GOODBYE TO BETTER CALL SAUL: FOLLOWING YOUR OWN BREADCRUMBS AND FLEABAGGING

The second to last episode of BETTER CALL SAUL is a doozy. For the first time we see what has become of Kim Wexler, and it's done in an extended version of a SAUL montage—we see Kim in different settings over the course of a day, first with her idiot boyfriend and their friends, then at work. But there's a major production twist: there's no soundtrack playing in the background. It's a choice that forces us to simply sit in the inanity and sadness of her life. 

And at the same time, much like the montage in the last Jimmy/Saul episode, Kim herself never nods to the emptiness of her life. In fact, when it comes to the boyfriend or her girlfriends she actually plays along, which makes things feel even worse. 

One of the most satisfying things that a finale can do is to return to the beginning in some way, to reference lines, moments or aspects of the pilot. So in the finale of SAUL just before the end we'll have Jimmy and Kim sharing a cigarette, very much as they did in the pilot (and also in so many other episodes). Because it's been used so often on the show, it's become a shorthand for the care they have for each other. (A genius friend of mine also pointed out, what they're sharing is something that will kill them.) 

The penultimate episode's montage twist is another version of that idea of following the breadcrumbs of your own work, aka looking to what you've done in the beginning or along the way for guidance on how to end your story. It's more subtle than the cigarette share. And it's also a moment of evaluation, the show raising up what is maybe its signature technique and showing the dark side of it. In a sense the needle drops of BREAKING BAD and SAUL have always been the playlist of its characters; even when terrible stuff is happening, the songs used in the montages have taken away some of the sharpest edges. They've given meaning to their pain and made their crimes so much more palatable.  

In other words, they have been a form of self-delusion. And here at the end the series takes that crutch away, because Kim's whole practice seems to be about honesty and truth—and becomes moreso as the episode goes on. 

One of my favorite techniques is when a writer or show takes something that they have taught you to  accept and love and then confronts you with the darkness of that thing. Call it FLEABAGGING your audience. It's the kind of a-ha moment we rarely see coming, because by the time we get there the technique has been with us so long we barely even notice it, or only do so on the show's terms. "Damn that's another great/classic SAUL montage." 

If you're looking for an exercise for your writing, watch an episode of a show you like. And as you watch it, step back and be the big picture observer noticing the techniques or story beats that are standard on it. For example, GREY'S ANATOMY is always going to have a narrator.  MRS. MAISEL is always going to have Miriam using her routine to expose elements of her most important relationships. MODERN FAMILY or ABBOTT ELEMENTARY involves an unseen or acknowledged camera crew. 

And after you pull out a technique, consider, what could be a great way to twist that up in the end? How can you undermine or flip the trust you've taught your audience to have? Like, it turns out Meredith is narrating all of this from Heaven. The MODERN FAMILY film crew turns out to be the descendants of the characters, or maybe one another. Miriam's use of comedy in this way ends up undermining her relationships.

GOODBYE TO BETTER CALL SAUL: THE GENEVERSE

Last week I wrote a little bit about the final set of episodes of BETTER CALL SAUL. The rest of this week I want to try to finish that off by talking about a couple things relative to the Gene-verse, that is the present day black and white universe that we've gotten glimpses of throughout the series, where Jimmy is hiding out as a manager at a Cinnabon. 

I'll be honest, while watching them I did not much like the first two episodes that were set almost entirely in the Geneverse. And here's why: the character of Jimmy is so completely different from the guy we left behind that it's hard to connect with him. In the first he's sort of our Jimmy, right? He pulls a scam with that kid in order to get the kid to leave him alone. 

But then in the second he gets so dark he is pretty much unrecognizable. The thing about the Jimmy we've followed all these years is that he is never able to go full Walter White evil. He can do some terrible things, but there's always a cost to him, a sense that he knows down deep that he has completely fucked up. What he and Kim do to Howard might be the worst thing he's ever done, but it's very much Kim that is driving that train. 

What allows Jimmy to become the monster version of Gene is in part the horrible tedium of his life. But it's also very much everything he went through in BREAKING BAD.  The show even names this episode where Jimmy goes Full Dark "Breaking Bad."

