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.
