PARKS & REC WEEK: PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU HAVEN'T

There's an episode early in season four of PARKS & REC (408) where Ben and Ann Perkins call Leslie on the fact that she's such a steamroller, i.e. when she wants something she doesn't really listen to what anyone else wants. It's a quality in her we've seen again and again, but it's always been presented as something funny, so it's not something we've ever really thought of as worth exploring.

Just a few episodes later, in 413, we see Leslie freaking out over one negative assessment from a possible voter, just completely unable to accept it and let it go. And once again, the story is drawing on qualities of Leslie that we've known all along, her obsessiveness, drive and competitiveness, but now for the first time the show is really spotlighting those qualities as flaws to be explored. 

Over time, most shows develops their own kind of blind spots. They no longer quite see certain aspects of their characters. It's the challenge of something becoming familiar. You miss stuff. Or the show is just so in love with certain characters they lose perspective. It's totally naturally.

Some blind spots can become a real problem. Some, like Leslie's obsessiveness or Chris' intense positivity and obsession with health, the audience just goes along with, so much so that a show might never need to adjust. 

But even if they're benign, it's always worth looking for the blind spots in your show, the things about your characters that you've accepted without digging into them. Because they are a huge untapped mine for story. And not only that, exploring a blind spot after years of ignoring it is often enormously delightful for the audience. If it's something that's been bugging them, they get the satisfaction of you finally contending with it. (For some reason as I'm writing this I keep thinking of Jack on LOST, what a mess of a character he was, and how I got so tired of him being treated as The Hero in those early seasons, and then as the series went into its later seasons they finally accepted that and how much better things around him seemed to flow.)

And if it's something the audience themselves hasn't really noticed, it's often even more delightful because it comes as such a surprise. I've been with you all this time and I never even saw that. Episode 502 of PARKS, where they finally interrogate why Chris is so desperately positive and we learn (and even better, so does he) that it all comes from the fact he's afraid of dying, which sends him down a real and hilarious rabbit hole of doom, is a great example of this.

Similarly in episode 504, we dig into the fact that Ann always changes who she is to be more like whoever she's dating. It's a very funny idea that's been present the whole run of the show, and yet I never once noticed it, and the show never called attention to it. To have it finally brought into the light and realize wow, that's been there the whole time, how did I miss that, is again an endless source of delight. 

Blind spots: every show's got them. And yeah, they can get in the way. But they're such a great opportunity as well.

PARKS & REC WEEK: TREAT YO SELF TO SOME LISTS AND YES/ANDS

Today I thought I'd present one of my favorite sequences from PARKS & REC. It's also features what is almost certainly the most famous catch line of the show.

 

This one scene captures two fundamental techniques of PARKS & REC comedy.

First, it creates comedy by listing a series of funny things. One of PNR's fundamental and very effective comedic moves is simply to present a set of things that are hilarious. It's Andy randomly suggesting that some day maybe Chris will marry April, and then building out of it this series of insanely hilarious ways that he deals with it.  It's Ron's Pyramid of Greatness, which gives us a laundry list of funny ideas, like Rage, Property Rights and various kinds of proteins as part of what makes for a great life, and then also becomes the jumping off point for Ron to riff on various topics like fishing. (Ron lists are almost always connected to his philosophy of life.)

Leslie lists all the things she supports, Ben plays Cones of Dunshire, every single town hall, Patton Oswalt's Star Wars filibuster and pretty much any time Tom Haverford gets the chance to share business ideas are all other versions of the same trick. Lists of funny things are really funny. 

The scene above begins with a short version of that, as Donna and Tom list the ways you can treat yourself. And halfway through it returns to the game as we get to see them try on different outfits, listing every element as they go, while Ben looks on, dumbfounded. 

We work so hard to get a laugh, but sometimes it can come down to just making a funny list. 

Second, It Yes Ands. There's one version of Treat Yo Self which ends with Ben becoming like Donna and Tom. He's got a bag full of sparkly stuff he will only wear once, he's sipping champagne and singing "Best day of the year". And that could have been really funny. 

But instead, the writers do like Donna, asking what Ben's version would actually be. Which makes for a version of Treat Yo Self that is totally different, revelatory of Ben's interior life and actually funnier than what had come before. Weepy Batman is just one of the all-time wonderful ideas. 

To me, this is a form of the improv idea of Yes/And. We have this situation of people indulging themselves. Great: So what does Ben saying yes to that look like? And then, how do Tom and Donna respond to that? 

