STATION ELEVEN OFFERS A FRESH WAY TO DO A REUNION STORY

In a way every story is a reunion story (okay, not all, but many). Characters meet only to be separated in some way by life or their own choices, and the tale to come is about them finding their way back together (or failing to do the same). It's Odysseus trying to get home to Penelope; it's Kim and Jimmy trying to stay together as a couple; it's Tony and Maria trying to get away. 

Separation and reunion are a natural engine for story; take two lovable characters and separate them, and the audience is immediately all in on that journey. It's like magnets, really; once you've established a legitimate connection between two characters, all we want is for them to be together. 

The problem is how to keep that separation alive in a way that remains grounded and believable. So many reunion stories end up stretching things out far too long and run the engine into the ground. 

I call this the HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER problem. Pilot episode, we're told that this is the story of how young architect Ted Mosby met the mother of his children, to whom he is speaking in the future. The fact we haven't met the mother yet offers a fun twist, but still, it's a reunion show. 

But then the show waits NINE SEASONS to reveal the identity of the mother. It takes 208 episodes, in fact, all the way to the finale itself. No show could sustain that idea for so long. 

Even a ten episode arc can feel like a hot mess of forced separation. And meanwhile the audience is spending all its time trying to figure out how the characters will get back together, which is great in that it means you've engaged your audience, huzzah! But if you don't land the reunion well, all that energy invested sours into hostility. 

Enter STATION ELEVEN. The pilot is built around 20something Jeevan Chaudhary meeting a little girl Kirsten and then trying to shepherd home while the world is falling down around them. But somewhere between the pilot and the second episode we learn that something terrible happened to Jeevan very early on. And so we spend the series waiting to find out what happened--a sort of reunion arc, but where the reunion is with death. 

Then in the penultimate episode "Dr. Chaudhary", written by Will Weggel and Patrick Somerville, we discover that what we've learned is wrong, Jeevan did not die. And suddenly out of nowhere the finale is a reunion episode. And that's a lot more manageable to pull off. In fact, the surprise and joy of finding Jeevan legitimately surviving 109-the writers do a great job of earning that survival with the suffering and challenge he faces--means that we enter into 110 eager for the reunion in a whole different way. Instead of figuring out how it's going to happen, we spend the time excited for each of them and what their reunion will mean for them. Rather than detectives, we're more like friends at the surprise party. 

And still the writers makes the moment of the reunion a surprise, by having Kirsten so focused on her comic and the girl she's showing it too we're no longer thinking of Jeevan, and having the traveling band singing a song nearby for their dead conductor, so that when Kirsten turns to them it's completely natural and Jeevan's presence totally not what we're expecting.

It's such a great bit of sleight of hand. 

There's more reunion engine work in STATION ELEVEN--one character who you definitely think is going to be reunited with the rest who never is--which is another way the show keeps us from thinking about the idea of Jeevan and Kirsten ever reuniting; another who you don't even realize is on a reunion arc; and the "Station Eleven" comic book itself, which is reunited with so many different people in the final episodes.

Reunion Engines--they really can be great for story. But they're tricky to maintain. If you're looking for some fresh ideas, definitely check out STATION ELEVEN.

STATION ELEVEN GIVES US THE KEY

I've just gotten into HBO Max's STATION ELEVEN, which tells the story of a young girl who survives a pandemic from multiple points of view and time jumping back and forth between the immediate before and after times and 20 years later. 

The third episode, "Hurricane" focuses not on Kristin, but on Miranda, who created the comic book "Station Eleven" that Kristin and others will be obsessed with their whole lives. In the pilot Young Kristin meets her a couple days before everything went crazy, and gets the comic book from her ex-husband, with whom she is starring in a Chicago stage production of KING LEAR.

In 103, written by Shannon Houston, we get to see Miranda's life, and where that moment with Kristin and her ex fits in. 

Early in the episode, we see her applying for a job in logistics. And the episode takes a moment for her boss to explain what logistics is--not just the path for goods to travel, but the right path, which may very well be much longer and more involved. It's presented in a memorable way, her boss correcting her and using a pencil and a pens as a visual way of explaining the idea. 

The more real estate (aka minutes) you see a movie or TV show dedicating to a character, a scene or an idea, the more that character, scene or idea gains in significance --or should. If you have a super long scene it better be super important to the story. (Think: the last scene in the BETTER CALL SAUL 509. Lalo shows up to have Jimmy explain what happened in the desert again, and Kim steps up to force him to back down. That scene is enormous, and it's also fundamental to the evolution of the show and the character of Kim.)

