Schitt's Creek, but instead of the Rose family it's the Rose lab; & they lose almost all of their funding & have to start making their own buffers & genotyping their own mice

I may or may not speak from experience when I say genotyping is not for everyone. We all have a bit of David Rose inside us https://twitter.com/HoxInSocks/status/750808058108846080?s=19

Picture this coat but made out of hundreds of mouse pelts

"But how would you rework the relationship between Moira and Johnny Rose?" asked nobody who's ever heard of academic co-PI power couples

The thing is, it's not just about creature comforts like premade PBS; they'd also have to learn to, like, strategize, and hypothesize, and use that good old-fashioned strong inference to publish papers that aren't fancy -omics data avalanches

"I worked 80-hour weeks in grad school and I was just fine. Sure, you miss your friends and family, but you make new friends and family in the lab. Pipetters, incubators...anything can be a friend if you put a couple googly eyes on it and tell it your secrets."

Is Jocelyn Schitt the PI down the hall who's been doing the same behavior+immunohistochemistry experiments for decades?
Yes. Yes she is.
Does she spend way more time advising students than she gets credit for?
Yes. Yes she does.

Does anyone on this entire planet of Earth give off postdoc-ier vibes than Stevie, I mean

Alexis has never worked in a lab that doesn't have both a manager and a tech

And Roland, he...well, he has tenure, so...

You know that student who's just bafflingly unflappable? Every lab has one. Well, every lab should have one.

Does Ronnie run the microscopy core? Possibly.

Does Moira keep asking her to let them use the scope without paying? Definitely.

And who helps the Rose lab get back to basics and write fundable grants again? (While helping David recover from a lifetime of scientific disillusionment, of course)

Still thinking about Twyla. Poor thing. She considered switching labs, but it seemed like more of a hassle than just putting her head down & grinding through the next few years.

Moira is, of course, the God PI (or at least she was, when they had travel money). She always has something supportive to say on her way out the door.

Back in the day, Dr. Rose used to pour her own plates, coat her own slides, clean her own water baths, everything.

So with the techs laid off, she has reason to believe that she can keep the lab up herself.

She is incorrect.

Mutt showing Alexis how to make her own graphs in R like

David tells Patrick that for anxiety experiments, these days, if a mouse falls off the elevated plus maze, he picks it up and resumes the test.

"We can't afford to remove mice just because they have one little fall! Do you have any idea how much it would cost to replace them?"

While we're on the subject...please do not test recently traumatized animals for anxiety-like behavior; or, if you do, please make them easily identifiable as such to your readers instead of lumping them together with their untraumatized cohortmates https://twitter.com/HoxInSocks/status/1301346973354786816?s=19

"We have got to start reusing antibody. Did you know that one 100-microliter vial costs $400?"

Alexis is now in charge of keeping the -80 freezer organized

Alexis is given the honor of managing the mouse colony

This is off-topic, but the gif reminds me:

There was a brief but glorious period of time during which our institute had a new Keurig machine and free access to pods.

Brief.

Alexis trying desperately, for the sake of her own sanity, to rebrand the forced swim test now that she has to run it herself

"Have either of you ever perfused a mouse before?"

Alexis has a knack for scoring free vendor food without signing up for any of their mailing lists.

Alexis puts David in charge of weaning the mice. But did he judge all those juvenile mouse genitals correctly? Or did he accidentally put a male in an all-female cage?

The babysitting scene, but it's Moira and Johnny running mice while David and Alexis are out of town

It's not fanfiction if you write it in a trance while muttering "It's not fanfiction"

Moira can't afford to go to conferences this year.

She also can't bring herself to admit that she can't afford to go to conferences this year.