Now I'm going to write about how the Geneverse story plays out. But the thing I want to highlight today is just the courage of the writers. This is where they saw the show going, and so they went there, even though it risked losing the audience a bit at this incredibly important moment. It's another version of the thing I'm always writing about the SAUL writers: they are unafraid of being painted into a corner. They have such enormous trust in themselves as a group and no doubt in their showrunners, too, they're not afraid of the hard things.

Maybe it's also that they trust in their audience to stick with them even when things suddenly disjointed. That might seem obvious. You have to trust your audience, right? But I actually don't think it happens that much. Writers might want that, but networks are so afraid of losing anyone, it's hard to take any risks.  

Did the team even know that they were going to have to shoot multiple episodes black and white at the end, because they had set that conceit up? I don't know. I want to believe they thought it was a great technique, but it wasn't until later that they realized what it was going to mean for their ending. But then they trusted that it would work out

If there's one thing I should have staring at me every day when I write, it's those two words: "Courage" and "Trust."

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON KNOWS HOW TO CRAFT A VILLAIN

 

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON began its run on HBO Max last night. I don't know about you, but I was a little apprehensive. It felt like it would be really easy to slip back into storylines and houses that we've already pretty fully explored. But the pilot is really striking for how much it begins to open up the world--there's tons of new settings and some new families and different kinds of characters and relationships. Even the way things look is different; there's more sunshine at times and at others a very different kind of darkness, one that seems thicker and more filled with menace.

But the thing that really leapt out for me is the treatment of Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith), the younger brother of King Viserys. On one level he hits a lot of pretty standard villain motifs--he's incredibly violent  he's got his own wolf pack of ultra-faithful devotees; he is massively ambitious and pretty fearless about saying so; and he's also not as talented as he promotes himself to be. Ser Cristin Cole kicks his ass both on horseback and up close.

That's a great choice, one that a lot of stories miss. You want your villain to have some flaws beyond he is arrogant and/or crazy. And the reason is not to open the door to some future failure, but because it humanizes them. It makes them a ton more three dimensional. 

And here's the other thing writer/co-creator Ryan Condal does along the same lines: He gives Daemon moments where he is more than a douchebag. First, he gives him a relationship with his niece Princess Rhaenyra that seems to be very legitmately niece and favorite uncle. He actually dotes on her. And later when her father is grieving, it's Daemon that pushes her to step up and help him. Moments like that are like an emotional palate cleanser; they're so totally different than the whoring & murdering tone that has been established for Daemon, playful and delicately played, that they open us up to him. We know going forward he gonna be crazy, because he Daemon, right? But because of the impact of those few moments where he's something else, we're going to tolerate a lot of that nonsense, because we want to see that other Daemon. They gave us a little sugar, and now we'll wait because we want some more.

The other great Daemon moment is the end, when he and Viserys have it out. Going in there is no way that Daemon is in the right; he literally had an orgy the day after his sister-in-law and her son were put to rest. WTF. (And he ridiculed the son!)  

But then the whole scene turns on him speaking truth to his brother. I am the one who sees what is going on, I am the one who you should have protecting you, you are surrounded by leeches, you are weak. And  by this point we've seen that all of these things are true, to such a degree in fact that we no longer want Viserys to punish Daemon, we see his point of view and want to see what he might do if given some trust. 

Two things make people love a new character, whether they're a hero or a villain: Big, bold, risky choices on their part; and some kind of specific, well used knowledge or talent. (Okay there are more than two, but these are differently two big ones.) Daemon is all about big choices; the first time we meet him he is sitting on the Iron Throne. It's so shocking they got Graham McTavish to gasp when he sees it. Graham !%!%ing McTavish. 

And in this moment at the end, as well as his scenes with Rhaenyra, we see his talents. He sees things clearly, and maybe (?) he is actually devoted to his family. 

Obviously, it's a little unfair to call Daemon the villain. This is the world of Westeros; everyone here is a villain and a hero at some point. But even so, I think a lot can be learned about how to craft a good villain from watching how Condal writes him.  