So, doing all this business about logistics near the top means that as I as a viewer go forward into the episode, I'm thinking about that. And it becomes this really useful interpretive key for Miranda--both her past with her partner Leander and her present as she tries to escape from Malaysia as the pandemic descends. In the case of her escape the right route ends up being incredibly circuitous;  in the case of her ex, she discovers too late that she made things much more complicated than they needed to be--although I'll bet by the end of the series we're going to discover that the longer route is somehow the right one once again. In fact I'll bet this idea of logistics is going to pop back up as way of understanding everyone's journey, that no matter how awful it all seemed in the moment, that this was the right way to where they were going. 

Not every episode, show or character lends itself to offering an interpretive key like this. But I do find that done well, they can really enhance the storytelling. We the audience are engaged almost like detectives or treasure hunters by the writers, the key the magnifying glass we use to see the deeper layers and themes of the story. 

A helpful exercise: Even if you don't think your show works in this way--which is totally fine--try to come up with a key for your main characters. Miranda's life is about dealing with logistics, finding the right path. What is your main character's life about? And two or three other characters? Even if you don't make that explicit in the text, just knowing it can really help hone the choices and dialogue of the character.

LEARNING FROM A SHOW'S MISTAKES: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA MAKES ITS WOMEN GO CRAZY

I've been doing a rewatch of the last two seasons of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA this last week. Once it gets into that fourth season the show is really hitting on all cylinders again. But one thing I keep noticing that is really true of the show as a whole is that it relies frequently on the trope of the Hysterical Woman. 

Time and again, the story of women on BSG involves them just losing their minds in one way or another. That's basically Boomer's whole story in Season One, her being unable to control herself and eventually trying to kill Adama. It's Callie's story in Season Two, when she gets so mad she kills Boomer, and again in Season Four, where she decides to kill herself and her baby because she's found some shocking stuff. It's also Dee's story in Season Four, when she, too, decides to kill herself after the Earth they end up on doesn't turn out to be what they hoped. It's also Tory's story in season four, when she suddenly awakens to a new sense of self and starts hitting on pretty much every man she meets. 

It's Deana's story in season three, when she keeps killing herself--huh, look at that theme keep popping up--because she just knows there's something important to learn in her between-life dreams. It's often Caprica Six's story. (It's interesting, the Caprica Six that Baltar is often hallucinating is NEVER hysterical, always bold and strong, whereas the real one and some of her clones are often suddenly fragile or scared.)

And so, so very often, it is Starbuck's story. She is constantly making decisions that make no sense to no one else, and getting in shouting matches with Lee or Adama for it.  Sometimes those decisions pay off, but even when they do, in the process she absolutely seems insane, none worse than the time she kills herself--there it is again--because her instincts tell her there's something more for her. While that is confirmed--huzzah!--it's pretty quickly revealed thereafter that she's going to be lead humanity to its doom.

Other times her emotional flips are presented as far less coherent. She meets Sam, falls in love with him so hard she insists on going back to Caprica for him--which is itself viewed as a crazy decision--then ends up cheating on him with Lee, repeatedly, and despite the fact he, too, is married. 

And along the way she brawls physically with Lee and also Adama, who in one season four episode literally takes her and throws her to the ground. Adama also renounces his affection for her (more than once, I think), which in some ways ends up being more violent as he is really all the parent she has. And in every case, there's no sense of those men being in the wrong in any way. No, even though we sympathize with Kara, still, she's the problem here. 

I go back and forth whether to include Roslyn in this category or not. She's definitely a strong, stable character, and a fine one. But she does have this spiritual streak which requires everyone to trust her in ways that there is no way they should. As with Starbuck, these risks are eventually vindicated in the short term, but also undermined near the end, when Earth is revealed to be a radioactive dump. (And what does she do then? She makes the very emotional choice to just walk away from everything she'd be working toward, until Adama is in danger.)

There are some crazy men on the show, too -- Baltar, Lee, Gaeta. But with the exception of Baltar, their craziness is more self-contained. Lee has a suicidal moment. Gaeta leads an insurrection, but honestly it's incredibly well thought out and rational. And much of Baltar's craziness is balanced out with our knowledge he is having actual visions, that he is being led by some kind of spirit. Really he's just a slime ball who is terrified of being found out for what he did. Kara and Laura's leaps meanwhile are much more intuitive and uncertain.

I'm someone who loves BSG, and would like to be able to say that madness or hysteria is in part in service of the show's themes about faith and overcoming one's assumptions about other beings. They seem mad because they're so out of step with those around them, but in the end they're vindicated. Except Dee isn't. Callie isn't. Boomer isn't. In fact Callie and Boomer's stories are more or less wrecked after their initial bouts of insanity. The show has no clue really what to do with them after that. Callie becomes the shrill, needy wife (as does Dee, at times); Boomer drifts from dumb insurgent leader to sex toy of the Ones. 

