PRIDE MONTH: PLAYING THE CON

In honor of Pride I'm spending this month looking at writing techniques in queer stories. This week I'm focusing on HBO MAX's great queer superhero show DOOM PATROL.  

 

This is in some ways an addendum on my last post (and apologies for not posting it yesterday; I'll have one more DOOM post tomorrow). 

Season one ends with the group discovering that Niles, the man who has been "trying to help them all this time, the man they've spent the season trying to rescue, has actually been responsible for the tragedies of each of their lives and is using them to try and find a way to achieve immortality for himself. 

There’s a little more to it than that--he’s got a daughter who doesn’t age and is incredibly dangerous, so he feels like he has to be around to protect her/protect the world from her. 

 

But even so, it’s quite a brutal turn. And after a first episode of hijinks as the team tries to find its way from where season one left them (tiny and living in a dollhouse – DOOM PATROL is so great, you guys), the characters start to confront that betrayal.

 

Meanwhile Niles begins to investigate a new means of immortality on his own. And Rita, who comes upon him doing so and getting frustrated, insists the team will take care of it, despite the fact that he tells them not to. 

 

It seems like a pretty big turn given what they've learned. But then when they actually jump into the mission, which involves stealing a purposely ridiculously named substance from a purposely ridiculously absurd time traveling guy, it turns out the only way to get to the substance is to kill him. Which Niles had conveniently not mentioned.

 

So having only just learned how they’d been used all this time, the characters have let themselves be conned again. And even better, so have we, because Niles continues to be written--here by April Fitzsimmons & Neil Reynolds--and performed by Timothy Dalton without a single nod to his inherent treachery. He is as amiable and genuine as ever. 

 

It's a pretty rare thing to see a story go this way;  9 times out of 10 after the end of season one reveal we're going to get nods to the fact that this guy can no longer be trusted.

Instead the DOOM PATROL writers continue to write Niles at the top of his innocence, as it were, even though he's not innocent at all. And that choice really energizes the storytelling. Every single thing Niles says and does now has to be scrutinized. Is there anything that's not part of the con? 

 

Because he never lets down the mask of innocence we're also left with the question, does he even recognize what a monster he is? And that creates so much interesting space for future episodes to play in, and a fun journey for him as a character. 

 

File this under: Always Write Your Villain as Though He is a Hero.

 

TOMORROW: ADMIRING GAME

PRIDE MONTH: HIDING THE REAL VILLAIN

In honor of Pride I'm spending this month looking at writing techniques in queer stories. This week I'm focusing on HBO MAX's great queer superhero show DOOM PATROL.

If you've been reading this blog for long you know that I'm fascinated by the writerly art of distraction, the sleight of hand by which storytellers get us to look one way while the real story lies somewhere else, waiting to surprise us later.

One of the great ways DOOM PATROL plays its shell game is by not letting us know there's a game going on at all. From the start of its first season, it's clear who the villain of the piece is and the danger that he poses. Mr. Nobody's abduction of the team's father figure/savior Niles Calder is in fact the inciting incident for the season, forcing the group to slowly confront their own fears and histories and work together to find and save Niles. It's a classic story setup: the team are Mario and Luigi, Mr. Nobody is Bowser and Niles is Princess Toadstool. Let's do this.

Along the way other antagonists pop up, most especially Victor's father, who from the first time we meet him just does not seem on the up and up when it comes to Victor's accident or desires for him. Eventually some of those hunches are confirmed, with terrible emotional consequences for Vic. Later he seems to turn to the good, breaking Vic out of Super Power Prison Experimentation Camp -- by seeming to betray him, of course. But even after, he just doesn't seem trustworthy.  

So we've got two Big Bads, the mad scientist and the monster, and each of them is 100% convincing as the Not Nice People we need to worry about. 

Except it turns out their presence and the dangers they've represented have all also been a way of hiding the real Big Bad, which is Niles himself. In the finale we get the reveal in flashbacks that Niles was in fact responsible in one way or another for the events that ruined each of the character's lives, and has been using them ever since to try and find a way to live forever. 

 

Icing on that cake, we get the surprising flashback scene between Vic's dad and Niles where Niles is trying to advise/play him, and Vic’s dad calls him out on all the horrible things he's done. And suddenly most of what we've seen him do in relation to Vic in the season, which is where our distrust of him began, is cast in a totally different light. Rather than trying to manipulate Vic he's been trying to protect him, because he knows the harm that Niles poses.

 

It's such a satisfying and surprising turn of events. And stepping back we see that the surprise of it all has come not only from the villains pulling focus, but the presentation of Niles himself. From the start he's this kindly old (and handsome) scientist in a wheelchair who loves chocolate pancakes and has dedicated his life to helping these tormented people that society has rejected. Having the series start with him surrendering to being taken by Nobody only further emphasizes both his fragility and his goodness.

 

If you've got a big turn in your show, DOOM PATROL has some great ideas on how to hide it: don't give the audience the sense there there is one; paint your Big Bad in colors we don't expect; and have others who are legitimate threats to keep the audience from looking around. 

TOMORROW: PLAYING THE CON

PRIDE MONTH: DOOM PATROL ALSO KNOWS HOW TO META

In honor of Pride I'm spending this month looking at writing techniques in queer stories. This week I'm focusing on HBO MAX's great queer superhero show DOOM PATROL. 