In some ways the most satisfying and surprising moment of the episode is Ben coming out dressed like Batman and Tom and Donna being into it. You need conflict to make a story compelling - and in this sequence, Ben's inability to enjoy himself creates pleasure. But agreement can also be so damn satisfying. 

 In part it's like going from the first to the fifth note of a chord--there's that same sense of completion. But also it's just so unexpected. Nothing about Tom in particular has signaled that he could understand what's really going on with Ben. But in fact when the costume comes out, Tom is right there. 

PARKS & REC really is the kind of show where you can sit with one episode or sequence and learn so much...  

[NOTE: This was supposed to drop yesterday and didn't. So I'm going to post one more tomorrow.]

 

PARKS & REC WEEK: THAT ONE THING aka WHO NEEDS A FUNNY HAT?

PARKS & REC is not a Greg Daniels show, but something that Mike Schur and the team clearly took from their years on Daniels' THE OFFICE is the idea of giving each character One Thing that is really specific and weird about them, a signature move that the show can keep returning to. 

There are big, meaty versions of this which can generate story for days and days--Tom's insane business ideas; Leslie's overwhelming generosity; Ron's alter ego; Chris' endless positivity; Jerry's total haplesssness. 

But by That One Thing I mean the garnishes, the little decorations happening around the edges. Like Leslie's obsession with waffles. Or the fact Chris tends to greet people using their full names, and absolutely always does Ann Perkins. Or the fact that Ben gets profoundly nervous when doing public speaking. Or the fact that Donna clearly has this whole other life going on. Or Jerry's loving family. 

These are the things that aren't so much story engines--although over time they can provide interesting new wrinkles--as they are ways of making the characters specific and interesting.They seem like background details, but they actually end up being the cherry on top, that one last brushstroke that takes a fine portrait and makes it goddamn gold. 

When I'm writing a script I'm often lost in the weeds of plot, dialogue, character arc. All good things. But from time to time you have to be like Georges Seurat. Step back and ask yourself, where does this painting need a monkey or a funny hat?

PARKS & REC WEEK (FOR REAL THIS TIME): THE JERRY

Hi. I'm back, with a week more of posts about PARKS & REC, which is one of my favorite sitcoms. Honestly this blog could be nothing but PARKS & REC posts. Half of them might be suggestively titled Duke Silver memes, but hey, who wouldn't love that? 

Today I want to talk about Jerry Gergich, aka Larry Gengurch, aka Lenny Gengurch, aka Terry Gengurch, aka eventually Garry Gergich, which despite being his real name I am not using because we don't even learn that until what, season 5? 6? He came to the big dance as Jerry, and that's what I'm calling him. 

There are many things to say about the Jerry of it all. First of all, it's such a crazy idea to take a show that is filled with wacky but fundamentally wonderful people, and then insert one character they all are so incredibly cruel toward. It's just so unexpected to see someone like Leslie be so irrationally mean; and that's what makes it so funny.

Which is in itself a great lesson: Give your characters a way to express parts of themselves that we won't see coming.  Because that stuff is gold for everybody. The audience loves to watch it, the actor  usually loves to play it and it's a lot of fun to write. 

Here's another Jerry lesson, what I would consider the main one: Crazy things get funnier the more you do them. Being mean to a nice person once is shocking (potentially). But being mean to the same person a hundred times is hilarious. 

I don't know why. I don't make the rules. It just is, especially if you can avoid being repetitious--which PARKS AND REC is astonishingly good at. I can't think of once where they repeated an attack against Jerry. Every time they went after him, they found out a different angle.  

It's something you see in improv a lot. When you feel like you're in a disaster, you've said the wrong thing, don't freak out. Lean into it. Do it more, or let your partner. It'll get funnier. 

(There's a fun writing exercise in here somewhere--pick the lamest joke or the dullest idea you can, use it at the top of a scene, either from something original or one of your favorite shows. Then no matter how bad it seems to go at first, force yourself to use it at least three more times in say, 2-3 pages. See what happens.)

Of course it's also true that Being mean to decent people is generally very funny (although if we're talking reality TV it's also generally awful, so please don't do it). 

I could go on and about Jerry (see: I could go on and on about PNR). But here's one more thing about his character that I really love: He becomes our means to having an inside joke about everyone else.

Pretty early in the Jerry is the Worst tapestry, the writers revealed that actually he has an amazing life in every way (truly, every way, ahem). Really, he has the life they all want. And the Pawnee members of the cast never recognize it, other than maybe Ron, who usually is not in on the Jerry hazing, and Ben, who isn't from Pawnee and therefore isn't under that spell, most of the time. 