Even Starbuck is really harmed by the trope eventually. You want her to find some kind of stability and sense of identity, for sure, you want her to end on a win. But her stories get so tired. She's the best pilot on the force, she's got bravado for miles and yet over and over again the story finds a way to once again undermine her strengths in favor of mental and emotional instability.

At some point the trend with her and the other characters is obvious and disturbing.

If you're looking for a little suggestion today, look to the women or other minorities in a script you've done. Do their choices ever revolve around them losing their mind in some way? See if you can find another way forward.

LEARNING FROM A SHOW'S MISTAKES: JOSS WHEDON BURIES HIS GAYS

This week I'm looking at some problematic techniques that TV shows will sometimes use to deal with story issues. In some ways today's is a subset of yesterday's concept of fridging, or killing a female or minority character in order to advance the story of the protagonist (who is almost always white, male and straight). 

But "burying the gays" is slightly broader, in the sense that it's not just about motivating other characters, but who a show chooses to have die or be killed. If a show needs to lose a character and there is a queer character on the show, they are much more likely to be the one to go, and they are going to get killed.

You might think that's an old trope. The Joss Whedon reference goes back to 2002 and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. The show had one of its leads slowly come to realize she's a lesbian, gave her a relationship with a great queer woman--and then randomly killed that queer woman (in this case to move the story along). 

(It also goes back to this recent Vulture profile/interview with him, which offers by his very sad and at times shocking example a lot of insight into how not to treat your fellow writers, cast, crew or family. Wow is it not good.)

But even as society seems to have advanced in its understanding of respect for homosexuality, writers have kept burying the gays. The technique was used 5 times in 2020 according to this study of the phenomenon, 11 times in 2019 and at least 215 times in TV shows overall. 

I'm willing to accept that on some shows, like THE WALKING DEAD or GREY'S ANATOMY, the issue is not so cut and dry. They're just shows where a lot of people die, and so yeah, gays gonna die too. 

But when we get to BUFFY, where Tara was randomly shot, or ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, which killed three queer characters in three years, there's an issue. Intriguingly, both those shows were generally praised for their depiction of queer characters. ORANGE actually won GLAAD awards for best comedy three years in a row. (Then they started burying the gays.)

I think it's important to note that seeming contradiction. It shows just how rooted the trope is in modern storytelling, and how deeply buried the internalized homophobia goes. 

That's the issue here, and really it's much the same as experienced by people of color in horror films, who are once again always the victims and never the Final Girls. Queer characters are viewed as disposable, eventually treated as such.  And that's just plain messed up. 

Characters die onscreen, just like they do in real life. But keep track of which characters you choose. Sometimes the patterns by which we make choices these kinds of choices are hidden away.  

LEARNING FROM A SHOW'S MISTAKES: THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT'S FRIDGING

This blog is not a critic's corner. I'm not here to cast aspersions. It's really really hard to make television of any kind, and every show has at least a few episodes that limp, and usually way more.

But you can learn a lot from things that don't work. And in the remainder of this week I thought I might point to a couple common story problems, tricks that seem to work but which we've come to realize are really not great for a whole lot of reasons. 

Today's example is Fridging, a term coined by comic book writer Gail Simone to describe the act of killing or doing violence to a female character in order to move the male protagonist's story along, i.e. to motivate them to act or to free them up in order to do something or be with someone new. 

The term comes from a truly horrendous moment in Ron Marz's Green Lantern run, in which Green Lantern Kyle Rayner discovered his girlfriend Alexandra hacked to death in his refrigerator by an enemy. Simone and others compiled a list of every time this trope has been used just in comics, and it's pretty horrendous. 

While modern storytelling has gotten at least slightly more self-aware, these tropes still recur, with women and others as the victims. So for example in episode 103 of THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT, after spending a tremendous amount of time transforming the Sand People from horror movie villains into the richly cultured indigenous people of Tatooine, episode 3 has Boba's tribe seemingly murdered offscreen. One hopes that future episodes will reveal that it wasn't the whole tribe, but that was certainly the implication of episode three. And it serves no purpose but to move Fett's story forward. 

The victims are not women in this case, but the trope is the same. It's just replaced one marginalized group for another.

The point here is not that women and characters of other marginalized groups should never die or suffer violent crimes in TV shows (although you know, wouldn't it be nice?). It's to say that these characters should not be treated simply as objects to move along the stories of others. That's not a magic trick, it's a crutch to prop up a bad story and a really fucked up one at that.

FIVE THINGS YOU CAN LEARN FROM WATCHING VERY OLD BRITISH DETECTIVE SHOWS: THE POWER OF AN OBSTACLE

In the latter days of the initial pandemic, aka before I was vaccinated, I stumbled into FOYLE'S WAR. It's a show set during and after World War II in a British town near the English Channel. I have to say it proved to be an extraordinary show to be watching during the pandemic, as the social issues it presented so often seemed to mirror things we have been going through. I recommend it mostly highly. 