DOOM PATROL's season 1 has about the most meta villain you can imagine in Mr. Nobody, a character who not only comments in narration on the action but understands that this is a TV series, even going so far as to wear Doom Patrol gear in 114 and to burn their TV series poster down. The degree to which they take his self-awareness is delightful.

 

But meta characters and commentary are a a huge challenge to a longform story. Even as they might entertain us, they also undermine the stakes of the story and its characters, by reminding us over and over again that in fact this is just a story. 

 

Stories are like Disneyland; they want to carry us away completely. At Disneyland, that's in part about thinking through every single detail that we experience, from the way you enter the park itself to the texture of the hallways that you walk through on the way to the Haunted Mansion ride. But it's also about constructing the park so that once you're inside, you can't see anything going on outside. There's nothing to pull you out of the experience.

Meta characters and commentary are exactly that. They intentionally pull you out. And once that momentum starts it tends to build on itself.  So having a meta main villain is a huge challenge. 

And yet the presence of Mr. Nobody does not in the end overwhelm the story or undermine its emotional stakes. And the writers accomplish this by not allowing his meta-ness to distract them from the fact that he is in fact a character with depth and a journey of his own.

 

In 114 as our heroes are finally facing off against him Jane’s psychologist persona manifests and starts analyzing why Nobody is like this. And very quickly the team recognizes, he’s actually just like them, someone who has been damaged. And just like that his meta-ness goes from undermining the story to becoming an expression of the pain that he's in. It calls forth their (and our) empathy.

The final episode takes this one step further. After having struggled over the course of the season to claim her own body and her own narrative, in 114 Rita was finally able to dismiss Nobody’s narration of her story and started narrating her own. But then in the finale she turns around and  encourages Nobody to reclaim his own narrative.

 

It’s some powerfully wise storytelling, the woman who has faced her own worst self and come out the other side teaching a monster who has tormented her and her friends to do the same. But it’s also all a very clever means of kneading the meta back into the story.

 

The lesson DOOM PATROL teaches: If you’re going to have a meta character, make sure you don’t forget the journey they’re on. Meta is super fun, but it's not the end all be all of who they are, it’s the thing above the surface that points to important thing going on down deep.

TOMORROW: HIDING THE REAL VILLAIN

PRIDE MONTH: DOOM PATROL DOES THERAPY SESSIONS RIGHT

In honor of Pride I'm spending this month looking at writing techniques in queer stories. This week I'm focusing on HBO MAX's great queer superhero show DOOM PATROL.

Therapy episodes are the writer's version of a thirst trap. We watched the SOPRANOS, we saw just how good those moments between Tony and Dr. Melfi were, and we want that in our story. 

But in practice therapy sessions are really hard to do well. They are the very definition of Telling instead of Showing. And they're usually predictable. In order to create a sense of problem or conflict, the patient has to be unwilling in some way. And the game of the sessions is really just about getting the patient past that resistance just enough to share some one bit of new insight into their lives, which is by the way not something they've gained from the back and forth of therapy, as you might expect, but just some secret they've been withholding. Making the entire sequence really just a concocted way to hide the fact that this is an Exposition Dump.  

 

In DOOM PATROL 107, writer Neil Reynolds opens on the idea of our main characters sitting together to do a group therapy session together. But then--in classic DOOM PATROL style--it both subverts the conceits of the therapy story and creates a truly compelling therapy-like experience from them. 

 

Reynolds' first great insight is to dismiss the whole "sit and share" conceit. Having shown them all sitting together, Reynolds then jumps back to earlier in the day and lets us follow each of the characters from there to the point where they're now sitting together. 

 

Just like that, the scene goes from a passive lull in the story to active and alive. And rather than doing the typical Kabuki fan dance of trying to hide what our hero's real struggle is, Reynolds immediately shows you what each person is dealing with. Jane is literally fighting herself over whether to destroy the work Niles has done with her; Rita is desperately trying to re-form her body as she tries to get to the meeting; Cliff is finally freaking out about being trapped forever in a metal shell. 

 

Coming after we've already witnessed each of their struggles, the"therapy" moment  now actually functions like real therapy, with characters gaining insight.

 

At the same time, this approach also allows less to ride on the therapy moment. Jane can say fuck this, not because the author needs a sense of conflict in order to distract us from the exposition to come, but strictly because she's already learned what she needs to learn. The therapy happened elsewhere. 

 

So if you're going to do a therapy episode, consider: 

 

How do I keep this active and organic to the story, rather than an interruption or lull? Therapy does not have to be just the patient and therapist sitting talking to each other.

 

How do I keep the scene from becoming just an Exposition Dump masquerading as a quest for insight? A good test: Is the therapy sequence bringing them to some genuinely new insight, or is it really just about convincing them to reveal something they already know?

 

Does what they learn set them off in a new direction or give them new momentum? That’s the funny thing about these kinds of episodes; even if they seem like the character is being forced to take a beat, and thus a pause in the main action, done right "taking a breath" should actually create new energy. 

 

It’s like when you’re working on a screenplay and you get super blocked, and you keep pushing and nothing happens. But then instead you give up and I don’t know, watch your kittens fight. (Vicious creatures.) And then when you come back, everything you need is now there. The gear shift was not a distraction after all, but the path forward.

  

TOMORROW: DOOM PATROL ALSO KNOWS HOW TO META