Horoscopes | Week of September 30-October 6, 2002

ARIES (March 21-April 19): To coincide with "Fall Premiere" season on television, this week's horoscopes imagine premises for new sitcoms, with situations tailor-made for each Sun sign. Will you keep watching? Debut: A ladykilling bachelor finally meets his match, when the new partner at his firm turns out to be his "dream woman," except for the fact that none of his flirtatious personas seem to work on her. Hilarity ensues, as he tries flippant come-on after flippant come-on, to no avail. He knows that she is drawn to him, but she won't give in without him working a little harder to prove his wits as well as his romantic prowess. Realizing his charisma doesn't always carry him all the way, he must go back to the drawing board and force himself to put prolonged effort and thought into wooing this smart cookie. Dramatic tension builds. Will they or won't they? And, in the process, will he develop a newfound patience?

 

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): To coincide with "Fall Premiere" season on television, this week's horoscopes imagine premises for new sitcoms, with situations tailor-made for each Sun sign. Will you keep watching? Debut: A self-employed artist, set in her ways and accustomed to living alone, must suddenly open her home to her kooky, down-on-her-luck, orphaned niece, who's just finished up a year's residence at a New Age ashram/rehab center and is ready to start a new life. Can she find a way to exemplify loving discipline to her niece, while also remaining open-minded enough to handle this shake-up in her private life? Hilarity ensues, as the niece brings home her wacky free-spirited acquaintances, who both frustrate the stodgy homebody and push her to reconsider her worldviews. If the apartment's not getting any smaller, then why does she find herself sculpting and painting in the bathtub? Dramatic tension builds. Will this living situation last? And, in the process, will the artist find that truly inspired art only comes from the unexpected?

 

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): To coincide with "Fall Premiere" season on television, this week's horoscopes imagine premises for new sitcoms, with situations tailor-made for each Sun sign. Will you keep watching? Debut: Two identical-looking strangers (played by famous Gemini twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen) meet at an open audition for a new Broadway musical. After they both get rejected, they start talking and decide to join forces to create a single persona and collaborate on a "one-woman" comedy show, in which they each write half the show for the other one to perform. The problem is their husbands, who manage their respective wives' careers but end up not getting along with each other. Hilarity ensues, as the women discover more about themselves through both their differences from each other and the similarities in their relationships with their overbearing husbands. Will they achieve stardom as a composite image, or will their husbands' conflicting management styles sabotage the illusion? Dramatic tension builds. Will the partnership work? And, in the process, will they learn to redefine their relationships by combining their strengths and standing up for themselves?

 

CANCER (June 21-July 22): To coincide with "Fall Premiere" season on television, this week's horoscopes imagine premises for new sitcoms, with situations tailor-made for each Sun sign. Will you keep watching? Debut: A quiet behind-the-scenes graduate student, who fills his time translating medieval texts into modern English, discovers a magical ancient manuscript in the dark nooks of the library. While reading the introduction, he's startled to find that this sacred text literally speaks (in the voice of I Dream of Jeannie's Barbara Eden). It tells him that his mission is to deliver its cutting-edge metaphysical philosophies, which are perpetually being written and re-written in its pages, to the academic world, where they are guaranteed to turn the institution on its ear. Hilarity ensues, as his stodgy professors respond to his newfound avant-garde utterances with shock, confusion and resistance. The student never knows what will come out of his mouth next, in the heady modern-day Cyrano story. Dramatic tension builds. Will the normally shy guy adjust to his new incarnation as a vocal visionary? And what would happen if someone were to find out about his magic book? Would they try to steal the treasure or would they just think he's crazy?