I could write a lot about the quality of its writing. But today I just want to point out one very small choice the writing team made. Foyle does not fight. He's a detective who relies on his wits and common sense. Also, unlike say, ENDEAVOUR, WAR is not a show where you have lots of chase scenes or what the kids use to call fisticuffs. It's very sleuthy. 

Still this is a police detective show. Sometimes the bad guys do try to get away. And yet Foyle never gets in a fight. There's one key episode where we see this really tested: in 501, Foyle finds himself at the end confronting the bad guy by himself. And he's got explosives. It's absolutely a moment where he should leap on the guy, or something akin to that. But no, the story sticks to its formula. He talks to the guy, trying to learn the story behind what he's doing. And then he plays the odds--based on what he learns about how the guy got the bombs, that they came from his girlfriend and how she got them out, he doesn't believe she actually gave him the legit stuff. (We don't know this at the time, but that's what we learn afterwards.) And he's correct.

The show never talks about the fact that Foyle doesn't resort to actual violence. It's just the implicit rule. And what I note from 501 is that by testing that rule, they actually came up with a resolution that legitimately reinforces what makes Foyle awesome, rather than making it seem flimsy and artificial. 

I don't know about you, but I find writing hard enough. Adding obstacles to the process seems masochistic. But it's not the case. It creates challenges, for sure--you have to create workarounds that are satisfying, aka that seem legitimate rather than writers' convenience. But if you can do that, it's just that much more satisfying. 

If you're working on a project right now, maybe it's worth asking yourself, is there some sort of rule/obstacle I could add to the show (or the script) to make things more interesting? Like my protagonist broke his leg. Or he has a phobia about entering people's homes. Or the script can only use five sets total.

And see whether it doesn't make the script better.

FIVE THINGS YOU CAN LEARN FROM WATCHING VERY OLD BRITISH DETECTIVE SHOWS: GENERATING STORY FROM SUBJECT

One of the things you start to notice when you work through a variety of different shows of the same genre in quick succession is their different emphases and preoccupations. As I was saying yesterday, INSPECTOR MORSE is always going to be about Morse himself in some way, whereas GEORGE GENTLY's main character is rather emphatic in his refusal to disclose much of himself for quite a few seasons. His show is rather focused on the case itself and on his screw-up detective sergeant John Bacchus.

But GENTLY does have its own particular twist on the genre that's interesting: the crime being investigated is often indicative of some sort of broader theme or social issue, like race relations, family or homophobia. And if you watch closely, most of the people that Gently and Bacchus meet in their investigation end up playing out their own story related to that theme or issue. So in 501, the episode on race relations, as the two investigate the death of a young black woman, we meet a white politician condemning black people and saying there's a race war coming; black young people who mostly just want to enjoy time together; an angry black man who is disappointed in his father for the ways he's lived his life; and others. And we have Bacchus himself, who starts out thinking the murdered woman was a whore in large part due to her race, and ends up having his prejudices revealed and challenged repeatedly over the course of the episode. 

(The show loves to throw Bacchus smack into the middle of whatever issue it's dealing with. Even as he is often kind of an ass, he's very much a POV character through which we enter into the landscape of diverse characters and perspectives that populate a given topic.)

FOYLE'S WAR will often do something similar; most episodes are dealing with some aspect of the ongoing struggle, like the sacrifices demanded of the people living in the UK during the war, and once again whatever issue it chooses ends up playing out in different ways in all the characters. 

In both cases, it very much seems like the writers literally start with whatever the theme or issue is going to be, then brainstorm as many different related stories and characters as they can and choose the most interesting ones to fill out the story. 

That's a really useful technique to remember when you're developing an episode. In part it's a helpful way to get you to get as clear as you can about what the is episode about. What is the big question or issue that the main character and this ep is dealing with? And then it gives you a means of thinking about what kinds of stories you want to give the other characters. What might be their takes on the same questions or issues? 

Not every show works like this, obviously. Some might even say really you need to be working on a procedural for this to really be useful. But to my mind some of the best serialized shows ever written work very similarly. THE WIRE, for instance, often builds its episodes around given themes, and has those themes rippling out in different ways amongst different characters. MAD MEN was much the same.

So it's possible to apply to a much broader range of shows than just detective shows or procedurals. And personally I think it's useful even if you think it doesn't apply to your show, insofar as it gives you the chance to use some different muscles for generating ideas. It's important to try switching things up from time to time, see what else you might discover.  

What's the crux of your story, and how can that ripple out into stories for others?  Questions worth asking.

