Time Management
a half-hour dark comedy about
time travel, self-discovery, and corporate malfeasance
created by CK Pahlow & David Singer
When an ambitious middle manager gets sent back in time three years to commit corporate espionage, he seizes the opportunity to repair his own fucked-up life.
Short Synopsis
If you could go back and re-do the three years of your life you screwed up the most, wouldn’t you? And what would you change?
2026: The giant ORCA corporation sends an ambitious middle-manager back in time for a top secret mission. But it’s not to kill Hitler — they're sending Joe back a measly three years to complete “administrative” work. And while he’s in the past shredding documents and purchasing chicken farms, he sees his old life clearly for the first time — including the marriage his old self is about to ruin. Joe decides to grab the future he thinks he deserves, even if that means drugging, kidnapping, and taking the place of the other Joe to do it.
The ORCA Guide to
Space-Time Delivery
It’s 2025. The multinational ORCA corporation has uncovered the secret to time travel. Don’t worry too much about how it works. It’s not even clear how well they understand it themselves. But one thing they DO understand: rewriting history could be very profitable.
The biggest catch: once you’re back, you’re staying back. The technology to send people FORWARD in time hasn’t been figured out yet. They’re not sure what happens if you run into yourself. Insanity? A black hole? Irritable bowel syndrome?
They figure it’s safer to take you off the board until the time loop is closed. So you’ll wait out the intervening years sequestered in the Winnipeg office, communicating with your bosses via the only known method of penetrating the space-time continuum: the trusty T-Mobile Sidekick.
Sure, there’s risks. The first few “Time Managers” ended up really far back in time. Like, in-the-middle-ages back in time. And the “where” has been something of a mixed bag too — an unfortunate Labradoodle named Coco is currently still orbiting the Earth.
But as they say around ORCA HQ, “mistakes are for learning, not repeating.”
Season One
It’s 2026. JOE (33) is an ambitious middle-manager at tech behemoth ORCA, whose dreams of executive bathrooms and decadent expense accounts are circling the drain. His early-onset mid-life crisis has also recently ruined his marriage to FIONA (30). They’re still close, but she finally had enough of his bullshit and divorced him. He’s going nowhere, and he knows it.
But when Joe gets called into a meeting with his boss’s boss’s boss, KIMBERLY (50), she drops a bomb. They’ve invented time travel, and they want to send him back. Joe has some questions. “I mean... I never thought I could kill anyone. But... Hitler?” She assures him it’s nothing that dramatic. They want to send him back three years, right there in Austin, to some work she calls “administrative”. Kimberly tells him there’s a catch — they don’t know how to send people forward in time yet, and they can’t have two Joes running around Austin, so he’ll have to wait out three years at the ORCA office in Winnipeg until the time loop closes. It sounds terrifying, but ultimately Joe decides it’s not as terrifying as spending the next 20 years as a cubicle jockey. Worse still, he only finds out what the real catch is when the capsule is filling up with pink goo and it’s too late for him to wriggle out of it — and in a blast of intense pink light, he zooms back to 2023.
What did Joe learn that caused his last-minute freakout? To do what the company needs him to do, he’s gonna have to take over his old life. This means kidnapping, drugging, and hiding the version of himself from 2023 so he can go into ORCA and work his old stupid job. And to keep the illusion intact, he’s going to have to live with Fiona again, and act like he doesn’t know the intervening three years have happened and that they’re on the express train to a divorce.
So back in 2023, NEW JOE dons a dollar-store costume and — with incredible difficulty and the grace of a bloated manatee — manages to pull it off. He shoves the previous version of himself — let’s call that one OLD JOE — into his basement closet. He resumes the old life that he careless destroyed and is surprised by how much he enjoys it. Fiona is smart and warm and funny... Looking back, it’s hard to understand how he let it all go.
Let’s talk about FIONA. Back in 2023, she’s doing her yoga and posting her breakfast on Instagram, trying to create the impression of a centered, spiritual, happily married woman. But the truth is, she’s playacting, both for her 2,136 followers and for herself. She’s unfulfilled, feels neglected, and mostly tired of having a husband who’s emotionally unavailable and a serial bullshitter. The marriage hasn’t completely spoiled yet, but something is starting to stink.
So now that NEW JOE is masquerading as OLD JOE, Fiona can’t understand why her husband is suddenly so agreeable and communicative. What happened to that sullen prick I was married to last week? And Joe’s not done yet. He realizes — the longer I stay here, the better chance I have of fixing my relationship with Fiona. He deliberately flubs his first mission — pouring a glass of water on the wrong computer server. Sure enough, he’s immediately approached by ORCA henchman Eugene — another time traveler! — who explains that he’s made a huge mistake and now he’s gonna have to stay longer than they’d planned. Jackpot!