The result is that every time the characters are mean to Jerry, we get to laugh not only at him, but at them. Their animosity exposes their own complete ridiculousness. For me it's the sitcom equivalent of that motif in scifi drama FRINGE where every episode there's a spooky looking dude somewhere in the background if you pay attention--another layer of entertainment going on, in other words, and placed there just for us.

That's not a thing you can pull off in every show, or should.  There are also really different ways of doing it; like every episode having a hidden reference to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER or a Sondheim lyric. 

It's just a question worth asking: Does my show have room for an inside joke? A game within the game?

THIS IS NOT MY BEAUTIFUL PARKS & REC WEEK (AKA WE INTERRUPT THIS BLOG FOR A MESSAGE FROM A GREAT WRITER)

Apologies for my absence. I've been moving and I thought somehow I would be able to keep this going in the midst of it all and that was crazy and also the story of my life. I am convinced that Past Me is an evil genius in a war with Future Me, and he is winning. 

I'm going to go back to PARKS & REC on Monday. But today I just wanted to mention this great comics writing seminar I attended led by Kieron Gillen, who I've mentioned here and think the world of. A list of much of his work, which you could download right this second. 

Go ahead, I'll wait...

While it's definitely true that comics writing is not TV writing is not novel writing is not that thing you wrote in your diary that you secretly hope people will discover after you die because it's really that good, it's also true that you can learn a ton about writing from writers who do things you don't. 

Kieron is always a worthwhile read/listen. For his fantastic THE WICKED + THE DIVINE book, which he co-created with artist Jamie McKelvie, he did reams of notes for every issue, and they are filled with good writing ideas that I have/will be stealing/writing about here. Find the start of them here.

Here are three big takeaways from the online lecture he did yesterday that I think are useful for us in screenwriting as well: 

1) Rather than worrying about how to break in, spend the time working on your craft so that when you do break in, you're ready.  Look, breaking in is important. It's the quest, baby. We're Gawain, it's the chalice, let's do this.  

But Gillen's point, which resonates so hard with me, is that you wouldn't want to get your shot and then not have your skills to the point where you can actually nail it and land the next gig, and the next gig. 

It sounds incredibly condescending to say, Don't worry about breaking in, it'll happen. So let's not say that. Let's do say that your hustle has to be matched by the hours spent at the keyboard writing writing writing. 

2) If you want to write for X, spend time reading/watching X and outline the hell out of how they do it. This is in a sense the premise of Craft Service. You want to write/be on a cop show. Cool cool cool. Now go watch all that/the cop shows. 

And don't just watch them--outline them. What are the main storylines -- A, B, C, D, E, F? 

How many scenes do each of those storylines get, and in what acts (if there are commercial breaks)? 

How many scenes do they have in each act (again, if there are acts)? 

What's the flow of the story? Are there patterns to what tends to happen at the end or beginning of certain acts? Like, just about every episode of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA starts with the "problem" of the episode, the thing or things that's going to be most pressing. If you were going to write on that show, you'd want to know that. 

Outline three, four episodes and suddenly you've got a structure of your own to work with. And you'll see the show in a whole new way, too. This is not always great for enjoying a show, but it can create a different kind of pleasure. It can be exciting to see a pattern get broken or played with. It's like you're suddenly getting to hear jazz. 

Outline outline outline. 

3) ICYMI:

I'm sure you're a wonderful person. Just the best. Yeah, you! 

Now, have you confronted the fact that you are also a parasite yet?

For me it happened during a five minute conversation with a Very Famous Person (sort of) -- if I told you his name you'd go, Wait, did he do--? And I'd go, Yeah. And you'd probably go, Oh cool. What's his deal?). 

I was trying to convince him that the stuff he's known for would make an amazing story, and I really believed that I had an appreciation of what he was up to that is more than most. I've watched every interview, read the books, that kind of thing. 

But as I was making my pitch and seeing his almost total disinterest I realized, Oh God, I'm not John the Baptist, here to prepare the way for the teachings of Jesus, I'm that disciple you never heard about, because he was just there for the free dinners and maybe help with his lumbago. 

Whether you're working in TV, film or some other form of writing the truth is the same: They--the artist, the director, the showrunner, the audience--do not need you. Even if your stories are shiny and amazing (which if they are, congratulations for that), there are other shiny and amazing writers and shiny and amazing stories to read/watch/play/do. wah wah

So proceed from humility. And, if you can, from a place of generosity. Be a nice human and let the karma flow.