FIVE THINGS YOU CAN LEARN FROM WATCHING VERY OLD BRITISH DETECTIVE SHOWS: THE CHARACTER HOLE

One thing that a lot of old British detective shows have in common is a protagonist that is lacking something significant. In fact usually for one reason or another they're very much alone. Frost has been living with a woman who didn't love him. Tennison has never really found a home for herself either at work or with a man that lasted. Gently is so buttoned up that he won't share anything about his inner life--which means we have the sense of him as isolated not only from others but from us. Morse spends pretty much every episode hitting on women and wanting his partner Lewis to come have a beer with him. And when Lewis gets his own show, he's lost his wife. He's actually a lot more open and friendly than the others, but the struggle is there. (Also, his partner struggles deeply with connecting with people.)

Each of these shows deals with that emptiness in their life in different ways. GENTLY is really a procedural that very very slowly over years lets us into the interior life of Gently. MORSE on the other hand is in some ways barely a procedural at all. Yes, we go through the motions, but more than anything it's a show about Morse. And PRIME SUSPECT really does the work of both--it's deeply procedural, but it is very very much about Tennison's personal experience in the case, too.

But the point is, what makes them all compelling is the fact that their characters have that hole, that gap inside that they are desperate to fill and can't. 

I find it a great question to consider when writing a script: What is my character missing? What is the hole that they are desperate to fill? It doesn't have to be rocket science--I don't think it's a coincidence that for most of these characters the issue has something about loneliness and relationship. But one thing that's clear watching these shows: once you know what that hole is, it really gives your character direction and momentum. 

FIVE THINGS YOU CAN LEARN FROM WATCHING VERY OLD BRITISH DETECTIVE SHOWS: AUDIENCE EXPECTATIONS

So I'm on this TOUCH OF FROST kick, the latest in a pandemic-long series of old British detective show-watching jags. And I'm thinking about the things even a kind of creaky show can illustrate, for better and worse. (For the record, I'm enjoying FROST quite a bit. But it's certainly 2022 cutting edge stuff.)

Yesterday I talked about a great question episode 102 begged, namely: What's the most interesting setting for this scene? 

Today, I've got another question, this time from the pilot: What is the audience thinking right now? Which is to say, How can I surprise them? 

In the pilot, we've got two guys killed twenty years apart by the same gun, one recently, both connected to a robbery where the money has never been found. And the suspect who turns out to be the killer (spoiler, I guess?) happens to be this elderly man who used to run the robbed bank who is taking care of his wife, who has dementia. 

As soon as we find out he's the killer, the story pretty much writes itself. He set the whole thing up because he needed money to care for his wife. That is absolutely why she's been written to have dementia. Well, that and one other thing; we'll get there. 

But then when Frost confronts him he has this whole other story; his son was this mess of a human who kept needing money, and the wife kept insisting they help, and finally the banker had to take money from the bank in order to do so. But that's not the money he stole; no no--the stolen money was him trying to set things straight later, after his son had completely flamed out. It's quite a clever plan in fact, that ends up going terribly wrong, much to the banker's horror. And, in one of the episode's most compelling moments, the shot shifts to a black and white extreme close up on the banker's eyes, as he talks about having to kill one of his helpers and washing his hands after. It's like suddenly we're in an Edgar Allan Poe story.

We might fault the writers for not giving us any hint of any of that beforehand; in fact we don't even meet the banker until past the midpoint. But it doesn't up feeling like a cheat, I think because the story he tells is so troubling and unexpected. If you're going to bury something, it damn well better be worth it when you dig it up. And this is. 

Rather than the reason for the robbery, the wife ends up being used by the writers as a kind of justification for the confession. Frost shows up, says you're the murderer, and wants to take the guy in. It could end there. Except the guy has this sick wife and no one else to take care of him. So he can't just go along. He has to fight back; so he pulls a gun on Frost, sits him down, and tells him what happened. In a sense he's pleading a case of sorts, but really he's just trying to get the truth on the table before the ending, where he knocks Frost out and then kills his wife and himself. 

You are so right, Will Smith. Damn. 

In every script we write, we're setting up expectations in the audience. We're telling them who and what is important, what to keep their eye on, where to look. And as good magicians, that's always a con job. When they get to the end of the ep, we want them to be looking left so we can surprise them to the right. 

Sometimes that comes in the form of a big dramatic life-changing twist. Sometimes it's just a matter of being able to land a more surprising and emotionally powerful ending. Same principles apply. And both rely on asking that question as you get to the end: where have I got the audience looking or thinking?

