SHRILL WEEK: THE CATHARSIS SPEECH

Pretty much every show occasionally features a great monologue. It could be Ben Wyatt weeping in a Batman costume as he explains why Treat Yo'Self Day has meant so much to him, or Walter White painting his incredibly dark and self-aggrandising portrait of the universe. 

Monologues are a moment in which someone gets to uncork about some aspect of their lives. And there's really something exciting about that -- especially when it matches up with some pressure or expectation that we've been feeling as an audience about something that has gone so far unsaid. 

Most shows use moments like this sparingly. But a couple have made Catharsis Speech moments part of their signature. GREY'S ANATOMY in its early seasons under Shonda was known for these kinds of beats where a character (often Bailey) would step forward, give a kind of thesis statement, then pour out their heart in unexpected ways and end up somehow back at that thesis, and the trip in between having changed what that statement means. 

In many ways THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL is those kinds of speeches -- delivered onstage as stand up comedy routines -- with story bits woven in between. (I love MAISEL's characters and storylines. But the reason I'm watching that show week after week is to have that experience of a woman living in a society where women's roles are limited and censored just standing up and saying what is actually going on in her life.)

SHRILL doesn't do this every episode, but it has some really strong Catharsis Speeches of its own. And the thing that's striking to me about them is that the empowerment and catharsis they provide is often simply in the act of Annie describing the horrible bad mind things she's been taught to think about herself. There's that old Christian spiritual concept that evil spirits desperately don't want us to say their names, that once their identities are spoken in the open, they necessarily lose some of their power. 

And that's how things seem to work on SHRILL. Annie lays out some horrible thing she thinks about herself, and that frees her to some extent from the net it's trapped her in. 

Here's a good example from Episode 104, "Pool", written by Samantha Irby.  

 

The moment's followed by Fran's girlfriend saying, "I wish someone would have said this to me when I was younger." Which leads Annie to go upstairs and write an article about it, which in many ways is not only her key choice in season one, but the thing that really fulfills the promise of the pilot and solidifies the direction of the series. 

Again, SHRILL doesn't do this every episode. But every time it does, it has that same sense of revelation and the shucking off of chains, without ever seeming contrived or  "The Author Steps Forward"-ish. Which is really hard to do. The series is well worth watching just to see the unique way in which they build these moments.

SHRILL WEEK: QUESTION YOUR SHOW'S ASSUMPTIONS

 

SHRILL presents structurally as a pretty standard half hour series. Annie is our main character, on a journey. Fran is her best friend who gives her good advice, gives her someone to talk to and occasionally gets into hijinks of her own. Ryan is her on again/off again/garbage always boyfriend, Gabe her self-consumed boss and Amadi her work buddy (who I personally would like a whole show about). 

But every story structure has its deficits. And in the case of the single protagonist half hour, the main problem usually is that so much of the story gets directed to the protagonist, they start to seem kind of self-centered and all about the drama. We end up pining for more story for some of the others.  

This isn't just a half hour issue, either. By the time you get to the fourth or fifth Harry Potter movie, it's enough already with Harry as the constant focus. Even if he does have a spooky noseless nemesis dude who is always after him, still, it's too much. More Ron and Hermione, please and thank you. 

The interesting thing that SHRILL does is write that very issue into the show. In the season two premiere, "Camp", written by Aidy Bryant, while Annie and Ryan go off on a ridiculous adventure, Fran is shown literally waiting by her phone for Annie to call. Her life as that sidekick completely dependent on Annie's. 

Then we don't see Fran again until the end, when we discover Annie's dad called her when he couldn't figure out where Annie was. And so Fran has been over trying to calm him down until Annie shows up. 

"You can't just disappear and then leave me to clean up all your mess," Fran tells Annie in private. "You have to be my friend, too." 

It's a thrilling moment, precisely because it's calling out the flaw we feel in the show.  

Then the rest of season two starts to provide a greater balance. Fran's heartache is much the center of the second episode, and gives her a journey all her own for the season. We also get a whole episode where she and Annie go to a family wedding, and a big party in the season finale that ends up being the culmination of her quest.

Rather than "stealing time" from Annie, these choices to focus on Fran have the feeling of expanding the world of the show. In fact it introduces Emily, who will becomes almost a third main character in the final season. All of which is to say, we love the series more for the changes Fran creates, not less. 

When you've been on a show awhile, or you're coming onto a show that's been on for some time, it's worth stepping back to ask yourself, What or who is this show ignoring or assuming? Who isn't it giving time to? What is it missing? 

Oftentimes your answers will give you exciting new story possibilities. Even just naming the issues can make for some really satisfying story.

