Jack and Bobby

Jack & Bobby is a television show that aired for one season in 2004 on The WB. It's a drama about a Future President of United States in his teen years. Each episode takes place in two time periods: the first is a Flash Forward Documentary about President Robert "Bobby" McAllister's time in office, campaigning beforehand, and much of his political career after he initially became a Congressman in place of his brother, Jack. The second shows the present time that helps shape Bobby into the man, and president, the world will come to love.

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Tropes used in Jack and Bobby include:

• Abusive Parents: In the pilot, we have Grace hitting Jack.

Grace: I shouldn't have hit you, Jack. I haven't done done that since you were, what, nine?
Jack: When I jumped off the water tower with Jimmy Weaver.
Grace: Well, that one you deserved.

• Big Brother Instinct: Despite their differences, Jack obviously cares deeply for his little brother and acts as both a father figure and big brother.
• Black Best Friend: Marcus to Jack.
• Book Ends: The pilot ends with Jack and Bobby running with Jack running several paces ahead. The finale ends with Bobby outrunning Jack.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Jack is not afraid to question Grace's decisions, particularly in the pilot.
• Cut Short: Averted. Despite only lasting one season, the series managed to tie up loose ends about Jack's future and what happened to their father.
• Faux Documentary
• First Episode Spoiler: The commercials teased that one brother would become President while the other would die before it happened. The narration at the end of the pilot revealed that Bobby would become President, Jack would die, and Bobby would marry Courtney.
• Gay Aesop: Jack's friend, who had not been in any episodes before or after.
• Meaningful Name: This is a show about two brothers named John and Robert, who go by Jack and Bobby, one of whom becomes President even though he only entered politics as a replacement for his brother. This has happened before, only the name wasn't McAllister, it was Kennedy.
  • You are at first led to believe that Grace, a big-time liberal, has named her children deliberately after the Kennedys. It turns out they are named after their "dead" father, Juan Roberto.
• No Party Given: Raised in a Democratic family, Future McCallister would drop out of the Republican Party primaries and run as an independent, after the soon-to-be Presidential Nominee informed him that the party didn't like his views.
• Our Presidents Are Different: He's a Reverend and Independent.
• Parental Abandonment: The boys' father, Juan Roberto left before Bobby was born and has been in jail almost as long.
• Promotion to Parent: Jack acts as a father figure towards Bobby, especially when his mother's too high to do her job as a mother.
• Very Special Episode: About Jack's friend who committed suicide, who we had never seen before.