FISK KNOWS HOW TO LAY THE GROUNDWORK FAST

Recently Netflix released a six episode Australian sitcom about a Melbourne lawyer called FISK. It stars Kitty Flanagan, who is really an Australian treasure. No one does deadpan humor like Flanagan. 

I happened to see the pilot tonight and I was in awe of just how quickly the writing set forth who Fisk is and what her problems are. The show opens on her doing an interview with a hiring agency, which is actually a pretty genius way of getting a lot of information out quickly. With the very first back and forth, we learn she's a lawyer, she's only just returned to Melbourne after a decade away, and her husband cheated on her. 

With the second back and forth, we likewise learn she has no references, suggesting both backstory to explore and more importantly that there may be something wrong with the way she tries to do her job. 

Then in the third back and forth, which ends hilariously with another lawyer in the office literally sitting on her because she stands out so little, we get really the heart of her problem, which will play out in the way she's treated by the office manager, by her landlord, and by the coffee shop: she's someone no one takes seriously. 

The whole sequence takes less than two minutes. It's breathtaking. 

For me there are two big takeaways: First—and this is something I need to hear over and over—don't be afraid to lay out the central problem or problems of the character right away. There is no need to wait and build to it; in fact it's more likely worth trying to resist that impulse and see how it shakes out. 

Second—The very opening of a story is one of the only times the audience will forgive exposition. I don't think twice about the fact that we start with Fisk literally telling us who she is. Part of that is the interview conceit, which is just such a smart way to start. Part of it also is that Fisk and the woman who's interviewing her don't exactly get on, and what Fisk has to share is embarrassing. So there's a sense of conflict here, which is always a great way to hide exposition. 

But I think it is also true, at the very beginning of a story the audience will forgive a little exposition, just to understand what's going on. You have to do it smart and speedy, or you'll lose them, but it's definitely an opportunity.

ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING UNDERSTANDS HOW TO OPEN A STORY

ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING opened its third season last week. I've written about the show a few times before. (Okay, more than few times. It's a great great show.)

One of the show's signatures is its use of narration. The first season opens with a moment given to each of the three characters which reveals their own unique takes on the universe. In the current season, Steve Martin's character Charles-Haden Savage narrates not his own story, but that of a new character, an actress who was smitten by Broadway as a child and then worked her ass for decades to make her own mark, without success. 

As is always the case on MURDERS, it's a beautifully written narration. So often when a show regularly uses narration, most of it ends up just going in one ear and out the other. But MURDERS really works. And I think the key is that its narration actually matches what we're seeing. Whereas say on GREY'S ANATOMY, Meredith may be dropping some wisdom but what we're being shown is I don't know, people waking up, people hurrying to work, people have uncomfortable (or very comfortable) moments on elevators, here we're watching a little girl fall in love with Broadway as Charles is talking about how people who love the theater usually fall in love early. So we're getting his mysterious character's version of that. (And it's such a lovely scene—the girl who can't see sneaking right up to the stage to watch. Remember that, because we're going to come back to it...)

Then as Charles says, "Once smitten though, then comes the work," we watch her as an older kid, as a young woman, etc., trying to make it happen. And Charles tells us what the dream is, in a really specific and poetic fashion—to have that moment in the spotlight and have someone "really see you, and say those magic words, 'Where you have been?'"

And he follows with a question: "But what if those magic words never come?...How do you keep at it with any hope?", as we watch her facing an endless series of rejections. 

We haven't even met this character yet formally, and yet we know everything need to about her. We know her dream, we know her journey, and we know her problem. It's a perfect set up. 

But that's only the first half of the opening. The second half shows that character, Loretta Durkin now revealed to be Meryl Streep (it's a wonderful choice to keep that bit of information back until now), auditioning for a role in Oliver Putnam's new play. And it basically mirrors the structure of the first half.

First, we get the audition, the moment in which Loretta has suffered so many rejections. Then, we get Oliver, stunned by Loretta's performance, walking down the aisle to the stage, just like she did as a child, and with the same kind of awe. And as she finishes her monologue, she looks toward Oliver, just as the actress on stage looked at her (by the way, that's supposed to be Diahann Carroll, performing in "No Strings," Richard Rodgers' first musical after Oscar Hammerstein died, and also the first musical to involve an interracial romance). And he stares at her, and says "Where have you been?" 

