In 2017, I had just finished my short, “Rachel and her Grandfather Control the Island” at Frederator Studios. LEGO was going around town asking for different studios to pitch shows based on LEGO City, and Frederator decided to have me develop the pitch. I enlisted the help of my friend Isabel Higgins to write the pitch, with some art provided by Victoria Vincent and Kai Jiang. It turned into the monstrosity you see before you. LEGO didnt seem to like it but we had fun making it.

BRICKSBERG: THE WORST CITY IN THE WORLD

By Jonni Phillips and Isabel Higgins

GENERAL SYNOPSIS AND WORLD: 

WELCOME TO BRICKSBERG, THE WORST CITY IN THE WORLD. Home to the most incompetent citizens who have ever lived, constant fires, horrible infrastructure, a government run by pirates, and worst of all, the HORRIBLE SUPERVILLAIN: OGEL. Bricksberg is looked down upon by every other city on Giant Lego Head Planet. We follow Jerry Brickerson, the grandson of the wise astronomer Janet Brickerson. We watch Jerry as he helps Mayor Pirate build the tallest tower in the world, takes the census of Bricksberg, and meets the many wild and wacky citizens of the city. 

GENERAL RULES & LORE OF THE WORLD:

-The world was created by Janet Brickerson and Ogel, the 2 gods of the lego universe. They had a huge magic fight in the cosmos a zillion years ago and accidentally created the Giant Lego Head world by smashing bricks together. When the world was created, there was a giant explosion that knocked both Janet and Ogel out. When they woke up, they found themselves on the planet, with most of their god powers gone. Janet accepted her new life as a mortal, while Ogel agonizes over it to this day. The citizens of Bricksberg are oblivious to this fact, even though it’s blatantly obvious based on the artifacts and history books.

-Character’s pieces (hands, heads, legs, etc) fall off a lot. People often literally lose their heads/bodies, and characters react like you would losing your keys or wallet. People often steal other people's body parts. Losing pieces is painless, and one of the only things people visit the hospital for, so going to the hospital isn’t that big of a deal. When people steal other people’s body parts, it isn’t considered a crime, just kinda rude.

-People can die, but only if their bodies are legitimately broken or if they get a horrible disease. Otherwise, they’ll live forever. Nobody dies of old age.

-The only piece that really matter are the heads, which hold the personality/soul. Every other piece on their body is disposable and replaceable. 

CHARACTERS

JERRY BRICKERSON

Age: 10 years old

Physical appearance: Baseball cap, smiley face, flannel shirt, stubby legs

Personality: Stable, curious, observant, and analytical. He contrasts with all the wackiness around him. He thinks very clearly, and is very reasonable. He prefers to sit back and observe, only helping anyone when directly asked to. Sometimes Jerry jumps to conclusions thinking he already knows everything about a situation, but is proven wrong as he learns more. 

Goals & Motivations: Jerry wants to record and analyze everything about Bricksberg, and understand the city better. He wants to learn more about the city’s history. 

Interests: Science, math, surfing, Excel spreadsheets, organization 

JANET BRICKERSON

Age: A MILLION YEARS OLD.

Appearance: Long gray hair, smiley face w round glasses and wrinkles.

Personality: Wise and cryptic. She’s mostly stoic and soft-spoken, with bursts of crazy fast movements and excitedly-told stories. She’s detached from current events and the city at large, staying in her observatory to write and study. Very knowledgeable about anything astronomy or history related. She has the ability to make objects float with her mind, a leftover power from being a God.

Goals and Motivations: Now that she’s accomplished her life goal of knowing everything there is to know, she wants to start dating and fall in love. She also wants to hide the fact that she co-created the entire world, not that anyone would notice anyway.

Interests: History, astronomy, spirituality

PIRATE MAYOR

Age: 45 

Appearance: Classic pirate accessories, business suit, smiley face with a little mustache

Personality: Selfish and irresponsible. Very self-obsessed. Considered the worst mayor in the entire world. He has a lot of literal monkeys swinging around his office. He can understand and speak to his monkeys, who do most of his chores for him.

Goals and Motivations: He wants to build the tallest tower in the world as a testament to his greatness. Instead of fixing the many problems of Bricksberg, he wants to use all their resources to build the tower. He is driven by materialism and proving himself as a legendary figure. 

