No Jersey — Day 18

Genre: Comedy / Drama

Premise: New Jersey has struck it rich, discovering huge deposits of a very rare heavy metal (used for making electronics) in one of its state parks. The wealth waiting to be pulled out of the ground will make the California Gold Rush look like a pauper's picnic.

New Jersey's three neighboring states (New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware) all look across their borders with lustful eyes. Of all the states to strike it rich... New Jersey!! But there is nothing to be done.

Until, that is, a corruption scandal explodes out of the the New Jersey Governor's office, and a very strange piece of information comes to light. While enumerating all the dirty ins-and-outs of New Jersey politics and its history of corruption on a sensational cable news show, a nebbish constitutional scholar jokingly points out that, in fact, New Jersey might not even really be a state... It turns out that during the constitutional convention a disgruntled court clerk—who had been left out of a kickback scheme by his fellow New Jersey delegates—neglected to file some of the paperwork necessary to secure New Jersey's transition from colony to state.

The media and the internet go into a full feeding-frenzy, fact-checking, analyzing and cross referencing every piece of evidence on the subject... And within 6 hours, a bombshell consensus is reached: The clerical error from 225 years is real. There IS no New Jersey.

Under normal circumstances, such news might cause a little embarrassment, but no real alarm. Surely the Federal Government and the other 49 States are willing to cut New Jersey a little slack while it corrects this minor oversight. But these are not normal circumstances...

With their eyes bulging at the recently discovered precious metals, New Jersey's three neighboring states draw their knives and pounce. Each has an argument for why New Jersey should be dissolved and its lands folded into their own state. At first, the public rejects the move to dissolve New Jersey as ludicrous—a transparent and craven play by New Jersey's neighbors to enrich themselves. But as the Jersey corruption scandal continues to metastasize, and nearly all of its state government is implicated, the idea to "scrap" New Jersey and start over starts to feel not so far fetched.

From the governors' offices of NJ, NY, DE and PA, to the cable newsroom floor, to the streets of New Jersey towns big and small, we follow an ensemble cast as the life or death battle for New Jersey and her spoils go to the victor with the most heart—or perhaps the biggest brass knuckles.