It's a perfect short story, in and of itself.

But writers John Hoffman & Sas Goldberg aren't done. Because there's one more beat to the structure of the first half: the "But ...." question that Charles poses. In the first half it's what if you never get what you wanted; in the second, what if you do. "But when you finally do land your dream, your moment in that spotlight, how far would you go to hang on to it?"

It transforms the fairy tale into something darker—or maybe changes it from a Disney fairy tale to something produced by Grimm (or Sondheim). An entrance into murky woods. Which is what you want at the start of a season of television: not something tied up in a bow, but a question, a mystery, a dilemma. 

As writers, I think there's lots we can learn here. There's the way the writers on the show construct the narration, the way it matches the story and also adds a layer of emotion and later, mystery. 

There's that mirroring of structure. An audience might not even notice that, but in a sense it doesn't matter. As I've written here before, great craft naturally produces a feeling of satisfaction. And even if an audience does see it, it still surprises because it ends not on the happy resolution we expect but on the further question.

Finally, related to structure, there's the choice of beats the writers present. They strip the story back to its purest form: The performance and walk to the stage; the dream with the line "Where have you been?"; the auditions and rejection; and the end question. It's so clean it seems simple, but in fact I'd guess it's the product of many rounds of editing. So often that's the key to a great script, editing and editing and editing.  Editing is distillation. 

Two Other Notes: 

What a great choice to let Oliver be a really tremendous director. All we've ever seen or heard suggests he is a disaster; to see him really locked in like this gives a whole other layer for the show and Martin short to play with.

Also, how great is it that Loretta's monologue is all about whether or she's capable or murdering someone. Every single moment in a script is real estate, and it's all so fucking precious. The writers could have given her some other kind of monologue that also demonstrated her talent, but why do just that when you can also be building out other aspects of your story. 

For me, it's a key writing lesson that my profs would talk about at UCLA.  You want every moment in your script to be serving at least two different ends. 

HOW GRETA GERWIG SET US UP FOR THE POWERFUL DEPTH OF BARBIE

I saw BARBIE over the weekend, and I have to say, I can't really think of the last time that I cried so much in a movie. 

This is not what I expected to have to happen at a movie about Barbie. Even halfway through the film, which was delightful, I did not see it coming. 

But in retrospect, it's all right there waiting.

I've been thinking a lot about how writer/director Greta Gerwig primed us for such a deeply emotional experience without giving away at any point that we were headed there. 

Here's five moments that I noticed which seem like key beats in that journey. 

1) The 2001 Opening

Starting a film about Barbie with a 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY homage is random and hilarious. And the execution is just spot on. It's an absolute delight to watch.

But Gerwig sits on that moment of the girls smashing those dolls a long time, longer than she needs to. And they look truly furious.

In a sense that only adds to the sense of delight. But it also underlines the girls' rage and pain. And I think it's there to open us up to the possibility that that this story could offer more than we might think.

2) The Barbie Land Opening

Gerwig does something similar in the "proper" opening of the film. We are toured through a day in the life of Barbie and Barbie Land. And once again, it's hilarious in a thousand different respects. There is so much here to delight in. (Gerwig loves to use the comedy of the situation, which is really the comedy that we come to this film expecting, to hide where she's really going.)

But Barbie Land is also overwhelming. No one has any privacy. And how many times does Barbie have to deal with people saying "Hi, Barbie!" to her forcing her to respond? I want to say it's over one hundred. (It can't be, can it?) 

Until the dance at the end of that first day, Barbie takes it all in without a note of exhaustion. This is just her life and isn't it hilarious, is what the story is presenting. Meanwhile it's creating in us a sense of disquiet, a feeling that something is wrong. Again, priming us for a different, deeper kind of experience.

When Barbie asks "Do you ever think about death?" in a sense we're back to the laughs, and the film points us to think the story is going to be Barbie dealing with her problems, not her world. But in the end that's all going to come back around. 

