RECALL

Cold Open

Oak Street floods at night. A homeowner wades through his basement, phone on speaker, hold music playing. When the dispatcher answers, he delivers the film's thesis: "I'm not in immediate danger. I'm in predictable danger."

CUT TO: A packed town council chamber. GIL PADILLA (58) sits at the dais with a thick binder. He starts reading the agenda out loud. WADE SUTTER (63), council president, leans in: "Mayor, we don't read the entire agenda. People have copies." Gil blinks: "They do?" The room laughs. Then Gil calls for an independent audit. The laughter dies. Wade says it's not on the agenda. Gil holds up the binder: "It is now." The vote passes. Wade notes the audit is "redundant." Gil responds: "So it should be easy."

TITLE: SIX MONTHS EARLIER — HE GOT 43 VOTES. NOW HE'S IN CHARGE.

Act One — The Accidental Mayor

Mayor RICHARD BRANDT works a Rotary luncheon while HECTOR RAMIREZ discovers the water utility's numbers don't add up. He calls Channel 1 News. The scandal breaks. Recall petitions circulate.

Gil lives in a trailer outside Aguaverde, running a podcast called Desert Truth. His mother was a downwinder—she grew up sixty miles from Trinity, got cancer, spent thirty years being told it wasn't connected to the bomb. She died filling out her fourth compensation application. Gil isn't crazy. He's grieving in a way that looks like madness.

SANDRA CHEN, the town manager, and DOLORES VEGA, the town clerk, discover an archaic charter clause: in a recall vacancy, the office passes to the second-place finisher. That's Gil. Forty-three votes out of 4,259.

At his swearing-in, Gil tells the room: "Statistically, almost none of you voted for me." The nervous laughter dies. He sets two goals: fix Oak Street's flooding drainage before monsoon season, and pass a Verification Ordinance so no contractor gets paid without independent sign-off.

Act Two — The Water Is Clean

Gil goes to Oak Street with a tape measure. They dig and find the pipe is eight inches, not twelve. The town paid for the wrong size. Small-town fraud: simple, stupid, expensive.

Then the lab results arrive. The water is clean. Gil has to be wrong out loud. It breaks his identity—but forces a pivot. The poison isn't chemical. It's procedural.

Wade escalates. He fixes a bus route for one councilmember, pressures others through "stability," kills quorum to stop votes. "The system moves at the speed of comfort."

DESTINY PADILLA (28), Gil's estranged daughter, returns to town. She's a clinic nurse who changed her last name. One night she finds MR. LUCERO—an Oak Street resident—sleeping in his car because his flooded basement smells like death. His oxygen concentrator won't work. Destiny finds an outlet, plugs him in, watches the machine do its steady job. "Wade said they'd handle it," Lucero says. "Last year."

At a Dairy Queen, Gil interrogates the cashier about health inspection logs before ordering a Blizzard with no candy. ("So... ice cream." "Yes.") Destiny walks in. "So you were wrong." About the water. About everything. He absorbs it.

In a diner, the disgraced Brandt explains why he stole: "I told myself I was owed." Gil responds: "You were good at the job. But you stole. I'm not good at the job. But I wake up knowing what I didn't take."

The Marlene Hinge

Gil publishes everything—but forgets to redact. MARLENE TORRES, a records clerk, gets death threats because her phone number is visible. Gil's transparency becomes someone else's nightmare.

Marlene doesn't quit. She teaches Gil how to do it properly. "Don't be sorry. Be boring." She builds a system: release log, redaction checklist, chain of custody. The conspiracy wall comes down. Boring public records go up.

This is the movie's moral hinge: being right isn't the same as being careful.

Act Two Break — Publish

Gil presses PUBLISH—properly this time. Phones buzz. The room shifts. Wade's mask becomes visible.

Destiny pays immediately. HR presents a "Civic Neutrality Acknowledgement." She refuses to sign: "If you need me in the exam rooms, I'm here. If you need me to pretend I'm not related to him, I'm not." She walks out, finds a supply closet, and shakes. She types a text to Gil: "Just... be boring. Please." She doesn't send it.

Wade calls a motion of no confidence. It passes. Gil loses on camera. He says the boring truth: "If you can't verify the work, you shouldn't pay for the work."

Act Three — The Storm

The monsoon hits. Oak Street fails again. Gil hauls sandbags at 2 AM. Marlene shouts: "Sandbags on the low side, not the pretty side! You want pretty, go to Santa Fe!"

Wade arrives with an umbrella and a camera crew. Gil tells him to count sandbags. Wade tells him to watch his tone. Gil tells him to watch his town.

In the shelter, Hector shows up with copies he kept after Wade "restructured" him out. Emails proving the fraud was intentional.

Emergency session. Dolores runs the roll call. The evidence is boring and devastating: invoices that say twelve-inch, field notes that say eight-inch. Gil asks for two votes: pass the Verification Ordinance and request a state investigation.

Roll call. Holt: Yes. Morales swallows, looks at Wade, looks at the room: Yes. Patel: Yes. Wade: No. The ordinance passes. Wade stands: "You're all going to regret this." Gil holds his gaze: "Maybe. But we'll know."

Aftermath — Boring Is the Dream

Oak Street gets fixed properly. Gil doesn't file for the election. "If I file, it's about me. If I don't, it's about the ordinance."

Election night. Holt wins with sixty-one percent. Tommy looks crushed: "They didn't pick you." Gil smiles: "They picked someone who now has to follow the ordinance."

Destiny watches from afar. She doesn't clap. She doesn't leave. That matters.

In his trailer, the conspiracy wall is gone. A corkboard of boring public records. Boring. Beautiful. His phone buzzes.

Destiny: "You good?"
Gil: "Yeah."
Destiny: "Stay boring."
Gil: "Trying."

He looks up at the New Mexico sky. A habit. A reminder. A choice.