When the producers of It Happens in Florida said we should “connect with real Floridians,” we thought filming in a retirement community would be a sweet, heartwarming idea.

Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.

Armed with cameras, a half-written script, and Oscar dressed as a rogue Zumba instructor, the crew rolled into Sunny Palms Retirement Village like we were about to capture the next great slice-of-life docu-drama.

The residents? They were not having it.

First red flag: our camera crane accidentally knocked over Ethel’s prized flamingo statue (“She’s had that since the Nixon administration,” someone whispered gravely).

Second red flag: Florida Man tried to join water aerobics without permission, wearing only goggles and a float shaped like a donut.

Third — and final — straw: we set up our lighting rigs in the rec room during bingo hour.

It was an ambush we didn’t see coming.

The first chip hit Raymond square in the temple.

The second struck a camera lens.

The third was flung like a ninja star, knocking over our boom mic with uncanny precision.

Ethel (possibly a retired Marine?) yelled “B11, BABY!” as she launched a full board at Oscar.

We tried to reason with them — to explain the show, the opportunity, the art — but Mildred was already revving up her motorized scooter like a demolition derby driver with something to prove.

One particularly spry gentleman named Stan began throwing Werther’s Originals like grenades. Florida Man dove behind a decorative ficus yelling, “I respect my elders! I just didn’t know they were armed!”

Eventually, security escorted us out. The crew was banned, the cameras were banned, and someone wrote “NO TV HIPPIES” on the front gate in chalk.

To this day, we still don’t know how they organized so quickly. We suspect they were trained. Possibly former intelligence.