 

LEO (July 23-August 22): To coincide with "Fall Premiere" season on television, this week's horoscopes imagine premises for new sitcoms, with situations tailor-made for each Sun sign. Will you keep watching? Debut: An up-and-coming entertainer, on the verge of success, is paired with a shrewd marketing executive who has been put in charge of how the entertainer will spend his limited development dollars. The entertainer is quite skilled in acting, singing, dancing and comedy—whatever it takes to charm an audience—but he has a hard time making difficult choices in practical realms such as finances. The executive must use her skills of grace and flattery to help her client realize he's reaching for stardom on a limited budget. Hilarity ensues, as the entertainer's flamboyant ideas are brought down to earth, yet he insists upon appearing as if he's still splurging, through mild manipulations and tricks of the eye. Occasionally, his cover is blown and his ego bruised, though these moments help the executive see her client's vulnerable side and thus make him more likeable to her. Dramatic tension builds. Will he achieve his dreams under the discipline of the corporate watchdog? And, meanwhile, will he discover that some of his most appealing qualities appear as a result of imposed limitations?

 

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): To coincide with "Fall Premiere" season on television, this week's horoscopes imagine premises for new sitcoms, with situations tailor-made for each Sun sign. Will you keep watching? Debut: A modern-day Pinocchio update. An older craftsman spends much of his time alone in his studio carefully creating small detailed figurines. After years of this solitary life, one day he wakes up in the middle of the night to find his latest creation has come to life. Only, the precise control he exercised over the inanimate object is completely lost once it becomes a living creature. Hilarity ensues, as the artsy hermit must adjust to having constant company from the little figurine who, with a one-liner comment for everything, has become an externalized version of the craftsman's own inner critic. Over time, he learns to channel the magic that turned his companion alive and attempts to use it again, to bring forth other tiny friends over which he might have greater control. Of course, each time, unforeseen circumstances alter the final results. Dramatic tension builds. Will he finally find peace in a workshop alive with diverse personalities which he birthed and now must share his life with? And, in the process, will he learn the lesson that, once we invest our energy in a piece of work, we no longer have control over how it develops in the world?

 

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): To coincide with "Fall Premiere" season on television, this week's horoscopes imagine premises for new sitcoms, with situations tailor-made for each Sun sign. Will you keep watching? Debut: A malcontented thirty-something woman has everything she could ever want—a good job, a secure romantic partnership, a beautiful home and wonderful friends. Yet she always feels like something is missing. One day, during her lunch break, she wanders into a store with a big "Psychic Readings" sign out front. She meets a flamboyant man in a turban (Designing Women's Meshach Taylor), who immediately diagnoses her as the victim of an ancient spell that casts an obscuring dark shadow over all visuals. He offers (well, sells) her a pair of hex-defying eyeglasses which deflect the curse and reflect the true beauty and happiness already in her life. Hilarity ensues, as she adjusts to wearing the glasses and finds her partner, co-workers and friends don't know how to relate to the new her. She must regularly check in with the psychic to learn how to be a happy person. Dramatic tension builds. Will she be able to change her convenient lifelong patterns of cynicism and melancholy with the help of the magic glasses? And what would happen if, one day, the glasses disappeared from her purse and she was forced to make it without them?

 

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): To coincide with "Fall Premiere" season on television, this week's horoscopes imagine premises for new sitcoms, with situations tailor-made for each Sun sign. Will you keep watching? Debut: Set in the Middle Ages, a middle-class knight suddenly becomes a feudal lord after he inherits a huge territory—and all its peons—from a long-lost baron uncle. He also inherits the companionship of an old magician who can conjure images from the future, showing the knight glimpses of reincarnations he may end up living, based upon his actions in the present. Hilarity ensues, as the new lord comes to terms with his new power through trial and error, for instance, mistreating a local farmer and later viewing himself as the same farmer's butler in a future life in 19th-century England. The kind magician gives the lucky lord a chance to go back and right his wrongs, but this luck may not last forever. Dramatic tension builds. Will the lord ever comes to terms with the karmic law of cause and effect, according to which every action always spawns unforeseen future consequences? And will that result in him adopting benevolence as his primary mode of deploying his power?