Which is sort of what PARKS & REC is about, see this isn't off topic at all, yeah, that's the ticket, but I promise I'll be back Monday with  more anyway.

PARKS & REC WEEK: FIND YOUR SAMMY SKOBELS

This month I'm looking at writing techniques in sitcoms. This week, PARKS & REC!

When I was growing up in the NW suburbs of Chicago, there was this hot dog place in my town that everybody went to. You pretty much had go to there, in fact, because it was run by a local hero, a legally blind roller derby champion named Sammy Skobel. 

He was basically our town's version of Stan Lee. You'd go in and there he'd be, this old grandpa figure making hot dogs and talking. He rode his bike to work, some people said he'd also played professional hockey...he was a legend. 

I rewatched PARKS & REC over the pandemic -- and thank God for it, that show is like an injection of joy. And one of the first things that hit me is just how much material the writers produce just from thinking about the kinds of stuff that goes on in towns. 

A very very partial list: empty lots; fall festival; town movie night; park clean up; Cub Scouts/Brownies; time capsules; local zoo; local news; taxes; elections; local businesses; pollution; farmer's markets; town slogan; murals; flu season; competition with the town next door; town hall meetings; town history; flouride in the water; high school issues and events (like Model U.N.).

Some of these ideas provide material for a single episode. A lot of them prove to be a never-ending wellspring -- and not always the ones you would think. The pilot episode talks about what to do with an ugly empty pit, and then spends almost the entire life of the show fighting step by step for it to finally become a park. 

The show also offers a clever variation on this kind of brainstorming, taking national issues like gay marriage, the amount of sugar allowed in fast food, election dynamics or the carte blanche given to tech companies, and then playing them out on the local stage--as of course they do play out. 

A lot of the Daniels/Schur/Goorverse shows seem to work like this. THE OFFICE is filled with stuff that actually happens in offices, BROOKLYN 99 with police stations (-ish), and THE GOOD PLACE with notions of the afterlife. 

But you could say the same with FRIENDS in terms of stuff that people do or talk about or get wrapped up in in friendships (like going to your friend's open mics, or the friend who loves his job so much and it is so boring to listen to, or the weird dude at the coffee shop), or MODERN FAMILY about family hijinks, etc. etc. And in the best cases the ideas are super specific, just like the events of our own towns or families. 

So when you get on a show -- when, not if! -- take some time to brainstorm. We may not know it, but we are each in our own life experience a gold mine of stories and ideas.

TED LASSO WEEK: THE FINALE AS PAYOFF

This month I'm looking at writing techniques in four different sitcoms. This week, Ted Lasso!

There's a million ways of putting together a successful season of a series. But for me, one of the most satisfying approaches is to see the finale payoff not just storylines of the season but as many elements of the pilot as it can. 

As I wrote in March, the pilot for TED LASSO crystallizes around one idea: that the most important thing is that people (and also ghosts) believe in themselves. And all through the season we see Ted coaching out of that philosophy. And in the finale we're given tons of examples of the payoff, starting with Nate, the very first person that Ted tried to encourage in the pilot, now not only promoted to assistant coach but celebrated by the entire team.

Then the heart of the quest of the episode proves to be Ted trying to find a strategy to win with absolutely no luck, until he decides to turn to the team and have them teach each other trick plays. And the trick play that almost wins them the game, which admittedly comes from Ted himself, ends up requiring the commitment and action of literally every member of the team. 

(Also it presents as a football play. Ted spends the whole season being belittled for being an American football coach, and then here at the end that's what gets them their goal.)

And when the team loses, what is Ted's refrain to them but to look to each other. They've each gone from another guy on the team to someone the others can look to and count on.

It's all a brilliant payoff of the pilot's promise. And that's in a sense what a finale is--the debt come due. You said you were going to give me a great show about X; hopefully you've done that all along the way. But in the finale there's that extra expectation of fulfillment.

Even the team's brutal loss after Jamie's last second pass to a teammate is really a fufillment of Ted's Believe in Yourself strategy. After spending the first half of the season fighting to break through to Jamie, and then discovering that the heart of his obnoxious egocentrism is the fear and anxiety he got from his father, here in the finale Jamie finally trusts enough to not be ruled by that anxiety and do the thing Ted had been trying to get him to do all along. 

(And he pays for it, too; that glimpse of his father shouting at him is, along with everything to do with Rebecca's ex, maybe the roughest moment in the whole season.)

There are so many other payoffs from the season in the finale. The pilot opens with Rebecca firing one coach and hiring another who she can be sure will tank the team, and ends with Ted quitting so that Rebecca won't have to fire him, only to have her insist he's the one they need.