SHRILL WEEK: TAKE ME TO A WORLD

One of my favorite TV things is when a show takes me into a world I don't already know. It's like being in another country with the tour guide that takes you to the restaurant all the locals love and no one else knows about. You have that sense of getting privileged "backstage" access, and with it comes the thrill of discovery, that delicious experience of wonder and surprise. 

A number of times in its three year run, SHRILL takes us into fascinating places. Probably the greatest example is episode 104, "Pool", written by Samantha Irby, in which Annie goes to her first plus-sized pool party. The sequence is an interesting example of a "new world" episode, in that it doesn't focus on some set of unique customs or practices of this community. There's no need for that here: what's interesting and fresh is just getting to see a group of plus-sized women in swim suits happily partying together.

Sometimes in a new world episode the characters we're following are already deep in the world, and we relish and discover by way of watching them. But "Pool" instead offers us a stand in. Annie walks around  just as curious as we are and also feeling physically insecure, as we might. 

But then as the scene goes on she's slowly drawn in. First she walks around just enjoying seeing other people so free and happy. Then she's talking to someone she doesn't know. Finally she's pulled into a group of women dancing. It's a sequence similar in some ways to her confrontation with her boss Gabe at the end of the pilot, insofar as it's not as simple as She Gets Pulled In and Then All is Well. No, it's a struggle. She tries to sneak away repeatedly, then finds herself just standing there uncomfortable while everyone else is dancing. And slowly, slowly she overcomes her own inhibitions, until she is dancing and spinning without a single thought for anyone else.

When the dancing ends she immediately peels down to her bathing suit, the thing that we've made to wonder about this whole time, and finally leaps into the pool. It's a beautifully cathartic sequence, and in a sense the fact that Annie was positioned at the start as a stand in for us makes it that much more impactful for us. As she comes into her own self-comfort, so do we. 

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In episode 202, "Kevin", written by Rob Klein & Hye Yun Park, the last third of the episode happens at a queer open mike night. Unlike 104, here the setting is mostly just background to the story of Annie and Fran having a night out after Fran has dumped her girlfriend. We get cuts of people dancing or other things going on, but it's not the focus of our attention the way the pool party is. 

And yet that fact doesn't really seem to matter. The sequence still hums with a glimpse of life and community that feels fresh and welcoming. In a sense the lack of focus on the setting actually lends itself to our interest. What little we see makes us want so much more. 

The sequence ends with queer performer Peter Smith singing a Brian Wilson song to the gathered crowd. We've never met Smith on the show, and there's nothing prior to this moment signaling this was going to occur or that something like this is where we were headed. 

But the easy familiarity with which Smith talks to the crowd and the song itself drawing us and the audience onscreen together until it feels like we've been invited into this beautiful moment of friendship and community. 

I love that moment so much I want you to have it for yourself. 

In both these cases, and others in the series, we've still got our characters at the center, having the desires and conflict that are the engines of the story. But "new world" episodes like these also remind us of the feeling and power a narrative can create when it offers a chance for discovery, for wonder and delight.

SHRILL WEEK: HOW TO DO A PILOT (AND ALSO A FINALE)

 

One of the things I love to do at the end of a series is to go back and rewatch the pilot, see how the two connect or relate. 

In the case of SHRILL, the pilot episode "Annie" is written by the same team of three writers who would  write the finale, Aidy Bryant & Alexandra Rushfield & Lindy West. And it's a classic example of how to do a pilot for a single protagonist point of view series. The first ten minutes lay out most of the problems of Annie's life: forcing herself to eat diet food despite the fact that it tastes disgusting; a stranger telling her she owes it to herself to lose weight; other strangers telling her the first stranger was so fucked up but then going on to say she reminds them of Rosie O'Donnell; a job where she's so cowed by her own insecurity she can't muster the confidence to pitch an idea to her boss; a boyfriend, Ryan, who makes her sneak out the back when his friends show up (which also means her having to climb a fence in order to leave); and the discovery that the Day After pills she has been taking are not effective for women over a certain weight and she is now pregnant.  

It's hard to believe you could present so much so fast in a believable way, and yet in fact the script works really well. By tying each of the issues Annie faces to the beats in her normal day's journeys, from home to the coffee shop to work to Ryan's house to the pharmacist, the writers keep everything feeling natural and organic.  

And with that first 10 minute in hand, we have a clear sense not only of Annie's life but the direction of the series. This is a show about someone no one really sees deciding finally to be seen and heard. And true to form, the rest of the pilot sets that story in motion, with Annie dumping Ryan and demanding to write a story for her boss. 

That second scene is particularly great, in that it's not as simple as her going back in to see him and asking for what she wants. His default is dismissal and disinterest, which is 100% her kryptonite. And so to get what she wants she has to repeatedly push through her politeness and inhibitions and insecurity and literally refuse to take no as an answer. It's a perfect example of how to make a character win feel truly earned.

