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?