The kid on the plane who takes a picture of himself with Ted on his phone and says what a disaster Ted is going to be returns in the finale to do the same thing to Jamie, with the added twist that he also shows Jamie video of Ted praising him.

In the pilot Ted and Coach Beard kid about how much angrier Roy is going to be once they win him over, and in the finale he's absolutely there, going nuts over Ted's insistence that he has to be the one who picks the next team captain, while Coach Beard looks on with glee.

After he gets injured stopping a kick Sam rushes over to him and helps him up, just as Roy did for Sam earlier in the season, with the same advice about playing it for the crowd. And later after they lose Ted asks Sam to tell the team about the virtues of being a goldfish after the loss, just as he had told Sam. And just as Keeley showed up about two thirds of the way through to pick up Jamie in the pilot, she comes to the locker room at about the same time in the finale to comfort Roy.

The finale of TED LASSO would have been great even without all these callbacks. It's such a well-written show. But with every bookend you create another sense of completion, another kind of payoff.  

TED LASSO starts its second season on Apple TV on July 23rd. Can't wait.

Next week in Sitcom Month: Lessons Learned from Parks & Rec!

TED LASSO WEEK: GETTING SERIOUS IN A COMEDY

This month I'm looking at writing techniques in  sitcoms. This week, Ted Lasso!

There's another big element to episode 106, written by Bill Wrubel, that very much begs a "How Did They Do That?" and that is the end sequence where everyone involved with the team puts a precious thing in a garbage can to be burnt, so as to remove the curse on the p.t. room. 

It's one of my favorite moments in the  season--which is saying something, because this season has a lot of great moments--and the reason is that it provides so many different characters with a chance to reveal something and develop further, including a number of characters that up until this point have been mostly in the background. Like, who is that guy with the sand from the beach where he first slept with a super model? I don't know, but after that scene I love him and need more of him. 

We get the guys from Jamie's thug squad, who haven't had much to do otherwise up until this point, Rebecca and Higgins, Roy and Jamie themselves, and also cutaways to everyone else we've never met.

Here's the thing -- it's a scene that gets me all choked up repeatedly (even on rewatching). Jaime's story about his mum and dad is absolutely devastating on a number of levels. But so is Sam burning the picture of the 1994 Nigerian World Cup team, which he had promised to keep up until he made the team, or Higgins talking about a beloved cat, even Roy talking about his blanket, for God's sake. 

But TED LASSO is not a drama, or even a dramedy. It's a sitcom. And so being able to get to an extended heartfelt moment and make it land is very much not guaranteed. On SEINFELD, this scene only works if Jerry and the others completely undermine it. On FRIENDS they can burn stuff but there's going to be a lot more ridiculous stuff than serious. Even on PARKS & REC, which has its own heartfelt streak, this scene does not play out the same way. (But it does involve everyone shaming Jerry.)

So why does it work on TED LASSO? 

Obviously, just like "The New Kid", part of it is about fit. The pilot sets up the show as simultaneously funny and heart on your sleeve hopeful in a non-ironic way. That alone paves the way to do things like these kinds of character reveals, or the truly painful journeys of Rebecca and Ted with their exes/spouses. The pilot (and often the couple episodes that follow) are so important in establishing the rules of a show.  

It's also worth noting that the sequence in 106 is really built out of a standard comedic sport story, the curse/superstitions. I have no idea how the TED LASSO writers' room began its work, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear that writers had sat down beforehand and brainstormed various funny stories that you often see in sports stories, with an eye toward how they could generate their own TED LASSO version. Even if the end result here is more serious than this conceit normally plays out, still inherent in the idea is a certain humor. 

Rewatching the scene, you also see how Wrubel does a great job of injecting comedy in ways that you barely notice along the way. Roy calls his blanket "blankie" and freaks out when others comment on it. Sandman Richard's sand is inherently silly, and yet he weeps about it. (And we get a shot of Rebecca behind him rolling her eyes.) Nate's "Clive Owen" sunglasses work the same way; it's an absurd object, and yet he is so emotionally wrought by the idea of destroying them that he has to be encouraged by the others to go through with it.

Higgins' cat collar, which to me is a quietly poignant story, ends on the revelation that her name was Cindy Clawford. Likewise, Rebecca burning the paper is a pretty straightforwardly emotional thing, especially for us, who know what her ex is putting her through. But then she ends on "Fuck the haters," which while not exactly funny changes the tenor of the moment to something less sad and more positive.