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The pilot ends on a call back to the fitness coach from the beginning who told her she owed it to herself to lose weight. It seems like it's going to be that moment in the hero's journey where we see how much the heroine has changed and grown. When the coach pressures her to get fit again, Annie quietly tells her to fuck off. 

But then she backs off when asked what she said. And the coach, who until this point was nothing but earnestness and "concern", now calls her a "fat bitch". Which on the one hand makes clear, Annie's struggles are anything but over. This heroine is nowhere near the end of her journey.  

And yet at the same time, as the camera holds on her face as she walks on, her expression shifts slowly from repressed rage and shame to a quiet kind of confidence. The world may still be a piece of shit place, and she may still have a lot of room to grow, but she is indeed different than the woman we met thirty minutes ago. 

It's a brilliant, powerful ending. 

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So on its own, lots of good stuff to consider here. But then looking at the pilot from the point of view of the finale, what's also interesting is the way in which Annie and Fran's friendship is presented as the place of truth and support that enables them to take big steps forward. 

In the pilot the focus is mostly on Annie, who sits with Fran at this rummage sale talking about why she'd consider having Ryan's baby despite how awful he is, how she never thought she'd ever have the chance to have someone's baby given how she looks. And it's Fran calling out her brutal self-image and telling her she can have more in her life that helps her decide to get the abortion and dump Ryan. 

There's also a moment of Annie challenging Fran over her sitcom-like attempts to juggle different partners on the same night. It's just a moment here. But eventually Fran will get her own journey from playing the field to taking the risk of real intimacy. 

And so in a sense the finale's examination of Annie and Fran's friendship really does emerge directly from the pilot. And it's that much more powerful because everything they say in the finale about their friendship is here seen to be true: It was their safe place. It was the thing that enabled them to grow. It was the greatest love story.

There's even a great visual callback. Just as the finale opens with Annie resting her head on Fran's shoulder, trying to savor what moments they have left together, in the pilot we see her do the same thing after Fran brings her home from her abortion. 

Start to finish, a really well-crafted show.

SHRILL WEEK: HOW TO DO A FINALE

This week I binged the final season of SHRILL, Aidy Bryant's fantastic Hulu comedy about a 20 something writer for an indy Portland paper who decides to stop taking people's crap about her gender or her weight and claim the life she wants. 

It's a show that I've come to love, and yet I don't totally know why it's hooked me as strongly as it has. And I think whenever you have that sense of surprise or mystery about a pop culture something, it's worth stopping to ask what's going on. Maybe it's just a great cast and the comfort you (aka I) have needed in a nightmare time. But often there's maybe something in the writing, too, that we can learn from and use. 

So, this week, SHRILL! 

I'm starting with the finale, in which our main characters Annie (Bryant) and her longtime roommate and best friend Fran (Lolly Adefope) are each about to step into bigger lives of their own with the partners they've found. And I'm doing so because the episode offers such an unexpected, Let's Take This Whole Show Deeper turn.

Quick summary: In the ep, Fran is looking for places with her partner Em, while Annie is trying to push her new boyfriend Will to do something similar. And it looks to be a kind of happily ever after for the characters, which actually feels very earned given all they've gone through in the series and also given the comic nature of the series. 

But finales are often a moment to reflect in a different way on what we've been watching all along. And the way writers Aidy Bryant & Alexandra Rushfield & Lindy West come at that is by centering the episode on the relationship at its core, Fran and Annie. We open on them holding each other, Annie explaining that as she prepares for Fran to move out she needs to savor what they have. It's a tender, sweet moment with just enough of the wacky comedy that the show knows how to bring. 

Then we follow both of the characters in their lives. Annie's story seems to be going in its own direction--the paper might be sold to the human equivalent of bots, while she becomes obsessed with learning about Will's ex-wife. But Fran's ends up curling back around to talk about her relationship with Annie, with Em saying the two of them have been keeping their "college vibe" alive too long. They need to grow and change.  

That ends up being the question of the episode. "I think it's good that we save a piece of ourselves that they never get to see because it's for us," Annie tells Fran after hearing Em's critique. "We're perfect. And everyone else can eat shit."

In a way you can see where the episode has to be going given this set up, but at the same time this has never been a show about two fucked up women who enable each other to hide from reality. They've been there for each other, and they've also pushed each other. 

So this take really is something new and interesting, a deeper look. 

And what emerges in the end is a unexpectedly profound contemplation of post-college friendship. "This is the greatest love of all time," Fran says of the two of them as the two sit on a park bench drinking champagne they meant to have on their final night together, having fucked up their relationships. 

They sit there struggling to get their heads around what is now all too clear -- in order to have something else in their lives, something new, this great love they share must change. How can that even be? "It's been the two of us for so long," Annie tells Fran. "It's always been the only thing that felt really good." 