3) The Older Woman 

When Barbie and Ken come to "our" world, once again Gerwig gives us lots of funny bits, particularly around Ken and his joy at learning about the patriarchy (and horses). 

Barbie's experience is much more unsettling to her. One of the great choices that Gerwig makes in this film is to allow Barbie to be authentic and present to her experiences. Things impact her; they beg questions that she considers. Why is she having these feelings? Why are people treating her in this way? 

(Compare that with Buddy the Elf from ELF. He, too, is from a fantasy world and enters our world an innocent. But self-awareness and self-reflection is something he learns only very slowly.)

Gerwig and Robbie are careful not to make the objectification Barbie immediately feels too serious. That first section on the beach ends, in fact, with Robbie standing up to the construction workers and saying she and Ken have no genitals.

Then we get this moment where Barbie simply sits by herself on a city bench, taking in what she's seeing around her. She's really feeling things.

Then she turns to look at an older woman, who looks back at her. And it's another one of these moments that goes longer than you would expect, which allows us to really be with them in that moment. (Robbie and the other actress—Ann Roth—are so good.) Then Barbie simply says, "You're so beautiful."

It's all so unexpected and genuine. Once again, it primes us for the depth of emotion that this film is going to deliver.

And also once again, it ends with Gerwig covering her tracks. The older woman stares at Barbie for a second, her face unreadable, and then says, "I know!" They laugh, and so do we. 

4) The Box

At the midpoint, the Mattel execs bring Barbie back to headquarters. And in response to her questions and anxiety, they tell her reassuringly that all she needs to do is get back in the large box they have waiting for her in the corner of the room. 

It's a very funny idea that they would have a human-sized box for a human-sized Barbie. It's yet another of a million ways that Gerwig adapts the ideas of the Barbie doll into the film.

But it's also an incredibly immediate and disturbing metaphor for the experience of women that the film is actually exploring through Barbie's journey. And Gerwig leans into it in wonderful ways: we actually see Barbie get into the box, which is in an of itself unsettling. Then the cords that hold the dolls slowly begin to tighten around her wrists, underlining what a nightmare this is. 

This is a brief moment. The box is never returned to. But the visual metaphor it offers absolutely captures what this film is really about, and where it's going. 

5) The Speech and the Character Head Fake

At the end of Act II, we come to the point that this whole film has been building toward, Gloria's speech about being a woman today.

Even as it begins, with Barbie having given up and Gloria and her daughter Sasha unsure what to do,  Gerwig gives no signal that this is going to be that kind of a moment. 

Instead, Gloria just starts talking about her own life, and the contradictions of it. It's thoughtful, but she's just thinking off the top of her head, reacting to Barbie's collapse. 

Only very slowly does it start to pick up steam. One contradiction leads Gloria to another, and another. America Ferrera as Gloria delivers a master class in how to make a speech feel organic and of the moment. 

And each new thought is put simply and concisely. Gloria is talking about her experience, but the particulars of her life have been stripped away to give us just the essential contradictions, which makes what she's saying immediately accessible and relatable to the audience. Without even knowing how it happened, suddenly we're right there in the middle of it with her, and she's talking about our lives. And the emotion of it all just rises up.

(As someone who wept profusely watching this, I was reassured to read Gerwig's anecdote that when filming the scene she noticed men on the crew crying, too. 'They have their own version of this sense of being trapped,' Gerwig said.)

Part of what makes the scene land so hard is the quality of the writing and performance, that simplicity and resistance to any language or affectation that would make the scene seem artificial or monologic.

And the other part is that Gerwig gives this moment not to Barbie but to Gloria. Given the content,  this moment absolutely couldn't be delivered by Barbie, right? There's just too much life experience behind it. 

But still, in a film called BARBIE, you definitely don't think the big moment is going to come from someone else. And so we don't see that move coming. 

And at the same time, the script has been setting us up to be open to this moment all along. 

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Lots to be learned here. Here's three of my takeaways: 

If you know the expectations of your audience—this movie is going to be silly; the protagonist always gets the big speech/moment—you can use those expectations to surprise them.