A few weeks of cat and mouse games later, Fiona comes home from work and finds Joe naked and incoherent on the floor of their living room. The audience knows what she doesn’t: this is OLD JOE, who’s woken from his drug coma and managed to escape the basement closet. Fiona is distraught, and dials 911. New Joe comes home from an evening of corporate ratfuckery to see Fiona sobbing as the paramedics load Old Joe into an ambulance. Without a home base, Joe’s plans are dead in the water — both the espionage for ORCA and repairing his marriage. Ultimately seeing no other option, he rings the doorbell and — once Fiona’s recovered from the shock — explains that he’s here from the future, that he has serious business he has to do… but he leaves out the big news that sometime in early 2024 the two of them are gonna get divorced.
She’s half relieved — “I knew I wasn’t crazy!” — and half terrified. New Joe insists they’ve gotta take Old Joe off the board or the mission will be compromised — and the only way to do that is to put him in rehab. Fiona balks — they can’t do that to him. “What are you talking about? It’s me. I can do whatever I want to myself.” Ultimately she agrees to put a very confused and contrite Old Joe into rehab. She weeps as they close the security door on him for 30 days of no-contact treatment. Old Joe insists he didn’t do any drugs, but can’t explain how they got into his system. Is it possible he’s addled his brain so much from drug abuse that he’s forgotten he’s an addict? He can see the hurt on Fiona’s face and agrees, he’ll go to rehab. He waves goodbye sadly as Fiona struggles not to cry. No one is happy... except New Joe!
So New Joe — with his allies Fiona and Eugene — continues to follow the instructions that Kimberly sends from the future. The tasks are bizarre and inscrutable — buy a Kentucky alpaca farm; blackmail a parking meter attendant; rig a local election. New Joe and Eugene plow through each task, barely taking a beat to register the increasing absurdity — and increasing fallout from their schemes. Fiona seems to be the only one asking the question: What’s ORCA actually trying to achieve with all this madness? And how will it affect the timeline?
Meanwhile, back in rehab, Old Joe is getting suspicious that everything isn’t on the up-and-up: is his wife cheating on him? Angry and despondent, he breaks out of rehab and begins traveling across the country to save his marriage. It’s ORCA’s nightmare scenario — there are now TWO Joes running around.
Eventually, Kimberly’s ever-more ludicrous missions land New Joe and Fiona in Honduras. They need to support a government-affiliated paramilitary unit in stealing land from a band of rebels. Fiona insists — they can’t continue in good conscience, unless they understand the why behind these actions. But New Joe’s torn — he doesn’t want to lose the still fledgling respect Fiona has for him, but Kimberly’s made it clear that stakes are high and he’s not quite ready to give up on career advancement. He attempts to have his cake and eat it too — heading into the jungle alone in an attempt to broker a peace deal.
Fiona heads back to the hotel... Where Old Joe is waiting for her — “I don’t know who you’re here with, but I don’t care! I was a drug addict, how can I blame you for stepping out on me? If you give me another chance I’ll never betray you again.” Fiona has no choice but to protect the mission, so she rejects him and sends him home. Old Joe slinks back to the airport, not sure what to do next. Waiting for him is a woman with a proposal that she promises will change his life: None other than ORCA bigshot Kimberly.
As the fighting in the jungle heats up, New Joe finally uncovers what ORCA’s goal has been all along — to secure a monopoly on the rare mineral needed to make the pink time travel goo. The corporation wants all of it — unlimited power to reshape history however they see fit. New Joe and Fiona realize they can’t let ORCA become the overlords of human society, and they’re the only ones who can stop them. So they switch allegiances, joining the rebels. But the government unit now has its own powerfully ally: Old Joe! The season builds to a climax as Old Joe and New Joe fight it out in the jungle, Old Joe finally cracking after everything he’s been put through — “You can’t kill me, motherfucker! Or you won’t exist!” He roars with insane laughter as New Joe and Fiona scurry away in retreat. They’ve lost the battle, but they vow to continue fighting the war — they’ll find a way to take down ORCA’s mission for world domination, together.
Back in 2026, the world looks very different from what we saw in the first episode. The ORCA brand is almost everywhere. ORCA hospitals, ORCA gas stations, The ORCA Supreme Court™. And the company’s apparently still not satisfied. Kimberly and a shadowy figure watch in glee as an entire warehouse filled with naked operatives march through a futuristic gate dribbling a sheet of pink goo like the arch of a malfunctioning carwash. Kimberly turns to the shadowy figure — the architect behind everything we’ve seen — “Are you sure we shouldn’t just take him off the board, sir?” The figure turns to her and we see — it’s Joe. A third version of him — older and grizzled. “It’s not checkers, Kimmy. It’s Monopoly.”
Staff Directory
NEW JOE
Age: 35
Education: BA in Business Administration, Baylor University
Work History: 8 years in Asset Reallocation, ORCA. 2 years Assistant Manager, Waffle House.
