Every apocalypse story has a hero. Someone chosen, or capable, or ruthlessly competent — someone who knows what to do when the world ends and does it. These stories are satisfying in a specific way. They’re about the exceptional.
But here’s the question that started The Fuglys: what about everyone else?
What happens to the people who weren’t built for this? The ones who are doing their best with the hand they’ve got, which is a busted flush in a world that’s already burned its decks? What does community look like when you can’t cherry-pick who’s in it — when the community is whoever was close enough to not get killed, and you’re stuck with them, and they’re stuck with you, and you make it work or you don’t?
That’s the world The Fuglys lives in.
The wasteland isn’t a backdrop. It’s a character — one that is relentlessly itself, that doesn’t care about the story, that makes Tuesday just as hard as the dramatic showdown moment and considerably less telegraphed. The Pits, the trailer park community at the centre of the series, exists because people needed somewhere to be. Not because anyone chose it. Not because it’s ideal. Because when everything else was gone, this was what was left, and the people in it decided that what was left was worth holding onto.
The Fuglys came from wanting to tell stories about that decision. About the choosing of community over and over again, in conditions that make it unreasonable to do so, by people who are strange and broken and funny and fierce and genuinely each other’s best option.
Post-apocalyptic felt like the right setting because the apocalypse strips away the comfortable distances. You can’t choose your neighbourhood. You can’t curate your social circle. You’re in The Pits because The Pits is where you are, and the people around you are the people who are around you, and you figure it out together or you don’t figure it out at all.
What surprised the creative team, in the development of the series, was how funny it got. Not funny despite the setting — funny because of it. There’s a specific kind of humour that comes from people who have decided that the alternative to laughing is not worth considering. Bud’s stories. Big Ma’s commentary. Axel’s particular relationship with consequence. The Pits runs on that humour. It’s the fuel that makes the hard moments bearable and the community moments real.
The world ended. The Fuglys built something in what was left.
We think that’s worth a story.
— Wasteland Whispers, your community dispatch from The Pits