Colin, who goes last, sees burning his car keys as a similarly meaningful sacrifice, except then, as Coach Beard says, "How are you getting home?" And the sequence ends with Ted saying let's burn this, then, only to be prevented from probably lighting the whole stadium on fire by Coach Beard, who says, anxiously, "Maybe we should do this part outside."

Truly,  every single beat of that sequence has a set up/punchline structure--even if in some cases the punchline turn is not exactly (or in the case of Sam and Jaime even slightly) ha ha funny. 

So even as the revelations are moving and character revealing there are tons of jokes sprinkled along the way, and the structure both as a whole and within its individual units is very much comedic. In a sense the real genius of its writing is in the fact that you neither question its place in the show, nor are aware of how much comedic work it's doing along the way.

TED LASSO WEEK: THE NEW KID

This month I'm looking at writing techniques in  sitcoms. This week, Ted Lasso!

Halfway through its first season, TED LASSO introduces a new player, Danny Rojas, who has apparently been injured up to this point. 

Immediately he steals the show with his nonstop enthusiasm and constant refrain that "Football is life", which somehow only get more wonderful the more times he says it. 

About halfway through the episode he's injured again, and for a moment it seems like he was just a guest star for the episode.But no, he's here for the duration. 

First seasons are always a time of experiment and discovery, so introducing a character like this halfway through the season is not completely unheard of. But it's pretty unusual.

For me the bigger trick is making a character like that gel with everything else going on, to make him feel right away like a fun new part of this world rather than something out of nowhere. How do they do that?

A couple things stand out: First, Danny is a perfect foil for Jaime. Jaime is self-centered, sour, and kind of dreadfully serious. Danny shows up and he's the opposite--he's playful, he's friendly, he's generous. His presence married to his talent immediately challenges Jaime's way of proceeding. 

Danny is also more or less the epitome of the Ted Lasso School of Life. He puts positive energy out into the world and believes that good things will happen, and they do. And much like Ted, success for Danny doesn't seem to be a function of winning so much as playing. His motto isn't Winning is Life, but Football is Life. 

And at the same time, he's not a Lasso clone. Instead he fills a classic sports story role the squad doesn't have yet--"the new kid".

So even as he seems to show up out of the blue, the character slides right in because the writers conceived of him in conversation with the broader story and themes of the show. Also, he's a hell of a lot of fun, which never hurts.

The next time you can't stand a character on a show, it's worth stepping back to consider whether part of the problem is that question of whether they've been designed to fit.

Weird LOST flex (and weirder still the second in two days!): In the third season the show introduced Nikki and Paolo, two of the rest of the survivors of Flight 815. To my mind it was a great idea; I spent the whole show hoping we'd get to meet more of the survivors, even if just as minor characters. But people HATED them. HATED them. 

And the complaints seemed to settle around three things: They were not likable. Their backstory was yet another criminal/con job story. And their lives never seemed to really intersect with anybody else's. 

Each of those complaints is really about fit. They felt like both a repeat beat and a dangling plot thread. And so they couldn't stay. Those kids ain't right.

TED LASSO WEEK: THE PROTAGONIST AND THE SIDEKICK

This month I'm looking at writing techniques in four different sitcoms. This week, Ted Lasso!

In the spring I did a post on the WGA-nominated pilot of TED LASSO. It's an excellent pilot to look at, and an interesting one, too. We learn who Ted Lasso is through the choices he makes, as you would hope. But those choices are not the big, dramatic or risky kinds of things you might find in other pilots. Nor do the yield a series of complications that force other choices and push the character farther. 

Ted keeps getting obstacles thrown in his path, and he responds to them all in exactly the same way -- with positivity and acceptance. Really, until very late in the season the main conflicts of the series happen not to Ted but to other people -- to the players he challenges to change or step up, and to his boss Rebecca, who is regularly confronted by her atrocious, humiliating ex-husband and the struggle between her desire to punish him by ruining the team and the reality that Ted is a great guy who only makes the players and the club better. 

In a strange way, though it's clearly Ted's show, for most of the season he's mainly the show's antagonist, his positivity and maturity an obstacle and challenge to everyone else's plans. 

(Weird aside: If you ever wondered, how do you a modern day take on Jesus or some other saintly figure without it being nonsense, I think this is it. 

Weirder still, I think you could probably also use it as an example of how to do a show about the devil.)

Ted is accompanied to Britain by his coaching partner, Coach Beard. And his character is equally interesting. In many sitcoms your main character has a buddy or buddies who they can both play off of and talk to, and Coach Beard certainly fits that bill. He's the guy who knows what Ted needs before he says it. He's the guy who does the research not just on soccer but on British lingo so that Ted can learn how to navigate that world. At important moments later in the season he's the guy who can call Ted on his blindspots and in that way draws Ted into deeper personal territory. 