"We'll fix everything," Fran tells Annie. And Annie agrees. But the look on their faces very much leaves us wondering whether that's possible. And on second thought it clearly isn't, because in order to have the things they want, they'll have to break the thing they have.

A great finale puts everything we've watched in a new perspective, surprises us with a new take on the characters we love. Newhart wakes up in bed with his wife from the old show. Claire Fisher drives to New York while we watch everyone we've come to love die. The Sopranos sit in the diner, trapped in a hell of waiting for the bullets that seem inevitably headed for them. 

In its very personal and quirky-world way, SHRILL offers that level of depth in its finale, and then goes one step further, allowing the struggle and relationship between these characters to hold a mirror up to of our own complicated experiences of friendship. 

It's not the end you expect, it's sadder and more scary. But at the same time the whole show has been about these two great women pushing themselves to get to a place where they'll take the real risks to have the lives they want. And so it's absolutely fitting in that brilliantly inevitable and unexpected way that the show would end on the reveal that the last risk they have to take is to step away from each other. 

FRINGE WEEK: THEY WILL LOVE YOU FOR THE STORY, AND THEY WILL REMEMBER YOU FOR THE LITTLE THINGS

Great shows are built around great characters in great conflicts and great relationships. Comedy, drama, it doesn't matter. Are your characters interesting and distinctive? Are they in pursuit of something challenging, or forced to contend with something hard? And are their interrelationships surprising and compelling? If the answers are yes, you've got the makings of a great show. 

FRINGE has all of that. Just to take one character: Walter Bishop is a crazy scientific genius obsessed with food, music, drugs and his cow Jean; he's ruined a universe to save his son and confronted now with the consequences is desperate to save his son again. 

Each detail about him and element of his backstory is clear and specific, his goal/problem is huge in its scope and difficulty, and his relationships with his son and colleague Olivia are enormously fraught as a result.  And you end up loving the show in part for the ways those relationships keep turning upon one another and eventually bring him to self-sacrifice and forgiveness. 

But if you ask someone about FRINGE, one of the first things you're going to hear about is that in every single episode there is a dude in an old timey black suit and fedora who appears for just a second in the background watching the events. It serves a narrative function -- Observers be observin' -- but really it's there as something to engage and delight viewers. 

FRINGE has many little touches like this. Episodes set in different time periods or alternate worlds get different opening credits. Check out the 1980s one, for it is fantastic:

Different universes and timelines also have different colors popping up repeatedly but unobtrusively--blue in the main universe; red in the other side; amber in the new timeline of season four.

Superfans will also tell you about how the glyphs and dots presented before each commercial break constitute a code that comment on what's happening or gives hints as to future episode, or how the 19th episode of every episode swings for the fences with insanely fantastic storylines that to read on the page would seem to break the rules of the series -- an animated quest through Olivia's mind! a very very high Walter imagining the world around him as a 1930s noir musical! -- and yet absolutely hit their marks.

Again, some of these details have narrative significance. And some of them are just easter eggs the creative team took the time to add for the audience. As Grandnana Rose says when she puts that third plate of lasagna before you, "I made special just for you." 

There's plenty of more interesting and significant writing techniques on FRINGE. But I think it's worth highlighting the show's little narrative decorations, too, because they can have such a nice impact. They are the TV-equivalent of how everything you see when waiting in line at the Haunted Mansion -- every molding, every fleck of dust, every font -- has been purposely chosen to help create a fully immersive environment.

And this isn't just about planting Easter eggs. It could be polishing the dialogue of your characters so many times that they become truly distinctive one from another or just uniquely entertaining, like LOST's Sawyer referring to everyone by nicknames; or giving a character a unique habit or preoccupation, like Walter's complete and total obsession with milkshakes.

The "little things" is not the the first thing we should be worried about when writing a script, for sure, but it is a good question to ask in later rewrites. Where can I make my story more special for the audience? Where can I add just a little more delight, a little more WTF, a little more zazzle? 

[Note: Sorry this wasn't posted Friday. I thought it was, only to discover last night it was still waiting in draft.]

FRINGE WEEK: DO WHAT SERVES YOUR STORY

This post has lots of spoilers. SO. MANY. If you have not watched FRINGE, you should not read further. 

Here's the tl;dr: Don't be afraid to fight for telling your story your way. Listen to the feedback that pushes you to reconsider; it's important, too. 

But ultimately you must Do what serves your story.

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FRINGE has so many big ideas in play -- 

*again, SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*

--alternate universes, Peter as having been stolen by Walter from the other universe, the Observers who seem to be just watching but in fact will end up invading --

But none of these things are presented in the pilot. In fact the alternate universe idea doesn't even begin to really get a hearing until around the midpoint of the season; Peter's backstory and what it means only starts to surface at the end of season one; and the Observer twist doesn't get revealed until Season Four.