GOODBYE TO BETTER CALL SAUL WEEK: THE PERFECT OPENING

I've written before about BETTER CALL SAUL's incredible openings. Truly, nobody on television takes such care with the way they open every episode. 

And episode 609 offers another great example. Kim and Jimmy have been told they must go about their normal day, with absolutely no sign of the grief they're feeling over the death of Howard Hamlin in front of them. And so we watch each of them just doing their normal stuff--Kim with a client, Jimmy at the office, while Mike and his team clean their apartment. The montage is woven together beautifully, the sequence moving from one character to another by way of shared visuals--the stain of blood becoming ketchup in a plate, a picture Kim is holding up becomes a photo of their apartment when it doesn't look like someone has been murdered within it. As usual for SAUL, there's also a perfect song to go with it, "Perfect Day" by Dresage and Slow Shiver, which ties it all together. 

For me what's really fascinating about the sequence is that there's nothing in any of the characters' behaviors that at all suggests what they've been through. We don't get some private moment where they let down their guard and show their sadness, nothing. And yet it's an incredibly sad sequence to watch. 

How does SAUL accomplish that? In part, it's the song, which combines a certain irony in its subject matter with a slow, dreamy quality that invites a kind of deep meditation. In part it's the repeated turn back to Mike and his team washing blood, removing bullet holes, looking for brain matter which keeps what's really going on here front and center. 

But I actually think the sequence might still work without that reference, i.e. just watching Kim and Jimmy work. Because we the audience already bring that information. We come to the sequence projecting onto Jimmy and Kim a lot of feelings about what they're going through. For me, that's the brilliance of them showing nothing themselves; the performers are letting us do that work. And the human imagination being as amazing as it is, we're going to make so much more of what they're going through inside. 

It's another fantastic example of a show incepting the audience. I don't know about you, but as I'm writing I'm not often thinking in these kinds of terms. But watching how effective it is, it's certainly worth asking that question: What information can I download onto the audience? And once I have, how can I let them run with it?

GOODBYE TO BETTER CALL SAUL WEEK: HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE LALO SALAMANCA

Last night BETTER CALL SAUL aired its series finale. It was a rich episode, with some really wonderful callbacks both to SAUL and BREAKING BAD, and an unexpectedly gorgeous end aesthetic. 

This week I want to talk about some of the interesting choices SAUL made in its final half season of episodes. And today we start with SAUL 608, which begins with Howard dead on the floor and Lalo making demands, and ends with him finally head to head against Fring. 

One of the great things about the SAUL writing team, maybe the greatest, is their absolute fearlessness when it comes to story problems. SAUL and BAD are the very rare shows that insist on painting themselves into corners from which there is no easy way out. And at the same time, somehow they always seem to find a way forward that seems true to the reality.

And maybe SAUL's greatest choice in this regard is Lalo Salamanca. From the moment we first meet him he is a force of nature, but in that last season he becomes something almost mythical in the eyes of Fring and consequently us. The more that Mike does to protect Fring the more clear it becomes, Lalo is absolutely going to get to Fring. 

But by the time the two meet he's become such a figure of resourcefulness to us that the question is, how can Fring possibly overcome him? And 608 only builds on that: Lalo manages to use Kim as a decoy, and then kills every single man guarding Fring. When the two face off in the future drug cooking basement, there is no possible way out for Fring. The quintessential SAUL/BAD position. 

And how do they get out of it? They've previously planted the idea that there are plenty of guns hidden around the chamber. So Fring is within reach of one. But to get to it, he needs to knock out the power cord for the lights. And that's how they play it out, right? He kicks the cord, gets darkness, runs to the gun and the two shoot it out. 

But that cord…it’s really thick. It does not seem highly kickable at all. Also, Lalo stands there for so long letting this moment go on. It mostly works, because Tony Dalton and Giancarlo Esposito are both so damn charismatic. But it's all a bit of cheat, when you come right down to it. Something SAUL really never does. 

In some ways it makes sense that this would be the moment they couldn't quite find their way out of the corner.  The writers put so much effort into building toward this moment, it was going to be nearly impossible to fully earn a resolution. In a sense I cheer them on for reaching a problem even they could fully crack.

