls an audible, leading his team out a second-story window. It’s a race for the safe zone, with the U.S. finishing seconds ahead to get the win.

Suddenly, a massive explosion rocks the complex. The teams realize with shock that the charges they planted were live. The Russian’s delaying tactic could’ve killed them. The Prince gleefully reveals this year’s Crackerjack will be more intense and dangerous than ever.

That night, as they’re getting ready for a fancy welcome party - Eli and the team are briefed by their CIA Handler, who will execute the covert ops. This guy’s a legendary warrior in his 70s.

While the competitors are at the party, he’ll head out to surveil Hassan. Eli wants to go but gets denied. Undeterred, he sneaks off during the event, seeking revenge.

Only to find the Handler fighting blade to blad with Hassan! Eli races to intervene but is too late to save the CIA man. He gives chase but loses his nemesis once again.

Eli covers up the Handler’s death to avoid compromising the mission. If the locals get suspicious, the U.S. team might get sent home, and bad guy Hassan will escape.

Back at the hotel, Eli analyzes intel he took off the body of the dead Handler, learning Hassan’s got a secret lab on Serenique where he’s designing a highly contagious and lethal virus to deploy against populated areas in the West.

Eli debriefs his Langley contact and all of this. So he’s surprised when they order him to abort the mission. He doesn’t get it - Hassan’s gotta be found and stopped from smuggling the virus off the island. They don’t care. Eli’s told to stand down. Of course, our hero refuses.

Eli lies to his team, telling them the CIA wants them to continue the mission. He claims Langley believes they have the Tier One skills to adapt and operate despite being a man down.

Some of the team aren’t so sure. If they’re trying to run covert ops at the same time as they’re competing in Crackerjack challenges, pulling off this mission will be impossible.

Eli acknowledges it won’t be easy, but stopping Hassan is worth the risk. They reluctantly agree to follow his piggyback protocol. What choice do they have? They’re under CIA orders. Right?

Throughout Season One, the U.S. team will use the competitive events as opportunities for covert surveillance and intel grabs. They’ll be constantly improvising and risking their lives, hunting for clues to find Hassan and his bioweapon. But they’ve gotta maintain their Crackerjack ranking, or they’ll get tossed off the island.

The Op Tempo is gonna get hectic.

During an urban combat challenge, the team splits up - with some staging a diversion while others plant bugs to monitor a meeting about Hassan. It’s a success but raises suspicion.

In another event, a HALO parachute jump and jungle navigation race, Jason fakes an injury to break away and retrieve chemicals linked to the bioweapon. But when the injury is questioned, Eli must break the SEAL’s wrist to sell the lie.

During another op, Katy, the rookie, must step in for injured Jason to recover a data-laden underwater drone during an ocean survival challenge. She barely pulls it off, lucky to survive thanks to Jason’s remote coaching.

As if competing in Crackerjack while running covert ops isn’t tough enough, learning to get along and work together adds a dramatic layer of emotional complexity.

Eli struggles with trust and delegation, butts heads with Myles’s aggressive approach to action, can’t contain Jason’s showboater style, worries about Zoe’s prosthetic prowess, and is reluctant to put Katy in jeopardy.12 You can bet fists are gonna fly when the team learns Eli lied to them about the CIA green-lighting their mission.

Eli’s not the only one who needs to get over his shit. Myles comes to terms with the root of his gender bias. He’s anti-female warfighters because he doesn’t want his estranged daughter from enlisting in the Corps. He can’t stomach the thought of her being exposed to the same horrors that he experienced.6

Zoe’s gotta process that her fear of abandonment stems from her drug-addict parents dumping her at her grandparents’ house so they could go off and party, eventually OD’ing in their Corolla. Zoe was just a kid then, but she carries the guilt of not being there to save them.7

Jason’s showboating and money lust is driven by the shame of feeling duped into fighting the forever war to defend the flag when the sacrifice of blood and treasure was really about padding Dick Cheney’s retirement account.8

And Katy Park has always harbored the low self-esteem of a neurodiverse outsider. Trying too hard to fit in and be perfect, overcompensating, not appreciating the value of her extraordinary talent.9

This team need to accept themselves and each other for who they are, not who they think they’re supposed to be. The stakes of this Op demand they ditch their demons, move past their conflicts, and cooperate because –

– if you thought the U.S. was the only one hunting for the bioweapon. You’d be wrong. Some of the other superpowers are under orders to secure the virus for their countries. During the games, they’re frenemy competitors, but in the covert virus hunt – they’re deadly adversaries.

Simultaneously, the political landscape of Serenique shifts when the Sultan is assassinated. The authoritarian island teeters toward chaos as Prince Rashid and Princess Amina vie for power.

As the season nears it’s climax, the team finally locate Hassan’s lab and attempts a make-it-or-break-it raid. The mission fails when an enemy from another team tries to escape with the virus. Katy, the rookie, risks her life to stop them, but the virus kills them both.

Now, Hassan is on the loose with the virus. Turns out the progressive Princess was protecting him. She’d hired the terrorist to develop the virus as a home-grown WMD. After assassinating her father, she’d planned on negotiating with the international reps from a position of strength.

Eli and team are tossed off the island. But after learning Hassan plans to betray the Princess and deploy the virus at Crackerjack’s closing ceremony, they hijack their departing plane and infiltrate the island. They rendezvous with a few of their competitors, now allies, and move to stop the bad guy’s attack.

The final fight is a tour de force of international unity as the good guys merge the diverse tactics we’ve seen the various competitors deploy in the games.

Our heroes foil Hassan’s plan and settle the power struggle in Serenique but make a dark discovery regarding a CIA agenda for the bioweapon – That’s why Langley had told Eli to stand down.

Crackerjack’s unique frame of competitive events and covert missions supports future seasons filled with new challenges, locations, and character dynamics. Eli and his team could participate in annual events hosted in various global hot spots requiring undercover operations.10

Like a Money Laundering principality in Europe, a cartel adjacent area South of the Border, or an Asian Pirate Enclave. The show could introduce recurring antagonists and allies. And new team members with fresh skills and storylines for the group. With authentic opportunities for international casting, grounded worldbuilding, and multi-season arcs.

Crackerjack explores the bonds, sacrifices, and inspiring ways professional warriors use trauma, tragedy, and teamwork to become not just Tier One Operators but Tier One human beings.11