Part of what makes him worth paying attention to is the way his buddy roles are crafted in such a way as to add laughs. So for instance he's the hand that comes out of nowhere to stop Ted from crossing the street after he's looked the wrong way. "Gotta look right, Coach." Or Ted is listing ridiculous insults his son makes when he's angry and forgetting one he turns to Coach Beard, who immediately comes out with "Pee Pee Fingers." Or when Ted and Roy keep going back and forth over who the new captain should be, Beard's silent reactions keep getting bigger and bigger, until it suddenly ends with this: 

It's like he just saw a perfect game.

In each of those cases, his activity is mostly supporting the story of the protagonist and adding to the broader comedy of it all, in the vein of a great sidekick.

But the writers and co-creator/actor Brendan Hunt give Beard all these incredibly specific details. He is almost entirely silent in the series -- which is in and of itself just a huge gift to the show. Silent characters hold our attention and also provide a great vehicle for background comedy. His reactions to things at times are just priceless. 

At the same time, Coach will occasionally scream a response in a crazily strangled voice. He carries on what seems to be a torrid romance via chess matches. And he makes out of nowhere hard rock references, but then his karaoke choice is this: 

Each new data point is hilarious in and of itself, and the pieces all together don't exactly add up. The longer I watch LASSO the more baffled I am by Coach Beard, and that is exactly what makes him so wonderful. Even as he's Ted's rock, he's also the joke that you never see coming, a utility infielder that the writers can use any time they need to punch things up or queer the pitch. He is the mustard on the ball. 

Or to put it another way (because I have no business making sports metaphors): he's the gap that viewers get to fill in for themselves. So many great stories ask you to do some of the work, to put some of the elements together yourself. And even as that can be challenging at times, it's also really satisfying. It's a chance for us to participate in the building of the story. 

(Random reference: most people who watched LOST say the worst episode was the one where you learned the backstory on Jack's tattoo. There's plenty of good reasons to feel that way, but I think the fundamental error was the writers thinking they needed to explain it at all. That tattoo was a constant contradiction with Jack's uptight character. It was something that did not compute. And it made him much more interesting -- it was an invitation for us to dig in and fascinate over it for ourselves.)

It's a great balancing act that the writers and Hunt have created in Beard. He's so kooky he could be just the punchline. But first and foremost he's Ted's support and truth teller; some would argue in fact that his "winning matters" harangue is one of the show's greatest moments. And so he's never just the punchline or the sidekick; instead those two roles he plays end up leavening one another, making him seem both funnier and more heartfelt.

PRIDE MONTH MOVIE WEEK: HAPPIEST SEASON

HAPPIEST SEASON, written by Clea DuVall and Mary Holland, offers some great writing lessons both in what it does well and in its struggles. 

On the positive side, the film offers two really strong queer characters in John and Riley, protagonist Abby's best friend and her girlfriend Harper's former lover. John in a sense plays the classic queer comic relief best friend role. He's Rosie O'Donnell and Rupert Everett rolled into one, by turns killing Abby's fish and providing her with solid, solid advice. 

Riley, too, occupies a sort of wise queer person space, but emerging from a really unusual take on a classic role, that of the old boyfriend/girlfriend. Typically that role is an obstacle to the main relationship -- either there are still sparks or the character is trying to undermine things. Riley is interested in none of that. In fact she's pretty careful early on about what she reveals of her history with Harper, specifically so as not to be any kind of spoiler. 

 I think what ends up making her so interesting--truly, every scene she's in she steals the film--is that it's very clear she has a life of her own. Her character in a sense illustrates the power of Playing Hard to Get -- as much as we're here for the drama of it all, we also love the character who doesn't care about any of that.

She and John also have in common a sense of acceptance about the messiness of life. When Abby says she thought Harper was one thing and now she thinks she's something else, Riley's answer that "Maybe she's both" really turns your head. Again, wisdom is not an uncommon trait either for the friend of the romcom lead or for the queer friend. But in a sense the truth that both John and Riley have to share comes from an awareness of our flaws and internal ambiguity that you don't often see in the straight versions of this film. 