Comedy can be a great means of distracting your audience, and a great place within which to hide things.

A visual metaphor can do much work to express the deeper conflicts or themes of your story.

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There are so many great writing techniques in this film. I hope to write about some more over the next week.

(Other things I'm planning to write about soon—GOOD OMENS, Season 2! STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS meets LOWER DECKS! OPPENHEIMER!

See you there...)

FINALES, SUCCESSION: GIVE THEM WHAT YOU PROMISED THEM

This is the flip side of yesterday, and while I think some would argue this is exactly what you don't do in a series finale, I think it's about how we define our terms. From the opening of a show we make promises with our audience. Most of them are pretty basic—this is who this character is, this is what the world is, this is what this show is about (in general). 

But there's also in many shows, and certainly in SUCCESSION, a sense of the bigger question or quest. It's in the title here—someone is going to succeed Logan Roy. Who is it going to be? You've got to answer that. 

But character, too, can have a kind of destiny to it. Jesse Armstrong has said from the start that SUCCESSION is a tragedy. And the characters have indeed all been so incredibly self-destructive. How could it possibly end with any of them succeeding or supporting each other? (Honestly, after that kitchen scene I really really wanted it to.)

If your characters are self-destructive, and you're telling a story where you've made it clear that people don't grow and change or learn, you have to follow that through. That's what you promised. In a finale, you have to deliver in some way on what you promised, or your audience will feel cheated.

Giving the audience what you've denied them for so long works into that really well. Because by offering that moment of friendship and mutual support, Armstrong sets us up to not see that ending coming. It's insane, actually, that he could fool anyone given what we've seen. But really, It's our human capacity for hope and belief in the possibility of new things that is the engine for this show and so many others. If we really saw no chance for any of them to succeed, we would simply not watch. 

One of the things I've gained from thinking and writing about shows on this blog is a greater examination of myself as audience. So much of a TV magic trick is about the writers playing on our natural tendencies. Human beings want to believe in a good outcome—or most do, anyway. And that desire is in fact so strong in us that we will reread books, movies or TV shows with the unconscious hope that something different is going to happen this time, that it doesn't have to be this way. 

When you're dealing with people who have such a fundamental belief that things can go better that we don't even see it going on—these are also known as "suckers"—you have so much to work with as a writer. First of all, you don't have to provide more than a little bit of reason for hope, or a reason why we feel strongly they should be allowed to succeed—like a father who is a monster—and we will provide the rest. We will drive that train ourselves. 

And then, as we see in the finale, If you give us just a couple minutes of our hopes fulfilled, we will feel so confirmed that we will miss entirely where you're taking us. I don't care if there's still 40 minutes left in the ep after the kitchen, the drama now is about the three of them together screwing the Swede. (Note to Self: Having a villain you love to hate is another great way of feeding the audience's hope and desire for a better outcome, and distracting them from what's really up.)

Give them what they promised, but don't let them see you coming. It's a challenge, but when you land it, wow. 

 

FINALES, SUCCESSION: GIVE THEM WHAT YOU'VE DENIED THEM

I know I said I was going to do MRS. MAISEL next but I'm still just so overwhelmed by the finale of SUCCESSION I have to go there next. 

(And happy series finale of TED LASSO, for those who so celebrate. I'll have things to say about that soon.)

Showrunner Jesse Armstrong delivered an almost 90 minute series finale to the series, as HBO shows often do (call it Max and we rumble). And that allows for lots of different kinds of opportunities, like the extended midpoint in which Shiv, Kendall and Roman decide to let Kendall run the company, and then celebrate in their own weird Roy-an way. 

I'm not a big fan of HBO's extra-super-duper-length episodes in general, but in this case it was really needed in order to get the three of them on the same page in a convincing (aka earned) way. We need the round and round of their time at the villa, and the ocean, and the kitchen scene. 

Having said that, I suspect that they could have done without that kitchen sequence and had it still felt satisfying and complete. 

But knowing how amazing that sequence is, I think we can all agree that would have been a huge missed opportunity. In a show filled with big iconic moments, that is one of the most iconic. 