Interests: Controlling others, jewelry, big tall objects, monkeys, the roar of the ocean. 

OGEL

Age: Millions of years old, same age as Janet

Appearance: Has an angry face with a beard and glasses, khaki suit, a bad haircut

Personality: Manipulative, chaotic, temperamental, hard to predict. He’s the only criminal in the city, and his jail cell is in the middle of the town guarded by one police officer. If someone walks by his cell, he’ll start screaming insults at them. He co-created the world with Janet, in a big outer-space fight. He loves to brag about this, but nobody believes him, and Janet denies it. But it’s true. 

Goals and Motivations: He wants to break out of prison and enlist the brick people into being his henchmen. His dream is to take apart the entire city, and eventually the world, brick by brick. 

Interests: Breaking out of prison, taking everything apart, being evil, himself

 BRICK PEOPLE, LED BY PYRAMID BRICK PERSON 

Age: Unknown, maybe they’ve been around forever, but who cares. 

Appearance: Shapes made out of bricks, no arms or legs, with sharpied-on faces. 

Personality: For the most part, all the brick people are very clueless and dim-witted. They hop around their dump all day and scream really loud and complain that they don’t live in the city. They don’t try and improve their situation, even though they could easily go live in the city if they were willing to pay rent. 

Pyramid brick person is very sarcastic and blunt, the smartest of all the brick people. Just like the rest of the brick people, he is extremely lazy. They’ve tried to go live in the city, but every time get kicked out because they’re not willing to pay rent and have to go live in the dump again. 

Goals and Motivations: They desperately want to live in the city, and be part of all the action. 

Interests: City life, complaining, relaxing, screaming, socializing.

DOCTOR SQUIGGLE

Age: 29 

Appearance: Long blonde hair, smiley face, doctor’s coat, stethoscope

Personality: Relaxed, confident, laid-back. She’s an excellent surfer and doctor. She really connects with her patients and takes care of them well. She’s afraid of conflict, and not good at standing up for herself or the hospital. Doctor Squiggle drives the ambulance as her normal car, which creates a lot of confusion whenever she drives somewhere.

Goals and Motivations: She has always wanted to help as many people as possible, but struggles with being courageous in the face of adversity. The hospital is really run down and broken, and she wants a facility where she can give proper care to the citizens, but since Pirate Mayor is putting all of the city’s resources into the giant tower, the hospital is left by the wayside. Since Squiggle hates conflict, she’s afraid of confronting the mayor, so to combat that stress she surfs. 

Interests: Surfing, healthcare, taking care of birds

Other characters: 

• Marty Brickboink, the only police officer in the whole city. His job is to keep Ogel contained in his cell, and whack him on the head with a newspaper every so often. His job is pretty easy, since no real crime happens in Bricksberg.

• Richard Tubeson, the fire chief. One of the only competent people in the city, needs to do his job well because there’s constantly fires everywhere. The firemen he’s in charge of are basically just a big mindless horde that run around and put out the raging fires.

• Sandy Slab, the news reporter. reports everything very bluntly and seriously. There’s no news networks in Lego City, he just lives in his van (with NEWS written in crayon on the side), and sends his reports directly to the citizen’s televisions.

• Jessie Yambrick, a person with 4 heads stacked on top of each other. All of the personalities from each head have fused into one confusing and chaotic character.

• Brick Ritter, the Octan gas station owner. Rambles and talks a lot, very hard to shut up. If you go get gas from him, he’ll talk at you for hours.

SEASON OVERVIEW

ACT I

The first episode opens with a view of the great expanse of a lego universe, with constellations and galaxies made out of lego bricks. Off-screen, we hear Janet Brickerson narrate, telling a story about the creation of the universe. We cut to a closed in view on one of the lego galaxies, then to another closed in view of a planet shaped like a giant lego head. We slowly truck in on the Giant Lego Head Planet, and we start to notice that it’s made out of smaller lego pieces. We look closer at the planet and we notice all the slick and modern cities littered around it. Janet starts talking about how all of these cities are competent and have-it-together, except for one, Bricksberg. We move to Bricksberg, and then slowly move towards the observatory. 