 

The other side of the coin is, the main relationship is deeply problematic, I think both because the film tries too hard to adhere to certain romcom moves, and because it doesn't dig deep enough into its main character. In a sense the film is an I LOVE LUCY storyline -- Harper has a secret that Abby has to help her keep it, while things get more and more complicated. Except in an I LOVE LUCY story the secret that Lucy wants Ethel to help her keep doesn't end up diminishing Ethel in any way, while Abby having to keep hiding not only that Harper is gay but that they're in a relationship is really a punch in the face at every turn. 

It might be different if the film had begun by giving us a moment where we see how much Harper appreciates her, or got a real taste of how cool their relationship is, so we'd have a "them" to root for. But instead the film begins with Harper trying to convince Abby -- whose parents are dead -- to love Christmas, only to then force her into this Christmas experience that is so humiliating. (Her parents actually accuse her of stealing something, and Harper does not back her. I mean, Jesus.) 

The other side of this is, where you'd expect the film's main arc to be the protagonist's, and our focus to be on their journey,  we never get to dig too deeply into why Abby is so willing to take this kind of crap. She's really the trope of the accepting long suffering girlfriend. In a sense that's part of why John and Riley pop so much; through both their advice and the way they live their lives they're the ones who offer to Abby the possibility that her life doesn't have to be like this.When she finally near the end tells John she doesn't want to wait for Harper to get ready, she wants to be with someone who is ready now you want to leap up and cheer. Finally, she's cast her assigned role off. If only the film had ended with that... 

There's an I LOVE LUCY lesson in this as well. Every crazy thing that Lucy does and goes through always is presented with an eye toward how those choices and events affect her. That's where the joy and the comedy lies, in us watching her have to deal with these things, and the hilarious things they reveal about her. In HAPPIEST SEASON, we follow Abby as she is confronted with these things, but it never really seems reveal anything new about her. It's more like, and will she accept this new crazy thing that Harper and her family ask of her? Why, yes she will.

Every obstacle should spur new choices and offer new revelations of our hero's character.  

++

It's been great writing about queer stories this last month. For the month of July I'm turning to comedy. I'm going to take four shows -- TED LASSO, PARKS & REC, RUTHERFORD FALLS and one to be named later -- and do a week of looking at techniques in each. 

See you then!

PRIDE MONTH MOVIE WEEK: SUPERNOVA

I know it's July now but there's a couple more recent queer movies I want to write about. Today I'm going to do SUPERNOVA and tomorrow I'm going to do THIS HAPPIEST SEASON -- because nothing says the Fourth of July weekend like a queer Christmas movie.

In a perfect world/somewhere down the road I'd also be writing about UNCLE FRANK, MATCH and PRIDE, all of which are very worth watching. 

But today it's SUPERNOVA, Harry Macqueen's 2020 film about Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci as Sam and Tusker, a gay couple on a road trip to see family while struggling with Tusker's growing dementia.  

The first half of the film is all about their trip to visit Sam's sister and the concert that Sam is going to do. But then we get a classic midpoint handoff/switcheroo, where we find out that the concert is actually just a distraction to get Sam out of the way while Tusker kills himself. 

Midpoints are so essential in keeping our interest in a story alive. And they work best when they offer the kind of extra layer and reorientation that SUPERNOVA provides. After that point we're still headed to the concert, but the story is radically different now and with much higher stakes for both characters. 

All of which is to say, if you want a good exmaple of how to do midpoints well, this is a film to watch. 

The other thing I really love is the family dinner scene around which the midpoint occurs. it's such a long scene--really it's half dozen scenes or more, but even so it goes on a lot longer than these kinds of scenes normally do. You can feel a hundred studio execs wanting to cut the hell out of it. And yet it works really really well as is. 

I think I've mentioned this before, but it's been a while. A number of the cast of the third season of TWIN PEAKS told stories about how David Lynch would totally throw them by asking them to go slower. Not that they were rushing to begin with, they were just doing TV like TV is normally done. You don't want anything to drag. And instead Lynch's atittude was like, Oh I want all the drag.

And the thing that happens in that season that is so interesting is that the actors discover all these additional layers of emotion and desire because they go slower. If you haven't seen the third season, it is so worth it to see how some of these moments play out. Someone will be like, sweeping a floor, and you're like, why am I watching this? But then the longer it goes on the more interesting it gets, just by virtue of the time that's spent there. 

The dinner scene in SUPERNOVA is a lot more straightforward than TWIN PEAKS, but it's the same principle at work. Let the scene be as long as it wants to be, and see what you uncover. Maybe in the end you realize, I don't need all this after all.  But other times, maybe you've found something really special. 

If you do watch SUPERNOVA, you'll also get the benefit of moments like this, which are truly wonderful. Tucci and Firth are so good together.