The opening scene of a season can be such an asset in setting up the journey of the coming season. Take the third season of BARRY, which came back two weeks ago.
Barry spent last season repeatedly insisting he was out of the assassination business only to somehow keep ending up in more and more horrifying situations, finally wiping out almost all the men of two different cartels. And all the while he was haunted by the fact that he had killed his mentor Mr. Cousineau's girlfriend, Janice, because she was onto him. In the end his handler showed Cousineau the body of Janice and revealed that Barry killed her.
So you might think we open on season 3 with Barry well and truly done with the murdering now, having wiped out all those who were after him or hiring him. But no, instead he's preparing to killing some guy Jeff for some other guy, who is there telling him the things he wants Barry to do, because the guy slept with his wife. So yeah, things are definitely not going well for Barry.
But when it's time for Barry to get busy, the guy reveals he's changed his mind. He's forgiven Jeff.
And as he tries to explain himself Barry gets more and more angry, until he shoots them both and walks away, saying: "There's no forgiving Jeff."
There's the question of the season: Can Barry ever be forgiven? And more specifically: Can Barry ever feel forgiven. Can he forgive himself?
It's such a clean, clear opening. And you see the power of it over the course of the premiere episode, as the question of forgiveness keeps coming up. Barry wants Hank--whose men he killed--to put him back to work, and Hank tells him you can't just move on. You have to earn forgiveness.
And then in the end we circle back to setting of the opening scene. Now it's Barry about to shoot Mr. Cousineau, who has confronted him about what he did. And Cousineau occupies the space in the frame of the two men Barry shot at the opening, and he's sort of the synthesis of their points of view: he apologizes to Barry for what he's done, and he insists he's forgiven Barry.
Barry's words, too, are a synthesis of where he started and what he learned from Hank. You can't just be forgiven, you have to earn it. It's very cool that each of them is a kind of synthesis--there's that sense of progress, of coming to a point.
And then we get it: "So fucking earn it!"
Therein lies Barry's quest for the season.
It's such a solid opening henceforth I'm going to call any great premiere opening scene a Forgiving Jeff. Seriously, it's that solid. And it's worth noting, from a plot standpoint it's not complicated. The great openings never are. They're distilled to the finest degree of clarity.
If I were a gambler, I'd say we're going to end up back on that bluff under that tree at some point, and Barry is finally going to be the one having a gun pointed at his head. And we're going to see the other side of his question asked. Can others ever truly forgive him?
If you're looking for an idea today, take a look at a pilot you've written and consider your opening scene. Does it set up the character and the quest or problem of the season (and the series)? Is there anything you can do to make it more iconic?
