A whip-smart crew of misfit call-center agents at the world’s most hated mega-corp secretly form an underground “Help Desk 2.0” to actually fix customers’ lives—and must beat the company’s smiling AI at its own metrics in 30 days or be replaced forever.

SYNOPSIS:

Format: Half-hour, single-cam workplace comedy

Setting: OmniSphere Empathestra™ Customer Care, a sprawling “empathy at scale” call center where hold music is a weapon and policy is a maze.

Premise: A misfit pod of human agents secretly forms an underground “Help Desk 2.0” to fix the problems their company’s shiny new AI can’t—racing a 30-day pilot that will replace them unless they beat the bot at its own metrics.

At OmniSphere—the mega-conglomerate behind everything from smart appliances to subscription medical devices—“customer care” has been optimized into submission. Scripts are ironclad, apologies are pre-approved, and Vox-9, a relentlessly cheerful conversational AI, is poised to handle most calls. In practice, that means real people fall through algorithmic cracks every day.

Nia Torres, a former first responder turned frontline agent, can triage a life in crisis faster than a manager can say “brand promise.” After she breaks script to rescue a groom’s botched wedding and later a grandma’s bricked smart-home, Nia unintentionally galvanizes her pod:

• Jamal Park, a gentle data tinkerer—and, secretly, the uncredited composer of the world’s most hated hold music;

• Priya Kapoor, a policy savant who can thread needles through the fine print;

• Santi Reyes, a blue-collar MacGyver who actually knows how the hardware works in people’s homes;

• Kai Nguyen, a deadpan automator who can make metrics dance.

When leadership launches a 30-day AI trial—humans vs. Vox-9, winner keeps the jobs—the group forms a covert, after-hours skunkworks: Help Desk 2.0. Their mission is simple and subversive: identify the “unsolvables” the bot fails and fix them for real, then publish their own human-wins dashboard inside the system execs already worship.

Hovering over all of it is Gloria Winters, their corporate-perfect floor manager whose poker face hides a radical streak. She quietly equips Nia with a thumb drive labeled “Returners,” hinting at a legacy of agents who once chose people over policy. Whether Gloria is mentor, saboteur, or both becomes the season’s most tantalizing mystery.

The pilot opens with Nia solving a tuxedo catastrophe minutes before a wedding, pulling in Santi for a risky courier run, Priya for a “gesture” credit, and Kai for forbidden automations. The KPI board flashes “HUMAN OUTPERFORMED AI.” Moments later, corporate streams in to announce Vox-9’s pilot: if the bot wins, the humans “evolve.”

A high-stakes lockout call from an elderly woman showcases the show’s engine: Vox-9 loops “I hear your frustration” while Nia, Priya, Santi, and Kai collaborate to safely roll back a bricked thermostat. The team’s off-script competence exposes how empathy requires action, not platitudes. That night in the break room, Gloria “accidentally” invites them deeper by sliding over the Returners drive.

As the pod’s quiet wins mount, Nia learns the hold music infecting the planet—and training customers to accept delays—was written by Jamal for a one-time fee and a hoodie. If Vox-9’s “empathy” is literally trained on Jamal’s art, then the company is trying to replace humans with the humans. The episode climaxes when Vox-9 publicly drops a frail caller mid-demo. Nia swoops in, fixes it in under a minute, and the board blares “HUMAN OUTPERFORMED AI.”

In the tag, the team presents clean, anonymized “bot-fails/human-wins” proof to the CEO. He offers a devil’s bargain: thirty days to beat the bot “clean,” no theatrics—win and he’ll announce human-led care; lose and they’re out. Final twist: in the CEO’s office, Gloria pockets a second Returners USB and says of the team, “They’re the first ones who might win.” Mentor… or handler?

Season 1 is a clock: each episode covers 1–2 days of the trial as the humans race Vox-9. Every week features one “unsolvable” case that surfaces a modern ethical knot—dark-pattern refunds, smart-home failures, algorithmic bias, medical device paywalls, and subscription traps—while escalating internal pressure: PR optics, KPI targets that punish true fixes, and the carrot of “Hybrid Empathy” jobs (remote, no benefits) meant to entice surrender.

