Even a cursory examination of the TV pilot process makes it clear that it’s really all just chaos; in an environment where a premise like “God sends a random dude a Facebook friend request” can thrive to the tune of a second-season renewal, all we can do every year is throw up our hand and say “Fuck if we know” as a new stream of ideas comes trundling annually down the pike. So while “family drama about time travel in the Bermuda Triangle” certainly sounds like a ludicrous, algorithmically assembled mish-mash of words to serve as the premise for a new ABC show, it’s not like we can blame the Disney-owned network for shrugging and giving it the thing a resigned green light.
Per Variety, Triangle is being developed by Jon Harmon Feldman, a TV production veteran whose most recent writing credits include the unkillable Designated Survivor and ABC’s short-lived Blood & Oil. (He’s also an old-school Dawson’s Creek guy.) The show takes place in a world where there’s an actual landmass at the center of the infamous geographic geometry, one with all sorts of suitably time-travel-y weirdness surrounding it. With the pitch, Feldman is presumably exploiting ABC’s little-known Lost clause in its development contracts, which stipulates that any series about a mysterious island enshrouded in time travel bullshit automatically has to be given its day in court.
Triangle isn’t the only pilot ABC ordered today, either; the network also signaled its interest in Stumptown, based off the graphic novel by Greg Rucka. Set in Portland, Oregon—which earned the nickname from its residents’ tendency to guard its infamous bridges with a series of increasingly tricky riddles—the series is a detective show, about a troubled army veteran working as a P.I. So basically Portlandia, but with murder, which is a premise we can definitely dig.