About A-Town, could you see, in the second season, they'd potentially do a David plotline (by accident, since the Animorphs don't talk about him), by introducing a new "recurring" cast member as a student who stumbles into the overall plot? And they're "edgier" than the main cast and represent the "hard choices" character, etc, and eventually are poised to betray the Animorphs and join the Yeerks, so they have to be removed in a TV-friendly way. Bonus if they date one of the main cast.
[For everyone just tuning in: A-Town is my idea for a shitty postwar sitcom about the leader (Brandon) of a team of teen shapeshifters, his best friend (JJ), his occasional girlfriend (Crystal), his cooler cousin (Trina), her on-again-off-again aviationship (Liam), and her beau's stepsister (Gina). Any resemblance to real persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental. Our legal team said so.]
What if this character is also Jeremy Jason McCole's self-insert Mary Sue? Assuming JJM's the same age as the Animorphs themselves, this'd put him at age ~26 playing age ~15 as of A-Town, but that's pretty standard for Hollywood.
Zachary the New Kid first appears at a meeting of The Gathering, chatting with some cool controller kids. The camera follows him as he walks out of the meeting, around the corner, and out of sight... a housecat walks out of the alleyway a second later. We smash-cut to Crystal's barn tree house, where the cat climbs up the ladder and into the window. "Zack!" JJ exclaims, "you scared me! Good thing we have you spying on the meetings of The Gathering, the secret alien organization. Ever since you joined the team last month after catching us morphing behind those dumpsters, you've used that cat morph more than any other — you're a real cat man at heart!" Cue laugh track; evidently this line is meant to be funny.
Zack may or may not live in Brandon's house. He refers to his parents having been taken by the yeerks, and over half his scenes are filmed in Brandon's bedroom, so...
The main plot of Zack's first episode involves him declaring he'll do "whatever it takes" to defeat the yeerks, and Brandon being worried that he's "going too far." Since A-Town never shows onscreen violence and involves lots of fauximorphs casually blowing up entire Yeerk Pools by pushing a button, it's not clear what either of these extremes would entail. None of the obvious answers (killing hosts, using oatmeal Chicken 'n Stars, siding with the andalites) ever comes up in conversation. In the end, Brandon and Zack hug and agree to put their differences behind them.
His catchphrase is "E-ZACK-tly!"
Zack's major running plot involves JJ being insecure because Trina obviously likes Zack better than him. JJ goes through various antics to win Trina back, and eventually succeeds, but then! The camera shows Zack hiding in a dark corner (of Brandon's bedroom) making out with someone, judging by the moans and smacking sounds. "Daisy" (Zeptron 420) flicks the lights on, and they scream in shock — it's Zack and Crystal! "Daisy" screams too, something about "filthy humans!" and runs off downstairs.
Brandon finds out about Crystal and Zack (presumably Zeptron tattled? or he just walked into his own bedroom?) and declares he and Zack must fight to the death. Brandon morphs his terrier Mopsy, Zack morphs a beagle, and... Well. There's lots of footage of Mopsy yapping and Zack-the-beagle howling, and Liam and Gina's narration assures us that there's a vicious dogfight happening just offscreen, so we'll take the show's word for it. Even though the footage clearly shows both dogs' tails wagging furiously the entire time. The episode ends without us finding out who won.
Between episodes there's a fan poll: should Zack stick around? He loses by a landslide.
Zack's penultimate episode opens up with him meeting "Daisy" in a back alleyway. Not only does he kiss her on the cheek — he's cheating on Crystal! — but he buys a pack of cigarettes from her. Zack walks out of the alleyway and straight into Liam. "This isn't what it looks like!" Zack declares, as Liam watches "Daisy" and the other Gathering controllers wave goodbye to Zack after he was clearly colluding with them. "I think," Liam growls, "it's e-ZACK-tly what it looks like. Cigarettes are an addictive substance, and contain over 40 different chemicals that cause cancer. Plus, cigarettes are uncool. We can't have someone who smokes on the team." Zack begs for another chance and promises to quit, but then — the mid-episode twist — offers a cigarette to Gina, who accepts.
The final episode opens with the other fauximorphs all telling Zack he can't be on their team anymore. Gina smoked one entire cigarette thanks to him, and she's just an innocent young... person. Entity. Being. Phenomenon. Look, the point is, cigarettes are DANGEROUS. Zack weedles his way into going on one last mission with the fauximorphs, where he heroically sacrifices his life to keep the others safe by letting the controllers capture him so the others can get away.
For the entire rest of the show, there's a memorial statue to Zack in the corner of the tree house. If you look very very closely in some of the shots, you can make out that the epigraph just says "SMOKING KILLS."