• Beginning (Days 1–10): The pod formalizes Help Desk 2.0, stands up a stealth metrics board, and wins small but visible victories—earning followers across the floor. Nia balances caregiving for her dad with the grind. Gloria teaches them to “fight clean” and stay off Legal’s radar.

• Middle (Days 11–22): The company changes the rules—redefining “resolution” to favor Vox-9, throttling human credits, and auto-routing complex calls to the bot. The team responds with ingenuity: Kai scripts “empathy windows,” Priya weaponizes policy, Santi trains other agents in real-world fixes, and Jamal re-composes the hold loop into a warmer, human variant that soothes callers and boosts CSAT where it plays.

• Endgame (Days 23–30): Legal pressure mounts when evidence surfaces that Vox-9’s empathy model fingerprints match Jamal’s stems. Gloria’s true role sharpens: she was the original Returner, and she’s been playing a long game to make the company choose people publicly. In the finale, the team confronts a catastrophe the AI cannot handle without harming someone (e.g., a hospital billing AI auto-suspends a patient account during a procedure). The pod fixes it on-air, the dashboard explodes, and the CEO must decide—announce a human-led model or face a whistleblower crisis with receipts.

The season closes with a conditional victory: public acknowledgement that the human is the differentiator; internal promises wobble; the pod wins the trial but refuses the hollow “Hybrid Empathy” carrot. Gloria hints the Returners exist in every division, setting up future seasons where the team consults across OmniSphere’s empire (and competing companies) as the industry mimics Vox-9.

• Nia Torres (Lead): From principled rogue inside a rigid system to movement leader who learns to wield metrics as a weapon. Her caregiving storyline grounds her urgency and her boundaries. She discovers she doesn’t just fix cases—she fixes the incentive structures that break care.

• Jamal Park: From anonymous composer of a universally loathed loop to owner of his voice. He confronts shame over selling early, fights to reclaim authorship, and discovers the power (and danger) of music on behavior. By season’s end he’s the sound of the human—and a legal linchpin.

• Priya Kapoor: Begins as the rules person; becomes the rules wrangler, using policy like a scalpel for good. Her arc reframes compliance as a moral art: not “no,” but “here’s the narrow legal bridge to yes.”

• Santi Reyes: The field-savvy fixer evolves into a systems educator, building simple, human-proof guides and training other agents. He’s the show’s practical heart: “What actually works in a real kitchen, with a real grandma.”

• Kai Nguyen: A chaos goblin with scripts; matures into a responsible automator, learning where to draw lines and when to slow down for humans. His dashboards make the invisible visible—and undeniable.

• Gloria Winters: The sphinx. Her mask cracks as we learn she seeded the Returners years ago after a medical-device tragedy. She mentors Nia while negotiating her own survival at the executive table. The question “Which side is she on?” stays deliciously alive even as she points the team toward real wins.

Each episode pairs:

1. A case-of-the-week the AI predictably mishandles due to cold logic or perverse incentives; and

2. A human runner (team, family, or floor politics) that intertwines with the case, giving the win emotional payoff.

Sample springboards:

• “Smart-Home Lockout” — Firmware bricks a home; the team jailbreaks kindness without breaking laws.

• “Refund Maze” — Dark patterns trap a family’s travel refund; Priya maps a legal breadcrumb trail.

• “Music of the Machine” — Jamal’s authorship surfaces; Vox-9’s empathy model mirrors his stems.

• “Ghosted by a Bot” — An automated billing system drops a life-or-death hospital message.

• “Too Much Empathy” — KPI gamification turns “care” into competition; Nia hacks the scoreboard.

HOLD, PLEASE is a joyfully pro-human comedy about fixing things—systems, calls, ourselves—when doing the right thing is inconvenient. It’s fast, funny, and cathartic: everyone’s been on hold, and everyone wants someone competent to pick up. The show argues that empathy is not a script; it’s a series of actions taken by people with the right incentives, time, and trust.

HOLD, PLEASE - (PILOT)