It seems insane to hold off on these major story elements so long.  Especially the alternate universe idea. That IS the show (or at least the first four seasons of it). It's the thing everyone is going to tell everyone else to sell them on this show. So why not put it in the pilot?

My thought? It's because that's where we would expect to find it. Every genre pilot has some big end of pilot twist that changes everything. Someone is watching Wanda's sitcom on WANDAVISION. Boomer is a Cylon on BSG. 

By holding exactly that kind of major twist back, the FRINGE writers create space for that reveal to be a much bigger surprise. It's the essence of sleight of hand, and also stand up: land the punchline where we're not looking.

This withholding also enables the series to build the relationship with its audience out of the strength of its characters and their relationships. Given the Enormousness of its big twists, FRINGE could have easily become what I call a JJ, a Mystery Box series where what drives the narrative and audience interest is some central secret. But JJs tend to have big sugar rushes and also big sugar crashes, when the promise of the mystery isn't met. 

By holding off on revealing even the extent to which there is a Big Crazy Mystery, FRINGE keeps the audience from thinking of the show in that way. We're going to come back week to week not because WE HAVE TO LEARN WHAT IS HAPPENING but because we like these characters and the crazy situations they're investigating. 

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You don't want to be precious with your Big Ideas. Not every Major Reveal is as strong as you might initially think. The question to ask is always: What best serves my story? And ultimately you have to trust your instincts on what that is.

FRINGE WEEK: MAKE A LIST

One of the things I like to do when watching a show is to keep track of patterns. What are the things that keep happening on a show structurally, thematically? 

In a sense what I'm looking for are the underlying rules of the show, the things you'd want to know if you were going to write on it. (I'll even sometimes write a document, "Five Things You Need to Know if You're Going to Write on ER (or whatever)".

One way of getting to those rules is via the process of watching a whole bunch of episodes themselves, which I highly recommend. When you go into a series ready to learn what it's doing, the patterns can really pop out.

But there's another way of doing some of this, too, a way that can be really helpful when you're first hired on a show. It's two simple steps:

First, Come up with a logline. If you had created this series, what would your one line elevator pitch be?

Don't settle for just one logline. Come up with a bunch, as a way of getting at different angles on the show. 

So for instance:  

FRINGE is the story of a mad scientist who saved his son and destroyed a universe. 

FRINGE is the story of a son forced to take care of the father who ruined his life. 

FRINGE is the story of an FBI agent drawn into a world of insane science experiments that begin to bring back memories of things done to her as a child.

Second, make lists.  Loglines are like the airport workers walking the tarmac with light up rods to direct the planes: they give us directions to go with episode pitches.  

If you're going to be on FRINGE, what kind of episodes should you be offering? The loglines make it clear: ones about crazy science ideas and scientists, fathers and sons and vulnerable children. So knowing that, you can brainstorm lists of ideas on each topic. 

Read through a list of FRINGE episodes, and what do you find? A never ending set of  insane science-based ideas like jumping into dreams, ideas absorbed via osmosis, a gas that makes your skin self-seal, a drug that turns you into a human porcupine, an anti-grav medicine. Many also involve a father who is trying to save a son (usually at the cost of the lives of others). And some involve adults preying upon children. 

You find a logline, you find a path. 

FRINGE WEEK: HOW TO DO A MYTH/PROCEDURAL

 

I recently finished rewatching FRINGE, J.H. Wyman's gem about a mad scientist, his son and two FBI agents drawn into a strange war whose purpose or even antagonist no one can quite understand.

I could spend weeks writing about the show. There's so much interesting stuff going on there. 

But this week I want to pull out just a few of the techniques it uses that make it so strong as a show.

The first has to do with the way it uses its format: FRINGE presents as a case-of-the-week procedural. Almost every episode in fact begins with a new case which the team will then investigate. And yet, it also has an enormous mythology tied into it. ENORMOUS. In many ways it feels like a latter day X-FILES, in fact.

But X-FILES generally viewed mythology/case of the week as an either/or. You'll have an episode about Bigfoot, then a three parter about Mulder's sister, then an insane story about people living in a rural town -- and there's absolutely no intersection between those eps. The cases are strictly cases; the myth episodes are strictly myth. 

FRINGE, on the other hand, works from both/and. Every episode has a case they're being called in on, and, the cases always end up having some connection with the broader mythology of the series. 

Which on the surface sounds like it could repetitive real fast--oh look, another strange weapon being deployed for no good reason. One reason for splitting cases of the week and mythology is to keep either from getting stale. Tired of Mulder arguing with the Cigarette Smoking Man? Great, here's a werewolf.  Especially when you're doing a 22 episode season, keeping the audience's attention is a real project.