FIVE THINGS YOU CAN LEARN FROM WATCHING VERY OLD BRITISH DETECTIVE SHOWS: SCENE SETTING

During the pandemic one of my "This is what I will do to distract myself from our impending doom" rituals was to watch an episode of a British detective show every night. I started with INSPECTOR MORSE, then went to its sequel LEWIS, then its very modern (and fabulous) prequel ENDEAVOUR, then GEORGE GENTLY, PRIME SUSPECT, MORSE again and finally FOYLE'S WAR.

 What can I say? It was a long pandemic. 

The other night I stumbled onto another one of these kinds of shows, A TOUCH OF FROST, which like many of these is a 90s-00s show that somehow fronts like 1975. It's about an eccentric middle aged detective (they're almost all eccentric middle aged detectives) solving cases in a small town while dealing with the loss of his wife (most of them have some kind of sad backstory eventually if not at first). 

It's not the kind of show I'd expect most screenwriters today to be poring over for ideas about writing. And yet, watching the second episode tonight I was hit by a very small and very clever move it made. On a detective show, so much of the story is just talking heads in an interrogation room, or someone's house/business, or in the detectives' office. And that can work just fine; LINE OF DUTY has made it a signature, in fact, to do interrogations that can go longer than 20 minutes, and still keep you captivated. And frankly a lot of these older detective shows just aren't that interested in being creative about things like setting. 

But about halfway through the ep, Frost and some of the other guys in the station hide out in his office eating curries. And the only light is the orange glow from the heating unit on their faces. It's been established over the course of the episode a) that the heat is out in the station; b) that there's consequently no food in the mess hall--and that that is a good thing; and c) their boss is an absolute prat. 

All of that is fun information in and of itself, ways to specify the world in which this story is happening. And this moment with the four guys eating curries and sharing information is the big payoff. The story here is ordinary, just a Debating Villains moment. But presented in this way both visually and with the broader context of We Have to Hide from Our Boss, it just comes alive. It's like we're watching a bunch of grown men playact being kids around a campfire in their backyard.

One lesson in this moment is the value of Hiding your exposition within conflict. Even a tiny, ridiculous conflict like the threat of their boss is enough to keep us from feeling like the story has stopped to download us with information. 

But the bigger idea, I think, is a question that is worth asking when putting together more ordinary scenes: What's the most interesting place to set this scene? 

You've got to do talking heads? Fine. What's the most unusual or interesting place that can happen? What's the place we're not expecting, or that adds another layer of story or business to the proceedings? 

The thing I really love about this episode of FROST is, it applies that question not just to that one scene but to the whole episode. How do we make all the talking heads work interesting? I got it, let's have the place be freezing. 

I realize, ancient (oh so male) British detective shows may not seem like they're for everyone. But I delight in the fact that they still have things to teach. That's really the premise of this blog; it doesn't matter what you're watching, you can learn from it.

So this week I'm going to look back through my notes on these old British shows and draw out some other fundamental writing ideas for us to chew on.

Cheers!

OSCAR CONTENDERS: FANTASIZING A CHARACTER INTO LIFE

Some screenwriters will tell you that flashbacks or dream sequences are a cheat. And there's something to be said for that--they're basically a way of getting around the challenge of having to reveal character desire, fear (or often backstory) through action. 

And as a result they're often a mistake. Next time you're watching a show or film with a lot of flashbacks, pay attention to where your mind goes. Usually that's where the daydreams on wandering thoughts set in. Because usually it means the forward action of the character--aka the thing we've invested in--is taking a break. So we might as well too.

Many of this year's Oscar contenders use dream sequences or flashbacks of one form or another. THE LOST DAUGHTER has many, ever-more-involved flashbacks of the character's life as a mother; DUNE has precognitive dreams--which, let's be honest, are largely a tease so that the trailers can make it seem like Zendaya and Timotheé Chalamet appear on screen together. (Spoiler: They mostly don't.) NIGHTMARE ALLEY has the main character occasionally flashing back to the death of his father. 

But the two that really stand out to me are the fantasy sequences in BEING THE RICARDOS and TICK TICK BOOM. In both cases they serve a similar function--to give us a glimpse into the hidden life of the character. And in both cases that goal seems completely unnecessary on the surface. Both Lucille Ball and  Jonathon Larsen are highly demonstrative characters who reveal their character consistently and boldly through their word and action. (I'm not a fan at all of Sorkin's take on Lucille Ball, but he certainly does create a well-drawn character.)

Instead of exposition or foreshadowing, the fantasy sequences in BOOM and BEING are used just to deepen our appreciation for who these characters are, the talents that they have. It's cake icing, in a sense, and yet if you asked pretty much anyone what was their favorite moment in either film, 95 out of 100 are going to say those moments. I've watched Larsen's Sunday Brunch reverie probably a dozen times, I know every beat of it and it still chokes me up. It's just such an intimate glimpse into what Broadway (and Sondheim) mean to him.