As her story winds down, we cut to the inside of her observatory, and see Janet putting on a show for Jerry, making model planets levitate in the air. One of her pet parrots squawks and when she loses focus the models all crash to the floor. Janet sighs in frustration and picks up the models. Jerry pulls out a notebook, flips to a page titled “TIMES GRANDMA HAS TOLD ME THE UNIVERSE STORY”, and adds a tally mark, making 100,000 tally marks. Jerry announces, “100,000 times! This is the 100,000th time you’ve told me that story in my entire life! And it never gets old!” Janet complains that her levitation powers aren’t what they used to be. Jerry responds, saying that she broke her last record by five seconds. 

Jerry then looks at the pile of mail on the counter, and sees a flier that Mayor Pirate sent out, talking about how the tallest tower is about to start being constructed in Bricksberg. He decides to visit Mayor Pirate’s office, to learn more about this tower. Mayor Pirate has decided that he wants to build the tallest tower in the world as a testament to his own greatness. He notices how good Jerry is at recording data and invites him to intern at the Mayor’s office. Jerry accepts, and later is tasked with taking the census. Mayor Pirate meanwhile decides how to most efficiently build the tallest tower, and decides to take apart certain people’s homes for extra bricks. 

For most of this first third of the season, Jerry goes from house to house and building to establishment and talks to each citizen he meets, gathering more information about the city. 

Jerry starts to make friends with some of the citizens, including Doctor Squiggle, who quickly becomes his best friend. Doctor Squiggle confides in Jerry that she really wants to help more people, and how the resources she has at the hospital are very limited. She really wants to figure out a way to truly help the citizens of Bricksberg by actually improving the city. Jerry promises to help her figure it out. 

The Pirate Mayor has a big speech at the construction site of the tower to announce his project to make the tallest tower in the world. Right after the speech Dr. Squiggles walks up to ask him if he can help rebuild the hospital, which is in really bad shape. She barely has the confidence to ask him this and is really nervous about sharing her idea. He immediately laughs in her face and says every brick needs to go to the tower. She leaves the event, dejected & drained of all confidence. 

Our one and only villain, Ogel, is currently captive in a jail cell run by the only police officer in the city, Marty Brickboink. Ogel was put in jail by Janet several centuries ago. The jail cell is just in the middle of the city, sitting right next to the mayor’s office. Ogel was contained in the cell shortly after he and Janet accidentally created the world. Ogel desperately wants to break out of the jail cell, but doesn’t have any good ideas yet. Most of the time he just sits there and pities himself, and if anyone walks by he screams horrible insults at them until Marty hits him on the head with a newspaper.

Jerry meets Ogel while taking the census. Unaware that he’s talking to Janet’s grandson, Ogel spews horrible things about Janet constantly whenever Jerry brings her up. Jerry brings this up to Janet in a conversation, and Janet hesitantly responds, not denying what Ogel said, but implying that he’s telling the truth without outright saying so. Jerry is confused by her reaction, and wants to know more. He tries to get more information out of her in this moment, but she doesn’t give in. Even though the fact that Janet is a god is blatantly obvious to the audience, Jerry doesn’t comprehend it, and this played for laughs.

On the outskirts of the city, is the city dump. This is where all the trash goes and also where a bizarre species of lego person lives, called the Brick People. The Brick People are just stacked lego bricks with sharpied-on faces. The Brick People are hated by everyone who lives in the city, because they’re really, really annoying. But they’re welcome to live in the city, if they would just pay rent, which they have no intention of doing. The Brick People are very lazy, but with the right motivation, however, they could do serious damage. 

The Pirate Mayor tasks Jerry with going to the dump to count all of the bricks that he can use to build his tower. When Jerry arrives, he meets the Brick People, and becomes completely obsessed with them. He decides to devote all of his free time to studying the Brick People.

ACT 2

Jerry is about halfway through taking the census. He continues to meet and befriend new people in the city. He meets characters like Jesse Yambrick, the four headed man, and Brick Ritter, the gas station owner. 

While Jerry continues to take the census, Janet decides she’s lonely and wants someone to be with. Janet throughout this half of the season starts to date many different people, including a barrage of hivemind firemen, Jesse Yambrick, Marty Brickboink, the local baker, a scuba diver, a skeleton king, and pretty much every other single and available person in the city. She eventually ends up falling in love with Brick Ritter, the gas station owner, but not through dating, just by meeting him for the first time at the Octan gas station.