And here's why: In four seasons while we've gotten moments where the three main Roy kids are on the same page, they've never lasted for more than maybe a scene or two. There's always an undercurrent of insecurity among them. We've never, ever gotten a moment in which they're just okay with each other. And so, having kept that from us so long, we have both come to believe that that is impossible—which is to say, we're not looking for it to happen—and on some deeper level we want it to happen. It's basic human psychology. You want to make someone want something? Keep it away from them. 

I don't think anyone went into the finale thinking, I just hope they have a nice moment together, because they've literally never done that. But in giving us that Armstrong and his writers and performers finally feed the part of us they've been starving. And that is just an incredibly satisfying thing to offer in a finale. 

You want to create a great finale? Give them what you've been denying them. 

FINALES, THE FLASH: LEAVE THEM WITH A GIFT

There's one last "fix" in the finale of THE FLASH. Season 8 saw both Killer Frost and Caitlin killed. And season 9 gave actress Danielle Panabaker a whole new persona Khione who, while charming, never totally made sense relative to everything that had come before.

A lot of her new identity turns out to be a deus ex machina (quite literally) to deal with the corner into which the show paints itself. But then in the end, having done that, we unexpectedly get Caitlin back. 

And I have to say, as mystifying as Khione was, that twist still lands. Which I think goes to show just how special and important a character Caitlin was for the show. 

In a lot of great finales, you try to leave the story with something new to play with, a gift for the future. It seems counter-intuitive; the show is over. But actually that's part of what makes many finales so satistfying. It tells us this world goes on, and not only that, it's got very cool things ahead. 

THE FLASH gave us three new speedsters, which was it's biggest act of gift giving. 

But I think bringing back Caitlin works a bit like this as well. Because sometimes the greatest gift a show can give is a fresh insight, either into our lives or that of the characters. And bringing Caitlin back does just that. She's always been central, but in such a quiet way I think some of the power of her character was easy to miss. By keeping her away for a whole year, the show gives us the chance to realize just how much we've missed her. And that awareness is itself an unexpected gift. 

NEXT: THE MARVELOUS MARVELOUS MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL

FINALES, THE FLASH: THE FIX

While the finale of TED LASSO doesn't drop for a couple days yet, I think it's safe to say that the way of May 24-31, 2023 will go down as one of the all time greatest weeks of finales ever. We've had THE FLASH, MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL and SUCCESSION already, and each of them wonderful in different ways. 

I love love love finales. And one of the things I find fascinating about this current set is that in a sense they all approach the idea of the finale differently, with different goals and techniques So this week (and probably next) I'm going to dive into them, one by one. 

We start with THE FLASH, which finished a 9-season run on May 24th with the end of a four-parter entitled "A New World" which brings back season one regular Eddie Thawne. Returning to the beginning in some way is a classic finale move. But THE FLASH takes that idea to a whole other level.

Eddie began the series as Iris' boyfriend and Joe's partner. But he's also pretty much screwed from the beginning. Barry and Iris are absolutely the couple of destiny for the series, and it doesn't take very long for Barry, who has only just woken from a coma, to screw things up for Eddie. 

And on top of that, he discovers that his distant descendant Eobard Thawne is the series' evil supervillain the Reverse Flash. Seriously, this guy is just screwed. This kind of character who normally would be a pretty good guy except he's only there to get in the way of the main characters and therefore is actually cast as an antagonist is a major TV trope; it's the patsy, really. Or, if you will, The Eddie.

In the end, the writers try to redeem what they've done to him by giving him the final heroic turn of the season. Seeing Eobard about to kill Barry, Eddie kills himself, stopping him from ever existing, which is a pretty damn heroic thing to do.

Except even in this regard he ends up being a failure and a writers' patsy. Because Eobard comes back. Like, a lot. The Reverse-Flash is the main antagonist of the entire show. 

This isn't a question that lingers over the characters or the series. We barely hear about Eddie, actually.  But it is a pretty shitty way to have left the character. And so in the final four episodes, they bring Eddie back. And honestly, he's pretty messed up after he learns what's gone on, and tempted to go full evil. 