In the case of BEING, it's the only real time in the whole film that we get to see Lucy being the Lucy we know. Which is the film's biggest problem; who writes a film about Lucille Ball and then doesn't spend any time letting us watch her do her thing?  

Actually in that moment we get to see her be more than the Lucy we know, because rather than just doing the bits she's dreaming them up. Those moments not only show us something important about her character, really her greatest skill, they give us material by which to understand her overall drive for the episode to go a certain way. We want Lucy to get things her way in the shooting of the ep precisely because we've been given these private moments where we see what a visionary she is.

There are lots of ways to use flashbacks, dreams, etc. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But I think the lesson I draw from BOOM and BEING is that using these kinds of techniques not for plot or exposition/backstory but to broaden or deepen our sense of a character can be really effective. It really is a kind of cake icing--which I know probably sounds like a dismissal; it's just sugar, right? Ech. 

Except what is a cake without icing? In most cases, just colored dough.

It's so often those little extra details, the moments where the writer goes that extra mile with a well chosen flourish that differentiate two fine hours at the theater from something that becomes important in my life.

OSCAR CONTENDERS: TRUST THE STRUCTURE

I watched Guillermo del Toro's NIGHTMARE ALLEY tonight, and the thing that really struck me is the structure of the film. It is not flashy, not at all. A very standard three act structure. 

I'm going to put a very thumbnail version below. Obviously, spoiler warnings. Also, it helps me to think of features in terms of a series of 7-8 blocks of 10-15 minutes --2 in Act I, 4 in Act II, 1-2 in Act III--each of which begin with a problem/goal, have their own internal complications and choices, and then end with a resolution that ideally itself creates new problems and goals. So that's why things are presented as they are. 

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ACT I: STAN FINDS A NEW AND EXCITING FUTURE FOR HIMSELF

Act I, 1: Fresh off of killing his dad, Stan finds a new home at a circus.

Act I, 2: As he learns the ropes of various jobs, Stan comes up with a plan to do what Pete does on a much bigger scale. 

ACT II: STAN RUNS WITH HIS NEW AND EXCITING FUTURE

Act II, 1: Stan woos Clara while he works Zeena and Pete to learn how to be a successful mentalist. 

Act II, 2: Stan kills Pete, then uses what he's learned to save the circus from the police. 

MIDPOINT: Clara and he leave to do their own act. 

Act II, 3: Two years later, Stan has gotten bored and Rose tired; but the introduction of the shrink Lilith and a new wealthy set of marks brings him back to life. Lilith and Stan make a bargain to exchange information so as to allow him to swindle these new marks.

Act II, 4: Stan's work gets him the attention of the dangerous and wealthy Ezra Grindle, who quickly demands to see his dead daughter. Stan at first convinces Clara, but ends up having to beg to get her to stay.

LOW POINT: Stan convinces Clara to stay and do the grift, but she tells him she's done with him after. 

ACT III: STAN FACES THE CONSEQUENCES OF HIS NEW AND EXCITING FUTURE

Act III, 1: Stan and Clara do the scam. It works at first, but then falls apart, leaving Stan at first alone with his money and then broke and on the run, as Lilith reveals she's been scamming him too. 

Act III, 2: Stan ends up back at a circus and agrees to become its new Geek, the very "creature" that had first drawn his attention when he'd stumbled upon the circus at the top of Act I. 

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In every way, really, the structure is standard, right down to the symmetry of having him become the circus monster at the end that he witnessed at the beginning. 

(The one major innovation is the decision to in a sense reset the film at the midpoint, complete with new characters and issues. But the midpoint is intended to be a moment in which the story takes a major new turn, injecting new complications and momentum while still staying true to the overall arc of the act, and that's exactly how things function here.)

But saying the film looks to structural essentials as a roadmap is not to say the film is boring, obvious or unoriginal. In fact this is a great film, and a large part of what makes it so is actually its faithfulness to the fundamentals. Hitting the structural marks (and in a way that is organic to the characters rather than forced by the writer--aka the hard part) elicits a deep sense of satisfaction in the audience. Without even knowing it they have the sense of being in the presence of something that has been very carefully crafted, and that's just naturally satisfying.

Del Toro is best known for his monster movie subjects, but for me the great hallmark of his work is his attention to the craft. A movie with an innovative structure can be tremendous, but in NIGHTMARE ALLEY we see that trying to adhere to first principles of screen storytelling can also produce tremendous yield. 

OSCAR CONTENDERS: COMPLICATING THE ANTAGONIST

One of the interesting trends I'm seeing in some of the Oscar contenders this year is a sort of complicating of the antagonists. If you've only heard reviews of THE POWER OF THE DOG, you might think Benedict Cumberbatch's Phil is some kind of psychotic monster. And he is--the man beats a horse, for God's sake. 