 

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): To coincide with "Fall Premiere" season on television, this week's horoscopes imagine premises for new sitcoms, with situations tailor-made for each Sun sign. Will you keep watching? Debut: A goofy but well-respected psychotherapist starts a new phase in his career by moving his practice onto an Amtrak train. Specializing in relationship counseling, the doctor conducts "Railroad Rescue" sessions, in which he and a troubled couple board the train in New York and share a small rail compartment on a two-day intensive journey, bound for Miami. The couple commits to bringing their unresolved issues to completion by the end of the trip. Hilarity ensues, as the doctor's patience is tested in wacky and intensely personal interactions with his clients, sequestered together in a small space for extended periods of time. Breakthroughs are reached, but then there's nowhere to escape for a little "down time". Dramatic tension builds. Will each couple make it or not? And, meanwhile, how does the doctor's unusual technique, goal-oriented through constraints of time and space, instigate the couple's acting out of an entire microcosm of their relationship over the course of a couple days?

 

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): To coincide with "Fall Premiere" season on television, this week's horoscopes imagine premises for new sitcoms, with situations tailor-made for each Sun sign. Will you keep watching? Debut: An experienced network TV executive, burnt out from listening to an endless stream of pitches for mediocre sitcom ideas, comes up with a fresh one of her own—a sitcom that documents all the ridiculous concepts and lengthy pitch meetings that she sits through as part of her job. The viewers would never believe the silly premises she regularly rejects, and the corny sitcom salespeople whose overbearing personalities she must indulge. Hilarity ensues, as each week we eavesdrop on a different meeting, with a new sitcom being pitched, complete with a brief five- or seven-minute clip of the pilot, satires of the genre featuring special guest stars from the annals of situation comedy history. We also get to see the executive conferring with her staff before and after these meetings, and we follow the potential sitcom developers outside the meeting to see their personal lives and what motivates them to develop their ideas. Dramatic tension builds. Will any of the ideas for new shows come to fruition? And, in the process, will the executive find a way to be both discerning and kindly merciful, as the whole industry will be watching her behind-the-scenes expose, a move that could make or break her career?

 

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): To coincide with "Fall Premiere" season on television, this week's horoscopes imagine premises for new sitcoms, with situations tailor-made for each Sun sign. Will you keep watching? Debut: A famous television journalist agrees to participate in a new combination news-magazine/reality-TV show in which, instead of interviewing her famous guests in pre-scripted and well-edited situations, she will spend a week sharing a small studio apartment with the interviewee, with no outside influences (a la Big Brother). The journalist, who has a long-standing reputation as a calm, well-polished and intelligent professional, is unaccustomed to having her "off time" on film as well and doesn't know what a challenge she's bargained for in this new arrangement. Hilarity ensues, as she loses her cool in absurdly intimate and mundane interactions (washing dishes, arguing about bathroom time) with each week's special guest star. In a scenario where she lacks complete editorial control, she unearths previously unrevealed vulnerabilities to the world of home viewers. Dramatic tension builds. Will showing a "more human" side help expand her popularity and improve her journalistic skills without jeopardizing her carefully constructed professional persona? And will her new show be a success?

 

PISCES (February 19-March 20): To coincide with "Fall Premiere" season on television, this week's horoscopes imagine premises for new sitcoms, with situations tailor-made for each Sun sign. Will you keep watching? Debut: A young man accompanies his brother, a renowned psychic, on his travels to different psychic fairs around the country as his assistant. While observing one of his brother's readings, he is contacted by a spirit guide who informs him that he is, in fact, the true psychic of the family. His brother, he learns, has secret self-serving motivations that infringe upon his abilities to be as compassionate and effective a psychic. Hilarity ensues, as the young man clumsily grows accustomed to his own newly unleashed powers, while he also begins to witness little psychic missteps in his brother's ego-driven methods. Soon, he finds ways to insert himself into situations in order to help his brother's clients receive more accurate and loving guidance. Dramatic tension builds. Will the young man fulfill his spiritual obligation to bring forth his otherworldly messages with the purest intentions? And, meanwhile, will he be able to deal with the inevitable personal discomfort that arises when, at times, he's forced to contradict or invalidate his brother's supposed insights?