But somehow instead of coming off as repetitive FRINGE feels much more focused and compelling than a show like X-FILES. And I think the reason is that its mythology has such disparate elements. There's "the war" they are fighting, which is the main storyline. But then there's also the history of our mad scientist Walter Bishop and his frenemy William Bell, which keeps coming to the surface in different ways. It will eventually be very clearly connected to that war, but not right away. 

Walter's history is also very much connected to two other massive mythologies of the show, that of leads Agent Olivia Dunham and Walter's son Peter. But once again the connections emerge so gradually (or in the case of Peter present so slowly) as to make them seem like completely different things. 

And let's not even start on the spooky alien dudes in suits who seem to be everywhere watching everything.

Point being, FRINGE overcomes the threat of audience boredom by way of having many seemingly separate mythologies to shift between. And a tidy result of that is that each case of the week ends up being significant, a part of something bigger.  Every episode is of value to the broader narrative. It all "counts".

POSE WEEK: ...AND SOMETIMES IT'S JUST BETTER TELEVISION

There's a number of episodes in the second season of POSE where what conflicts there are mostly take a back seat to just letting the characters be together. So in 203, written by Our Lady J, the three house mothers--who usually are in competition and conflict--come together to help when Elektra has a client die on her and she has to figure out what to do. 

In 209, written by Janet Mock and Our Lady J, something similar happens: Blanca's business landlord burns down Blanca's nail salon to drive her out. But then instead the episode is about Elektra, Lulu and Angel taking Blanca to the beach for the weekend to cheer her up. 

And the season finale written by Ryan Murphy & Brad Falchuk & Steven Canals works the same way: We start with a crisis in Blanca's health and some problems in the Ball community. But then rather than those problems inciting complications they incite community. And the episode becomes just a series of wonderful moments of different members of this extended family being together and helping each other. 

As I wrote on Friday, one of the big lessons I took from UCLA was the need to have conflict in every scene. And yet, each of these episodes is profoundly compelling without any of that. Why is that? Why doesn't it get boring? 

Maybe in part it's because in the broader context this is a show about a community of people who others reject and persecute. And so those issues and hardship are there hanging over the narrative even if they're never alluded to. Episodes that focus on the friendship within their community are compelling precisely because that's what we want for them more than anything, and what they often aren't given. 

But I also wonder if they're so refreshing because they refuse to take the path we expect. We've all been trained by a million hours of television, movies, books and video games to expect conflict.

And in each of these episodes, we start with what looks to be a major, episode-long problem: illness; loss of a business; a dead body. Which is to say, the episodes prime us to believe we're in familiar territory. 

But then instead of following through with the beats we expect we get amazing moments like the four of them singing in the car at the end of 209, or the dancing at the ball in 210. And they land even bigger by virtue of not being what we expected.

POSE: It's a great show. 💙💚💛💜💗

 

POSE WEEK: SOMETIMES NO CONFLICT IS THE MOST GRIPPING CONFLICT OF ALL...

In POSE 205 Ricky and Damon both get the chance to audition for Madonna’s Blond Ambition tour. It’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened to either of them or their houses. There’s a lot of excitement but in Ricky’s house some urgency, too, as Mother Elektra considers how she can parley his opportunity into her own. She even tells her children to break Damon’s foot to rule him out. 

 

There's a "hijinks ensue"  version of this episode where that back and forth of undermining and competition is the episode's engine. But instead Blanca finds out pretty much right away and talks Elektra down.

 

And yet I still spent the remainder of the episode on pins and needles, worried about one of them getting injured or Ricky betraying Damon. Was it just because the episode set up those possibilities early?  You’d think, except I was just as terrified of them when they were leaving their Solid Gold pilot shoot at the very end and Damon steps into the street (where once again nothing happens). 

One of the lessons that I heard again and again at UCLA was that you want conflict in every scene. It's the magnet that pulls us in.

But we've all also seen so much TV at this point, we anticipate that. And it turns out the longer that an episode refuses to give us real danger, the more certain we become that something is coming, and that it's probably horrible. Seriously, Damon just walking into the street at the end was about as scary a moment as I've ever seen on the show. 

 

If the stakes are high enough and the characters loved enough, maybe sometimes writers don't have to do anything other than have the characters living their lives. Lacking external stimuli we in the audience will take care of the rest. 

 

I don't always post on Saturdays and Sundays, but I do have one more thought on POSE to offer. So look for that over the weekend!

 

 

POSE WEEK: HOW TO DO AN ILLNESS REVEAL--KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE CHARACTER

Looking over my entries this week one of the things I'm realizing is how often my note on POSE seems to be, "You know that thing we've seen a hundred times before? Check out POSE, because they do it differently and it's pretty great." 