While Jerry works on his census, the Brick People get up enough energy to get out of their dump and try and visit the city. The Brick People decide since they’ve been kicked out of the city before, they want to try and blend in with the rest of the citizens of Bricksberg. The Brick People decide to steal a bunch of body parts from the citizens while they’re sleeping, and the next day walk into the city with new bodies made out of the pieces they’ve stolen. While in the city, the Brick People come across Ogel’s jail cell. Ogel notices how they have the potential to help him destroy the city. He manipulates them into helping him break out of jail by destroying the jail cell and knocking out the police officer.

Ogel and the Brick People run off to the mountains to plan their big attack on the city. Over this part of the season, Ogel and the Brick People continue to try and come up with solid ideas for an invasion of Bricksberg, and come up with a lot of horribly flawed ideas, such as building a trojan horse with their bodies, or screaming at the city until it falls down. They attempt some of their horrible ideas and fail stupendously, and the Brick People are often sent by Ogel to the city to steal materials. 

Jerry wakes up one day to find that he is missing both of his legs. For the rest of the season he has to transport himself around the city on a skateboard, scooting along by his hands.

The Pirate Mayor starts taking small amounts of bricks from everyone’s houses and building his tower with his monkey team. The tower is growing incredibly fast as tensions in the city grow with citizens blaming one another for their stolen bricks. The mayor lies and says he is getting the materials from the dumpyard, and cites Jerry’s census as evidence. Eventually as his tower grows in height it becomes obvious that he is the culprit. 

During this time Janet continues to try and gain back her levitation powers, but they are weaker than ever. She’s frustrated with the state of her abilities, and can hardly lift one small toy. She begins to train and make her powers grow stronger. 

Jerry visits Dr. Squiggle one day, and Dr. Squiggle tells Jerry about how she suspects Pirate Mayor is stealing bricks from the hospital and other buildings around town. Jerry doesn't know whether that's true, but he decides to reserve judgement until he knows for sure. When Jerry asks the mayor whether or not he's been stealing bricks from the town, the mayor gets angry and defensive, and interrogates Jerry about who gave him the idea. Jerry accidentally lets it slip that it was Dr. Squiggle, and Pirate Mayor pulls some strings to get Dr. Squiggle fired. Dr. Squiggle, now without a job, can’t even find joy in surfing. 

Ogel and the Brick People eventually come up with a plan to make all the Brick People combine their bodies together and create one giant brick person, controlled by Pyramid at the top. They decide to go and crush everything in the city with their giant body. 

While Ogel is gone, the police officer makes a search party to track him down. When they finally find him in the mountains, they’re too late to stop the giant brick person that has been built and unleashed. 

ACT 3

The brick monster wreaks havoc upon the city and destroys the Mayor’s tower. As the pieces from the tower rain down on the city, people start to recognize them as the missing parts of their houses and buildings. Jerry, still having to transport himself by skateboard, notices his stolen legs among the rest of the pieces that the mayor stole from the citizens. 

Jerry, finally realizing that Janet created the world based on the countless and obvious evidence, races back to the observatory and finds Janet meditating and floating in the air. Jerry has to encourage Janet to help save the city with her god powers. Janet is insecure about her ability to do anything with her powers, but decides to try and help anyway, since the lives of all the citizens are at stake. She uses her leftover god powers to separate the brick monster with her mind, and places the individual brick people inside the walls of buildings. 

After the monster has been destroyed and repurposed for walls, and Ogel has been contained, the citizens demand an apology from Mayor Pirate for the horrible crimes he committed. He doesn’t apologize, blaming the citizens for not noticing instead. The citizens all turn against Mayor Pirate, and he tries to escape the town before having to pay the price for his actions. As he tries to escape, Dr. Squiggle hits him over the head with her surfboard, and throws Mayor Pirate into another jail cell; the second one in the history of Bricksberg.

EPILOGUE

At the end of the season, the citizens are beginning to rebuild the city. Ogel has been placed in a more secure jail cell, and Mayor Pirate has also been imprisoned. The Brick People have all been built into walls, and now get to socialize with the citizens like they always wanted. Jerry finally has all the answers he wanted about Janet’s mysterious past, and is excited to bond more with his grandmother now that he understands her better. Janet feels more free now that she has nothing to hide about her past. Doctor Squiggle is elected the new mayor. The citizens are still their wacky selves.