And there's also an argument to be made, it has to come down to dumb luck in the end. For a character as overcontrolled and overplanned as Fring, luck and random chance is the thing he is most afraid of and therefore must face to finally take control. But still, on an emotional level dumb luck is hard to make feel satisfying.

But it’s also worth noting how the writers still try to make that little sidestep palatable. After Lalo is dead we discover Fring, too, has been shot, emphasizing he did not by some random miracle escape unscathed.

It all speaks to an important rule in escaping the corner: You have to earn it.  A character can only win out in an impossible situation at a cost. The bigger/harder the win, the higher that cost must be.

 

THE DEMON IN THE MACHINE

FOR ALL MANKIND had its third season finale tonight. I will not spoil anything that happened tonight, but for much of this season, there's been a frequent dynamic in play that I've been thinking a lot about. It revolves around everyone's least favorite astronaut ever, Danny Stevens. 

In season two Danny Stevens was a student at the Naval Academy. And he had a huge crush on his best friend's mom, Karen Baldwin, that ended in them sleeping together. Which felt really bad in every way. REALLY bad. She broke it off (thank God), but still. It was really really not good. 

Season three, he's an astronaut, getting married, great wife, all is well. Except HE'S OBSESSED WITH KAREN BALDWIN. And this leads to an more and more bad decisions. He heads to Mars with Karen's ex-husband Ed, who knows nothing, and hacks their video communications with each other, which makes him more crazy. And then he starts stealing oxy from the medical supplies, which makes him even crazier. And then he starts becoming a Real Problem, and is responsible for Really Bad Shit. 

And here's the thing: the longer it all goes on, the less sense it makes. How is nobody aware there are drugs missing from the medical supplies like, for months? And once he starts acting crazy and mouthing off, how are there no consequences? Almost directly after demonstrating Very Clearly that he is a mess, he is put in charge of a job that the entire mission depends on. As my grandma liked to say, It crazy. 

But you know what all of these preposterous beats bring? Conflict. Danger. STAKES. All of which good storytelling usually needs. Your script should have conflict on every page, one of my screenwriting teachers used to tell us. 

He also brings endless complications, new problems everyone else has to deal with. All of which is to say, he creates story. 

In storytelling we talk about the Deus ex Machina, aka God in the Machine--a character, thing or event that solves a problem for your characters. It's usually some kind of cheat on the part of the writers. That doesn't mean it's necessarily bad, but it often can be, because it sort of breaks the reality of the story. Instead of the characters having to save themselves, suddenly something that has nothing to do with them is responsible. 

I think Danny Stevens is actually the same thing, but for bad stuff. He's the Demon in the Machine, the Daemonium ex Machina, a tool the writers use to seriously fuck shit up. And he's different than other characters in that the problems he causes seem artificial in some way. Too much, unbelievable, inorganic. 

I suspect characters hooked on drugs may be highly susceptible to becoming demons in the machine. Because drug use can be a good way to hide the fingerprints of the writers as they use that character to cause drama/complications/story for others. If you've ever watched someone high starting to mess shit up and felt a sort of ugh in the pit of your stomach--I know I have--I think that's our instincts telling us there's something artificial being added here. 

When it comes to FOR ALL MANKIND, the audience rage around Danny is quite something. Some of that is fans being fans, right, wanting the show the way they want it. But I think the level of rage is a pretty big warning light, too. Something is not working. 

I'm sure there are good Demons in the Machine, too, characters where the mess actually feels earned and believable. Prince Joffrey Baratheon, for instance, never seems like just a tool of the writers, even though he is absolutely always there to fuck shit up. Ramsay Snow, same way, although he's so damn good at being bad it does eventually start to ring a little less true.

But Danny Stevens is not one of them. And it's very worth watching season three just to follow his story. If you pay attention to where you're getting pissed off or something feels false, I think there's a lot to learn.

Next Monday is the series finale of BETTER CALL SAUL. I know, it's impossible to believe. And I'm going to spend the week digging into some of the final episodes. It's like Vince Gilligan's Last Lecture (in this world, anyway). Let's see what we can learn.