Today's entry is much the same. In POSE 202, "Worth It", written by Janet Mock, Blanca reveals to her children what we've known since the pilot, that she's HIV+. It's the kind of reveal you see over and over in dramas, particularly if they've been any length of time. Some shows will build whole seasons around a medical secret. 

To its credit, POSE does not go the Blanca Has a Secret route. In the pilot her HIV diagnosis actually motivates her to live a bigger and more generous life. It's the inciting incident of the series, and the first season follows Blanca as she fights to build that life.

 

The reveal of her diagnosis in season two is similarly presented within the broader context of Blanca's life. Instead of revealing to her family that she has AIDS, she tells them the story of her early life as a transgender woman, the years she spent longing for love and letting men who were attracted to her do whatever they wanted out of that longing. She talks about how much her life improved when she started to demand respect for herself, but also how by then certain things about her life were already decided. And that's what brings her to her diagnosis. 

As with so many episodes of POSE, one writing lesson is about keeping the focus on the character's humanity. Illness stories can slide so easily into Sickness Porn or Ones To Grow On. Even if there's good intention in some such ideas, they're fundamentally dehumanizing.

 

But talking about "the character's humanity" is also another way of saying keep the focus on the character's choices. When it comes to AIDS, cancer, dementia, pregnancy, what have you, every story has already been told. The only thing that makes my story interesting is the specificity of my character's choices. Blanca's way of talking about her illness stands out so strongly precisely because it comes from who she is and what she wants for herself and her family.

 

POSE WEEK: BE TRUE TO THE WORLD OF YOUR STORY

POSE 106, written by show co-creator Ryan Murphy & Janet Mock, has a great storyline for Stan, the Trump employee with a wife and kids who’s seeing the transgender Angel on the side. All along his story has been really interesting. It’s never clear where exactly it’s headed or what exactly is going on with him.

 

Having found out what he's doing, his wife Patty tricks him into going with her to see a psychologist.  And the scene is very well crafted. Even as he’s betrayed her, Patty approaches him with a  kind of care that is atypical for these kinds of scenes, and the shrink too. 

 

Confronted with the question of what exactly his deal is in terms of orientation and attraction, Stan completely breaks down. He has no answer for them. He just keeps insisting he doesn't know. 

There's a version of this story where it's made clear in some way that he's in denial, his "I don't know" a way of saying "I don't want to know". But that's not the story POSE tells. Even as he gets further beats in the final two episodes of the season, he remains a mystery to us and to himself.

That ends up making for a much more satisfying resolution to his story.  In part it just has a greater ring of truth to it.  Scripts so often love to drive from mystery to some moment of self-awareness or articulation. But sometimes the greatest truth of all is the acknowledgement of our own limitations and confusion. 

 

But I think it also lands as well as it does because it's truer to the world of the show. POSE is about people owning who they are without having to justify themselves. The demand for explanations or "proof" is understood in this community as a form of violence, a means of silencing and rejecting people whose lives are different. The episode allows Stan his "I don't know" because that's the show. In a way it's right there in the episode title: "Love is the Answer".

 

Sometimes you're writing into that big moment of self-expression or revelation and you go round and round and nothing seems to work. There can be a lot of reasons for that. But POSE 106 makes me think one question to ask in that situation is, Is this moment that I'm writing true to this character, this world, etc.? Maybe I'm stuck because I'm actually breaking the rules of my story.

POSE WEEK: A WAKE LIKE THE ONES WE GO TO

It's been almost exactly twenty years since SIX FEET UNDER first debuted on HBO. (It debuted on Sunday, June 3, 2001 at 10pm EST, not that I'm keeping track or anything.) And while the show had many strengths, including maybe the greatest finale of any television show ever, its most lasting impact on television may lie in the way it wrote  dead people. 

On SIX FEET UNDER, someone dies at the beginning every episode. (It's a show about a funeral home, by the way.) In the first episode the victim is the patriarch of the family, Nathaniel Fisher, Sr., killed in a car accident on the way to pick up son Nate at LAX.

And yet his is not a BIG CHILL Kevin Costner situation. The character of Nathaniel shows up for years as a sort of independent daydream of his family members, sometimes mocking them, sometimes encouraging them, sometimes just doing his own thing. For instance:

Oftentimes the deceased of the week also end up interacting with the main characters in some way. The blurring between life and death, reality and fantasy became the show's signature. 

I'm sure other shows before SIX FEET UNDER also had characters talking to the dead occasionally. But since UNDER it's pretty much become the standard. And for good reason--having the dead reappear creates the possibility of deeply satisfying endings for different characters and  relationships. In the fourth episode of season two POSE has a wake scene that goes something like 40 minutes, and consists almost entirely of different characters getting to have a last conversation with the deceased. And it's wonderful; the character in question is allowed a freedom and a happiness that we never saw her have in life. Every scene sparkles. 