But then in the finale, he once again sacrifices his pain to be the better person. But this time it doesn't result in his death. I'm not exactly sure what life in the Negative Speed Force universe looks like but it is a life. And he has finally confronted and let go of what he's lost. 

So the finale becomes a way of righting a wrong, fixing an injustice. 

There's another sort of "fix" here, too. Unlike its predecessor ARROW, which was a series about a very dark character slowly coming to trust and come to the light, THE FLASH presents from the start as a hopeful show, a guy who not only gets the power to do the impossible but who believes in the impossible, namely that he can prove that his father did not kill his mother. It's such a beautiful storyline.

But the thing is, his mother is still a murder victim. And the killer turns out to be the man he believes to be his friend and mentor (who then terrorizes others that he loves). And now he has powers that enable him to potentially change all that. Each of these details make the show much, much more complicated and sad. And intriguingly, in some ways the show became more about a guy who struggled against the darkness of what he had experienced. Which has a tremendous real world resonance, and personal dramatic stakes for Barry for sure, but threatened at times to overwhelm the show's foundations. 

In the finale, we get this incredible moment where Barry says all this as he's trying to figure out what to do about Eddie and concluding his only real solution is to murder him. And while he's said versions of this before, there's a sense of him being overwhelmed by it all that really hits hard. It's perfect for the finale. 

And his mission, as given to him by Caitlin's new identity Khione, is to believe in the impossible once again. So again, we're returning to the beginning, but this time for inspiration. And out of it we get not only the resolution of the Eddie story line, but something radically new: Barry sharing his power with three brand new speedsters. It's a bit of fan service for those who know the Flash comics, but it's also a great "fix" on what has been Barry's fundamental character problem, a belief that it's all up to him. 

The series actually ends with us watching Barry run. And it's the first time in a very long time that we see Barry smiling as he does it. He's happy. It's a great end.  

SUCCESSION ON MAKING US CARE FOR EVERYONE

For me the real magic trick of SUCCESSION 406 is, as I mentioned yesterday, that you end up feeling strongly for all three kids, even as they're actually fucking each other over. 

In my experience, that is not generally how SUCCESSION has worked. Other than when they're unified against Logan, we've usually been given reasons to root for or against one or another of the siblings. If I step back and think about that, it's usually their flaws that are used to guide us against them. Kendall has crazy ideas and is often a public embarrassment; Shiv has a hard time standing up for herself; Roman is such a daddy's boy. The show offers us these moments and in doing so guides us to side with the other siblings. 

(I realize there are people who would say, I have been Team Shiv from day one, and her "flaws" are much more indicative of her father's horrendous manipulative treatment of her than a judgment on her in herself, and so on for all the characters. Another way of putting it might be, the show has loved to expose characters as "weak" in some way to turn us against them.)

As we start 406, we find ourselves headed into familiar Roy sibling territory. Kendall and Roman have a plan, they are not letting Shiv in on it, even though that's what they promised they would do just a few days ago. And so of course I'm rooting for her. 

But then slowly she comes around to undermining them, which on the surface, hell yeah. Fuck them. But then in that moment before Kendall is going to go on stage, after Shiv has convinced Roman to not go up there on the stage with him,  we watch Kendall sitting in a chair, just reeling, as we've seen him do before. 

But rather than satisfying it's painful. In some ways that's precisely because we've seen him in this place before. Here again, we're revisiting an icon of the show. But where the water imagery is used to create contrast, here the repetition is like a doorway back into the sympathy we've had for Kendall at other times, the vulnerability that we know is who this guy is beneath the surface. 

And so instead of feeling vindicated, because he has been a complete shit to Shiv and also he's so incredibly self-destructive, we're suddenly protective of him. Sad Vulnerable Kendall is itself part of the language of the show, so much so that when played it generates sympathy. 

(While I'm trying to look at this strictly from a writing point of view, it's important to note, this scene works like it does because Jeremy Strong just fucking kills it. He's so damn good in this episode.)