 

THE ROOTBEER ANALOGY

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE is not a recent show, I know. But in its day it was really groundbreaking, particularly for its willingness to break with STAR TREK creator Gene Roddenberry's insistence that his characters must all get along. (It was sort of the antithesis of SEINFELD's "No hugging, no learning.") Characters on DEEP SPACE NINE argue, and in fact the heart of the series is a seasons-long war between different alien races. 

Still, a problem that DEEP SPACE NINE had early on which matches up well with other STAR TREK shows of that era is a certain interior flatness. Characters didn't really reflect too much on their own situation or interrelationships. Everyone kind of seems on the same level as everyone else. 

Then at the start of season four, showrunner Ira Stephen Behr and co-writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe produced this fascinating scene between two of the show's non-human supporting characters, where they step back and reflect on themselves and the Federation using root beer as an analogy. It's a very small moment, but I would say it utterly transforms the experience of watching the show. Because it gives you a fresh take on what and who you're watching. That's what a good analogy does. 

And when they're effective, those takes tend to stay with the audience as it moves on. Going forward from this scene, you start to think about the Federation (and also our humanity) in the terms that have been offered--cloying and insidious in its happiness, and yet also a source of great hope. It's like that moment gives us a new purchase on this world and its characters. 

Is there a moment for an analogy like this in the show or script you're working on? There isn't always; if you try to force these kinds of things you can end up breaking with the reality of the show and its characters. The DS9 moment works precisely because it emerges naturally out of the lived experience of those characters. Is there a place like that in your script?

Or the next time you're watching something, keep your antennae up for a moment like this. They don't happen all that often, but when they do they have a big impact.

REPETITION AS A STORYTELLING DEVICE

 

Hi! I'm back. How's your writing going? Is the heat keeping you locked away at your keyboard or breaking your spirit? I'm sort of waffling back and forth myself. Gotta bear down!

I've got some great TV shows I'm looking forward to talking about in the coming weeks -- FOR ALL MANKIND, WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS, BETTER CALL SAUL, THE SANDMAN. 

But I thought I might mix in some other kinds of posts that offer other ways into thinking about writing, stuff I've come across in my own reading. 

For instance, you might not know the name Stephen Lawrence. He was a songwriter who spent 30 years writing songs for SESAME STREET, and did some other very cool stuff as well. He died in January, and in his obituary the New York Times pointed to something he'd written on a blog about writing songs for kids. 

"One of the most effective devices," he writes, "and for children, one of the most important, is repetition." When you repeat a lyric or a melody, you give it more weight. It becomes more deeply embedded in the  listener's brain. 

Lawrence points to a bunch of his own songs, and also many modern composers like John Lennon and Elvis Presley.  

On one level, repetition is something we avoid as screenwriters. You never want to hit the same beat more than once. So in the early episodes of THE SANDMAN there's a tendency to see our protagonist Morpheus responding pretty much the same time and again to the problems before him. It can make those early episodes, which are gorgeous and interesting in a hundred ways, feel oddly static. It also undermines the concept. I found myself wondering, What is the point of this show? (It gets better.)

But repetition can be a powerful force in screenwriting, too. Take the rule of threes--if you return to a situation or line three times, it tends to build interest and also tension. Whether it's a drama or a comedy, the third beat becomes a sort of release valve, the resolution (aka punch line). 

SNL skits are generally built around some kind of repetition--a line, an action, a conflict. And waiting for the repetition to occur becomes a big part of the entertainment. When will it happen? How will it occur? With what variation? 

In a long form drama, there's also the repetition that occurs over seasons and series. BETTER CALL SAUL is approaching its series finale, and a finale is often a moment when a show goes back to the very beginning and brings back lines, events or motifs. And even if we're not aware of it, we're sort of expecting that or hoping for it. And once again the delight is both in the repetition and in its change, the new way something familiar lands now, after all that has happened.  

If there's any show or movie you're watching right now, keep an eye out for anything that's repeated. See how the writer uses repetition. What seems to be its purpose(s)? And does it work?  

And if you want to see just how many different ways repetition can function, check out that Sesame Street video. I don't know if Lawrence wrote it, but it is something I remember watching as a kid. Any time I think of Sesame Street, it comes to mind.