The Ghost Goodbye: it's high quality wish fulfillment material. We so rarely get those kinds of final goodbyes and resolutions in our lives.  

But in episode 105 of POSE, "Mother's Day", in which Blanca's mom dies, the show goes a different way. Blanca's mother is not a character we have ever met or heard about. It's part of the premise of the show really that everyone in the community has been orphaned by their families, who drove them away. 

And so the heart of the episode lies in the conflict between Blanca's desire to be there and the animosity she faces from her family in doing so. It's a well observed story that goes deep in its exploration of different points of view within Blanca's family. 

At the wake, writer/show creator Steven Canals makes the decision not to give Blanca the SIX FEET UNDER treatment. Instead, when she goes to the casket, she kneels and we simply hear what she's thinking. She tells her mom about her own family, the kids she's raising. She hopes her mother is proud of her now, and talks about their relationship. She forgives her mom for not being perfect. And other than a momentary cutaway the camera stays entirely on Blanca's face. 

Visually this is the least dramatic version of a casket scene. And yet I found it riveting, I think because it paints the moment in the way that you and I actually experience it, and pretty much nobody on television does. There it's either SIX FEET UNDER fireside fantasy chats; a quick moment spent at the casket followed by something else (oftentimes business about how the dead person doesn't look right); or there's no casket moment at all. Which is nuts when you think about it. There's no more concrete encounter with death (and shared by pretty much everyone) than that visit to the casket. 

I’m all for the more fantastic wake scenes.  I highly recommend POSE 204, written by Ryan Murphy and Janet Mock. The ending alone, which I don't want to spoil: Wow.

 

But I think for me the lesson watching 105 is how much power there can also be in offering a scene in just the way that we actually experience it. As boring as it may seem on paper, you don’t always need to add a bow or a layer of paint. The audience's ability to identify with a moment can grant it so much power all by itself.

The moment also reminds me of how essential it is to always be thinking about whose scene is this. We might be interested in who Blanca's mother was, and in seeing them interact--which is why elsewhere the episode delivers a few brief memories from Blanca. But the focus of this moment is Blanca's journey. After decades of being shunned, this is her moment to speak. And so we don't need to hear from her mother. In fact to do so might be to further undermine her.

 

POSE WEEK: HOW TO DO A CHRISTMAS EPISODE--BE REAL

Last night FX's POSE started its third and final season. It's a show that many have praised for the light it has shown on the transgender community of color in New York in the 1980s and 90s, also for the opportunities it has given transgender and queer artists both in front of and behind the camera.

But in addition to all of that, it's also a very well written show. So this week I'm going to look at some great writing ideas from the first two years of the show.

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You think of your classic TV Christmas episodes. The conceits line right up--wistful memories of childhood; absent friends; loss; family. 

 

In episode 103, "Giving and Receiving," written by Janet Mock and Our Lady J, POSE offers all of this. We've got Pray Tell and Damon's dance instructor Helena contending with loved ones dying of AIDS; Angel being given an apartment of her own by Stan, but then having to deal with him not showing up to be with her on Christmas; Elektra and her children stealing from a Salvation Army Santa so as to have the kind of Christmas they are accustomed to. 

 

(Okay that's not your classic Christmas episode, but it is classic POSE.)

 

But the heart of the episode are two scenes with Blanca and her family. In the first they tell stories of Christmases past as they decorate. In the second they're at Christmas dinner in a Chinese restaurant, their own meal having been completely messed up (another classic holiday show conceit) and Blanca gives them gifts. 

 

In one way, the thing that unites these scenes is their poverty. The family's recollections of Christmas are full of small wins and big losses, like Damon being able to dress up queerly without being beaten up by his father for once, or Angel stealing a high heel as a kid, only to be found out and her father never treating her the same. 

 

The gifts Blanca has for them are likewise anything but flashy--a backpack with socks; a Casio watch; a pair of high heels; a cheap camera. Not much, relatively speaking. 

 

And yet Ricky wipes away tears when he sees the watch; you wonder when was the last time he got a Christmas gift. And sharing their stories only makes us care more for them, and them for each other.

 

The episode begins with the sounds of A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS playing on TV. And it's a perfect choice. Because the heart of CHARLIE BROWN is the little tree, in a sad state and soon to die. At first the kids dismiss it, but in the end they're taken by its fragility. Precisely in its poverty they find beauty, strength and wonder. 

POSE brings that idea to the family as a whole. They are each that little tree, and stripping them down to that fragile core only reveals their beauty the more. 

For me, it's a great reminder not to be afraid to get really real with my characters. You won't lose the audience, you'll win them.