But from the very moment we meet him his sadism is always couched within the context of his need to have his brother George at his side. It's an unexpected vulnerability to the character, and even as we remain scared of him and horrified by him at times, it gives him a lot more layers. I'm not sure I'd say we ever empathize with him exactly, but there is something deeply pitiful about him. That's a very unexpected way to position the antagonist--and it really works.

In THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE (which is not getting as much Oscar buzz for its writing or direction as it should; it's a fantastic film), the creative team make similarly interesting choices with Andrew Garfield's Jim Bakker. As the film is told through the eyes of Tammy Faye, there is no hint that Jim is the antagonist until pretty far along in the second act. And even then, until we get to the midpoint, in which we see Jim both laughing at his wife's make-up with some of the crew and "rasslin" with his male assistant, what hints we get are only briefly mentioned. Tammy didn't think anything of them so we don't dwell on them either. 

On the one hand, the story of Jim Bakker is so well known that perhaps writer Abe Sylvia thought the script really doesn't need to do much of that work, it's all already there. 

But it also allows the character to be more straightforward in a way. Rather than the guy with some big secret or some kind of snake oil salesman, he's truly idealistic and positive; also overawed by the big players; also capable of real conflict with his wife. 

Calling that "straightforward" really undersells it. Once again, it's about layering. The writing and performance by Garfield refuses to simplify him to slick or two dimensional, opting instead for something a little more enigmatic, which invites us to fill in the blanks instead (again, just like Tammy Faye). 

I see the same dynamic at work in SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME. Each of the villains is given so much more room to be more than a Super Hero Bad Guy. And I found the film a lot more thrilling just for that (let alone all the other good stuff that happens in it). We've seen Otto Octavius or Elektro or any of the other villains do "bad". What happens if we dig into the rest of them? Answer: You discover there's a ton more heart to the film and a lot more complex stakes, too.

OSCAR CONTENDERS: ENTERING ON THE PROBLEM

This week I'm digging into some of the films released around Christmas time that are getting a lot of buzz. 

Today, rather than picking any one film in particular, I want to highlight a technique in the opening I've seen in a number of them, and that is ENTERING ON THE PROBLEM.  

One thing I've noticed in a number of the scripts that I've written is a tendency to give a couple of scenes of introduction before establishing clearly what the main character's problem is. It makes sense, right? You want to give people a chance to get to know your characters and world before you launch into the thing that's going to drive the story. 

But in fact a lot of great stories do not adopt this step-by-step approach, instead opening on the problem and allowing that in itself to also be a moment which helps us understand who the characters are and what's this world they're living in. 

A "soft" version of this: DON'T LOOK UP, the new Adam McKay satire about a massive comet that's coming to destroy the world.  The opening scene has one of our leads, grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), discovering the comet. She doesn't know it's a problem yet, that won't happen until she tells her boss and at the celebration party he clarifies the trajectory. In fact that opening scene is much more about establishing who she is and that this world is going to be a little kooky--there's just something about Jennifer Lawrence in this role that naturally seems a bit off.

But the moment the comet is discovered really is the start of the crisis.

A much harder version of this: THE POWER OF THE DOG, the Jane Campion film starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons as brothers running a cattle business in the early twentieth century. The film opens straightaway on Cumberbatch's Phil looking to his brother George to be right there with him remembering what today is, and George is just not interested. And the entire opening sequence is really just a long series of this same issue, and the mounting anxiety this brings out in Phil.

And each of these moments tells us more about both characters--the wildness and scariness inside Phil, the grief inside George. And it's all occurring as they lead their cattle on a trail, establishing the world. 

A "middle" version which you find in a lot of films today is the opening time jump, which THE LOST DAUGHTER uses. We open on Olivia Colman's character staggering down a beach and then collapsing at the ocean. That's it; then we jump back to her arriving in this seaside Greek town and getting to know everything, with no real conflict other than a certain standoffishness in the character for some time. 

Sometimes the Time Jump is all about establishing some kind of ticking clock or twist that we'll spend the film looking to see coming or worrying about. In the case of DAUGHTER, it's actually a bit of a con job. It's there to create a sense of conflict, to tell us there is a problem, but in fact when we come full circle it doesn't amount to much. Certainly it's not the heart of the conflict of the film. (And the film truly has some fascinating conflicts in it. So good.)

One screenwriting idea that I heard recently that has really stayed with me is the idea that you want every scene to be serving at least two purposes. You've got so little real estate to work with; you want to use what you've got as much as you can. Entering on the Conflict is a great example of that at work. 

If you're looking for an exercise, why not pick a script you've worked on and see how that opening scene goes.  Is it doing more than just introducing the world and characters? Does it present the problem in some way? Could it?