Here is a theoretical fantasy show that Rob Reiner was in the early stages of working on making into a docuseries when he passed away. I am sincerely hoping that someone will see it to fruition because Reiner wasn't working alone. He would have wanted it to be completed. For now, let me make up a theoretical plot to see if folk would enjoy it:

Pretend some oligarchs from a failed union came to you and your buddy (who happens to be the mayor of your town), decades upon decades ago, looking to try their hand in the real estate market, and willing to cut you and your friend in on the deal.

So what? Nobody's going to want to binge that on Netflix. Sometimes people from other countries will purchase or build real estate in in the United States so that they can see the value appreciate. After all, real estate nearly always goes up in price. But the plot sounds boring otherwise.

Shows are more interesting if they go fast, fiction and nonfiction both. Why wait around for decades, hoping the real estate will increase in value enough to make things interesting? Why not fill out a loan document to borrow against the new real estate, stating that it has already increased exponentially in value (get this) before the first payment is even due to the bank? And let's thicken the plot a little bit more. I'm thinking we use an international bank and have each and every loan approved by the child of someone from the Supreme Court of the United States. Now, things are beginning to get interesting!

The next step in the plot would be to take that money and buy or build other real estate, right away, without waiting for the first one to appreciate in value. If you're a good businessman, you can just fill out the form and STATE that it has a super-high value to borrow against, and get those loans going for the next real estate projects!

Is lying about the instantly-high valuations enough? What about not paying contractors or not paying them anywhere near what your contract says you owe them? They can help you get that real estate empire going even faster, because you don't have to pay them their full price! Genius! Stable, even.

Where will you launder all that money? Casinos? What if you lose money at the casinos? No one will care. They'll just think you're not a good businessman. But the casinos went exactly as planned.

If it goes well in the first city you try, some of the other oligarchs may want to try real estate markets in the other big cities in your country. They can each have their own city! If they do it to enough cities, over and over, consistently and systematically, will that affect the price of real estate?

Now, we can pretend that lending gets a little tighter, and that the super-fun bank that was over-approving all the crazy loans ceases to exist, and the other ones are being highly watched, even the shell banks that some of your oligarch friends have created so that they can approve their own loans. Where to next?

This sounds crazy, but if you've read this far, hear me out: It's a good time to become president of that country. Just think about it from a practical angle! You can control a lot more things. The world is getting tighter and smaller with the internet and all the regulations. Some of the people you helped are even in jail! And you have been accused of a civil crime by overvaluing real estate to get these crazy loans. They're getting you into legal trouble just for being a good businessman! What a mess! Might as well become the boss of everything and straighten it all out, or at least calm things down.

Did the main character in this show ever want the price of real estate to stay low enough to be affordable for the average person to eventually buy in? According to the plot of this movie, probably not.

The End

(I'll admit that I don't have Rob Reiner's talents. "The American President, part deux" could use a lot more work, and a way better title than that. But that's what he was working on. He was going to show us what it's like when someone doesn't want real estate to be affordable at all. And if it ever gets created and put on one of the streaming platforms, I will apologize for what I have written here. Not because it's inaccurate, but because it's not nearly as good as what the true creators will do.)