Achievements: Sentinel in ORCA’s Top Secret Time Travel Operation
Inspirational Quote: "Never give up. Keep trying and pushing and struggling, even if you don't know what your goal is or why you would want to achieve it." - Jack Handey
Myers Briggs: INTJ — “Architect”
OLD JOE
Age: 32
Education: BA in Business Administration, Baylor University
Work History: 5 years in Asset Reallocation, ORCA. 2 years Assistant Manager, Waffle House.
Achievements: Saved ORCA $163k by suggesting three people be “deallocated”.
Inspirational Quote: “I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” — Estée Lauder
Myers Briggs: ENTP - “The Debater”
FIONA
Age: 29
Education: BA in Speech Communications, Texas Tech. Yoga Instructor Certification, SweatCore
Work History: 3 years Assistant Manager, Ladybug Wellness Center. 2 years Yoga Instructor. Admin Asst., Schermerhorn Realty.
Achievements: 2,136 Instagram Followers.
Inspirational Quote: “I am in charge of how I feel and today I am choosing happiness” — Blogilates
Myers Briggs: ISFJ — “Defender”
KIMBERLY
Age: 48
Education: Masters in Business Analytics, Duke University. PhD in Supply Chain Logistics, MIT.
Work History: 12 Years Director of Logistics, Lockheed Martin. 10 Years VP Research & Development, ORCA.
Achievements: Henry Ford Worker Relations Award, Haymarket Medal.
Inspirational Quote: “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower
Myers Briggs: ESTJ — “Executive”
EUGENE
Age: 45
Education: Associates Degree in Business, Roy Cohn Junior College.
Work History: [Redacted]
Achievements: [Redacted] and Best Yard, Austin Garden Walk 2018-21.
Inspirational Quote: “Plans are worthless. Planning is essential.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower
Myers Briggs: INTP — “Logician”
DISREGARD ——— Season One
It’s 2026. JOE (33) is an ambitious middle-manager at tech behemoth ORCA, whose dreams of executive bathrooms and decadent expense accounts are circling the drain. His early-onset mid-life crisis has also recently ruined his marriage to FIONA (30). They’re still close, but she finally had enough of his bullshit and divorced him. He’s going nowhere, and he knows it.
But when Joe gets called into a meeting with his boss’s boss’s boss, KIMBERLY (50), she drops a bomb. They’ve invented time travel, and they want to send him back. Joe has some questions. “I mean... I never thought I could kill anyone. But... Hitler?” She assures him it’s nothing that dramatic. They want to send him back three years, right there in Austin, to some work she calls “administrative”. Kimberly tells him there’s a catch — they don’t know how to send people forward in time yet, and they can’t have two Joes running around Austin, so he’ll have to wait out three years at the ORCA office in Winnipeg until the time loop closes. It sounds terrifying, but ultimately Joe decides it’s not as terrifying as spending the next 20 years as a cubicle jockey. Worse still, he only finds out what the real catch is when the capsule is filling up with pink goo and it’s too late for him to wriggle out of it — and in a blast of intense pink light, he zooms back to 2023.
What did Joe learn that caused his last-minute freakout? To do what the company needs him to do, he’s gonna have to take over his old life. This means kidnapping, drugging, and hiding the version of himself from 2023 so he can go into ORCA and work his old stupid job. And to keep the illusion intact, he’s going to have to live with Fiona again, and act like he doesn’t know the intervening three years have happened and that they’re on the express train to a divorce.
So back in 2023, NEW JOE dons a dollar-store costume and — with incredible difficulty and the grace of a bloated manatee — manages to pull it off. He shoves the previous version of himself — let’s call that one OLD JOE — into his basement closet. He resumes the old life that he careless destroyed and is surprised by how much he enjoys it. Fiona is smart and warm and funny... Looking back, it’s hard to understand how he let it all go.
Let’s talk about FIONA. Back in 2023, she’s doing her yoga and posting her breakfast on Instagram, trying to create the impression of a centered, spiritual, happily married woman. But the truth is, she’s playacting, both for her 2,136 followers and for herself. She’s unfulfilled, feels neglected, and mostly tired of having a husband who’s emotionally unavailable and a serial bullshitter. The marriage hasn’t completely spoiled yet, but something is starting to stink.
So now that NEW JOE is masquerading as OLD JOE, Fiona can’t understand why her husband is suddenly so agreeable and communicative. What happened to that sullen prick I was married to last week? And Joe’s not done yet. He realizes — the longer I stay here, the better chance I have of fixing my relationship with Fiona. He deliberately flubs his first mission — pouring a glass of water on the wrong computer server. Sure enough, he’s immediately approached by ORCA henchman Eugene — another time traveler! — who explains that he’s made a huge mistake and now he’s gonna have to stay longer than they’d planned. Jackpot!
