Comedian Aziz Ansari’s recent Netflix series Master Of None might have gone in an extremely different creative direction, at least if a new video posted by Eric Wareheim is to be believed. Wareheim claims that “an unaired CBS pilot called Big Bud Lil Bud was the original inspiration for Master Of None.” Other than the participation of Ansari, however, the two programs have very little in common. A four-minute “teaser” for the show reveals Big Bud to be a laugh-track-saturated sitcom very much in the mold of such classic TGIF favorites as Family Matters, Full House, and Perfect Strangers from the 1990s. Wareheim and Ansari play the title characters, two oppressively cheerful humanoid robot siblings with a reincarnated talking puppy as a father. Naturally, like all the shows from the Miller-Boyett Productions assembly line, this one features a catchy, upbeat theme song and opening montage. Also, both Ansari and Wareheim were using aliases back then and were billed as “Kenneth R. Ballendir” and “Jeremy Kuhar” respectively.
The plot of the Big Bud Lil Bud is slight: The titular buds have to eat their way through a huge pile of bananas as a punishment for some unnamed transgression. Ultimately, though, they learn a lesson and end up learning some important information about each other and their thought-to-be-deceased dad. This being a traditional network sitcom, a good deal of the running time is actually taken up by establishing shots of the house the siblings supposedly occupy and bumpers reminding the audience that Big Bud Lil Bud will be right back.