And writers Georgia Pritchett & Will Arbery are not content with leaving him stripped away like this. They make him go lower, first by having Carl, who is by far the wishy washiest character on the show, the most milquetoast, go absolutely toe to toe with Kendall, ruin the plan he's spent the last few days dreaming up, and leave him speechless.

Pritchett & Arbery set this moment up so well; earlier in the episode we get Gerri and Roman going head to head as well. And she is in many ways more confrontational than Carl, and a stronger character by far, and Roman absolutely steps up and shuts her down. Meanwhile Kendall, facing a far weaker foe, can barely get a word out.

And even that is not the bottom for Kendall. We watch him go out onstage, and his opening moments are just a trainwreck—he's repeating the same thing over and over; he's talking to the teleprompter; he has a simulated conversation with his dad—so painful. It's just one long spiral of agony, with cutaways to his family and employees watching in horror. 

There's just no way not to care about this guy in the face of all that.  

And yet again, he is being terrible to Shiv, lying to her face and seems completely at ease with it. And he's tanking a deal that he absolutely shouldn't. All of which is classic Kendall. 

Which for me makes where the show leaves us with him just an incredible feat. And I can look at structurally how they did that—repeat an iconic Kendall trope; have him roll over and play dead against a weak foe; and publicly humiliate himself—and say yep, that's how they did that. And now we can too!

But honestly I think I'm still barely scraping the surface. Because there's something else going on in the episode with all three characters, beats of them being really exposed and vulnerable—always in private—that seems to grant each of them that same sympathy, even as they are each being, again, so horrible to each other.  

Could it be that the good will and sympathy that the Logan's death episode generated in us is still a work? Is that what this is? 

I may continue to babble about this tomorrow. It's just such great writing. 

SUCCESSION ON THE ART OF REVISITATION

Another great episode of SUCCESSION this week. Maybe my biggest takeaway, and one that I'm going to write about, is the way the episode creates conflict amongst the three kids, and you see them each fucking over the others—especially Kendall and Roman screwing Shiv—yet somehow you end up feeling for each of them. Like, start of that ep I am 100% Team Shiv, and in a way that doesn't change. But then once Kendall's all alone I am so rooting for him, too. 

There's a lot to unpack there. 

But today I just want to note the way the episode ends. Kendall, on his own, floating on his back in the Pacific. It's clearly a baptismal moment; he's come through something, his own self-destructive tendencies, and come out the other side. 

And what's brilliant about that end image of him floating is the way that it calls back to him in the pool at the end of 308. There he's really at his lowest point: having killed someone at the end of season one, he's now got his father—who of course got him out of it—holding it over him, telling him he'll never be free of that. He's basically trapped. And at the end he's floating on a raft, drunk. But the episode ends with him passed on, his face in the water, his beer floating away like an image of his soul. It was a huge question mark whether we hadn't just seen him die. 

How brilliant to take that image and flip it on its head—or on its back, as it were—to represent what is really his resurrection. Where he was face down and drowning in despair in 308, now he's face up, floating without even needing a raft to hold him. 

One of the things I adore about the final season of great series is the way that they revisit its key visual metaphors, events and lines of dialogue. Together those moments are the imaginative landscape of the show, that is, the landmarks of the show as it exists in our minds. To offer any kind of callback is great fan service. But to do what Georgia Pritchett & Will Arbery do here, to take such a moment and use it in a whole new way, is both deeply emotionally satisfying for the audience and carries the water for so much story. Kendall floating on the ocean tells us everything that we need to know about him without a single word having to be said, and it does so 1000 times better. 

We should all be so lucky as to write on the finale of a great show. But the same principle applies to the end of a season, or even the end of a pilot. What can I revisit at the end of my piece that casts that moment in a whole new light?

SUCCESSION ON THE CATHARSIS YOU DON'T SEE COMING

Last night on SUCCESSION, "Kill List" written by Jon Brown & Ted Cohen, we got our first real glimpse of Roman and Kendall working together. And on the surface what we're shown is the challenge of having two heads rather than one (or three heads, as it goes on). Where Madsen is able to shoot from the hip and move on the fly, Rome and Ken are backfooted at the first meeting by the fact that they clearly have such different reactions to the offer. 

