The co-creator of Dads is returning to Fox with a sitcom pilot about not using a cellphone

When someone falls off a horse, it sometimes takes absolutely everything in their power to get back in the saddle. They’re laying in the dirt—ego bruised as badly as anything else—with friends and family hovering up above, telling them it’s OK to let go and to just stay off the horse this time. But no, they get up anyway. They can’t let one setback keep them from riding a horse, even if that one setback is being the co-creator of a pretty lousy TV show. See, this has all been an elegant metaphor, with the rider representing Alec Sulkin—the co-creator of Dads—and the horse representing Fox. Or maybe the rider is Fox and the horse is Dads? Look, the point is that Fox just bought a new pilot from Alec Sulkin, the co-creator of Dads. Figure out your own metaphor.

This comes from Deadline, which says that the project will be a multi-cam sitcom called All Together Now. It will reportedly focus on a group of twenty-something friends who all agree to give up their cellphones and “engage each other for as long as they can stand it.” In other words, it will last about five minutes.

But let’s give this show the benefit of the doubt and assume it will last longer than that, since even Dads got a full season. We think a series about a group of friends who hang out all the time and never check their e-mail or go on Twitter could work, but it would have to be careful not to be too derivative of every other show about people not going on Twitter. Like, you know, pretty much all of them. Also, it would have to somehow last longer than that aforementioned five minutes. Deadline says Fox has committed to the pilot, so it will almost certainly air, but anything after that depends on if audiences are willing to put up with a TV show where the entire premise is “a group of friends don’t go on their phones.”