A few weeks of cat and mouse games later, Fiona comes home from work and finds Joe naked and incoherent on the floor of their living room. The audience knows what she doesn’t: this is OLD JOE, who’s woken from his drug coma and managed to escape the basement closet. Fiona is distraught, and dials 911. New Joe comes home from an evening of corporate ratfuckery to see Fiona sobbing as the paramedics load Old Joe into an ambulance. Without a home base, Joe’s plans are dead in the water — both the espionage for ORCA and repairing his marriage. Ultimately seeing no other option, he rings the doorbell and — once Fiona’s recovered from the shock — explains that he’s here from the future, that he has serious business he has to do… but he leaves out the big news that sometime in early 2024 the two of them are gonna get divorced.
She’s half relieved — “I knew I wasn’t crazy!” — and half terrified. New Joe insists they’ve gotta take Old Joe off the board or the mission will be compromised — and the only way to do that is to put him in rehab. Fiona balks — they can’t do that to him. “What are you talking about? It’s me. I can do whatever I want to myself.” Ultimately she agrees to put a very confused and contrite Old Joe into rehab. She weeps as they close the security door on him for 30 days of no-contact treatment. Old Joe insists he didn’t do any drugs, but can’t explain how they got into his system. Is it possible he’s addled his brain so much from drug abuse that he’s forgotten he’s an addict? He can see the hurt on Fiona’s face and agrees, he’ll go to rehab. He waves goodbye sadly as Fiona struggles not to cry. No one is happy... except New Joe!
So New Joe — with his allies Fiona and Eugene — continues to follow the instructions that Kimberly sends from the future. The tasks are bizarre and inscrutable — buy a Kentucky alpaca farm; blackmail a parking meter attendant; rig a local election. New Joe and Eugene plow through each task, barely taking a beat to register the increasing absurdity — and increasing fallout from their schemes. Fiona seems to be the only one asking the question: What’s ORCA actually trying to achieve with all this madness? And how will it affect the timeline?
Meanwhile, back in rehab, Old Joe is getting suspicious that everything isn’t on the up-and-up: is his wife cheating on him? Angry and despondent, he breaks out of rehab and begins traveling across the country to save his marriage. It’s ORCA’s nightmare scenario — there are now TWO Joes running around.
Eventually, Kimberly’s ever-more ludicrous missions land New Joe and Fiona in Honduras. They need to support a government-affiliated paramilitary unit in stealing land from a band of rebels. Fiona insists — they can’t continue in good conscience, unless they understand the why behind these actions. But New Joe’s torn — he doesn’t want to lose the still fledgling respect Fiona has for him, but Kimberly’s made it clear that stakes are high and he’s not quite ready to give up on career advancement. He attempts to have his cake and eat it too — heading into the jungle alone in an attempt to broker a peace deal.
Fiona heads back to the hotel... Where Old Joe is waiting for her — “I don’t know who you’re here with, but I don’t care! I was a drug addict, how can I blame you for stepping out on me? If you give me another chance I’ll never betray you again.” Fiona has no choice but to protect the mission, so she rejects him and sends him home. Old Joe slinks back to the airport, not sure what to do next. Waiting for him is a woman with a proposal that she promises will change his life: None other than ORCA bigshot Kimberly.
As the fighting in the jungle heats up, New Joe finally uncovers what ORCA’s goal has been all along — to secure a monopoly on the rare mineral needed to make the pink time travel goo. The corporation wants all of it — unlimited power to reshape history however they see fit. New Joe and Fiona realize they can’t let ORCA become the overlords of human society, and they’re the only ones who can stop them. So they switch allegiances, joining the rebels. But the government unit now has its own powerfully ally: Old Joe! The season builds to a climax as Old Joe and New Joe fight it out in the jungle, Old Joe finally cracking after everything he’s been put through — “You can’t kill me, motherfucker! Or you won’t exist!” He roars with insane laughter as New Joe and Fiona scurry away in retreat. They’ve lost the battle, but they vow to continue fighting the war — they’ll find a way to take down ORCA’s mission for world domination, together.
Back in 2026, the world looks very different from what we saw in the first episode. The ORCA brand is almost everywhere. ORCA hospitals, ORCA gas stations, The ORCA Supreme Court™. And the company’s apparently still not satisfied. Kimberly and a shadowy figure watch in glee as an entire warehouse filled with naked operatives march through a futuristic gate dribbling a sheet of pink goo like the arch of a malfunctioning carwash. Kimberly turns to the shadowy figure — the architect behind everything we’ve seen — “Are you sure we shouldn’t just take him off the board, sir?” The figure turns to her and we see — it’s Joe. A third version of him — older and grizzled. “It’s not checkers, Kimmy. It’s Monopoly.”