And by starting there, the Brown & Cohen con us into thinking that the issue of the episode is getting them on the same page, seeing whether they can "pull off" the deal. It's an easy groove for us to fall in, as getting the kids on the same page is always the problem with the Roys. And so is Kendall self-destructing.

But this episode is not about that. It's about not holding back. And even though Kendall is the main player at the table, in the end this is really Roman's episode, not Kendall's. He's the one that has the most trouble with the new offer. And then in the second scene, he's the one that still says nothing. Kendall is actually firing on all cylinders. Roman mostly nods.

That scene ends with Madsen saying, "Well I don't care what you think," he says to Kendall's critique of his analysis of Waystar. "You're a tribute band." It's a brilliant SUCCESSION-worthy line. The dialogue on the show is so often about reducing complicated things to witty, devastating (accurate) metaphors. 

But what I love about that line is that it brings the conversation back to Logan. Which is where Roman's head is anyway. He's the one dealing with Connor's craziness about the body. He's the one that just cannot hear anyone saying his father is a bad guy or his plan should be tossed out. But having said that, Brown & Cohen give us nothing to suggest he's going to cut loose. That's not how this world works, actually. For as entertaining and nasty as the banter of  SUCCESSION is, it's also highly constraining. You do not pour your heart out here.  (And this is especially true of Roman. He is 100% "fuck off" and quips.)

And that's what makes Roman's monologue to Madsen on the mountain so incredibly thrilling. Certainly the other conversations with Madsen have been building to this, though again, by putting Kendall front and center they've distracted us from Roman. But it's not just that; in a sense by so often withholding a more open conversation, they've sort of starved us. And so when Roman comes in with "I fucking hate you," even though it makes him sound like a teenager talking to his dad, we absolutely relish it. 

There's a bunch of possible lessons to take from this. One is obviously how important it is to create early distractions in an episode, so the audience doesn't see your end gambit coming. 

But another is, when you're working on the last season of a show, it's worth asking, what have we been withholding from the audience? What are the things we haven't let them have? And if we can find a way to give that to them, Wow will they eat it up.

SUCCESSION ON HOW TO CRAFT A SURPRISE

This is going to seem like a really obvious observation, but it's something I've been thinking about a lot in terms of not events but character choices. If you really want to surprise people, don't telegraph that it's coming. 

I did say it seemed really obvious. But I think it's worth mentioning from a broader perspective. There's so often when I'm working on a script or a character where I think to myself, I need to set up that later reveal, event or character choice early, so that when we get there I've established a runway for it. I don't want the audience to feel like I've cheated. 

And there's truth to that. If Miranda Bailey starts murdering people on GREY'S ANATOMY—well, first of all I would be here for that, because I would follow Chandra Wilson doing anything. But I might very well say, Um, not sure that really tracks? 

In the case of SUCCESSION, we've had plenty of set up over the last three seasons that Logan is not well. But probably they could have sold it anyway because he's just old. He comes with his own ticking clock built in. 

But as I think of some the best character work I've seen, oftentimes it involves a certain refusal to signpost or pre-justify. I see it especially with great villains—instead of seeming good while secretly twirling their mustaches, we have the character play altogether good, and then in other moments simply be evil. Basically, they leave it up to us to put those pieces together. 

Admittedly, this can go wrong. Te boy next door who turns out to be a creepy voyeur/serial killer is actually pretty tired at this point, not only because it's been done but because it can feel untrue. There has to be some deeper truth that justifies the surprise. 

But the key truth is this: Story Gaps are great for audiences. It gives them a way to participate. It gives them something to sink their teeth into. 

In the case of SUCCESSION Logan's own behavior is a great example of this. We never know what's going on in his head. All we have is the things he says and does, which in his case are so far from the fullness of what he's up to. And that gap not only keeps the kids spinning, it keeps us engaged. 

But the choice to have him die without warning is kind of a version of this as well. Telegraphing and signposting are sometimes great, essential. But sometimes it's the gaps that we create between our signposts and story choices that create great story.