by Neil Landau
NL: In terms of point of view and relationships, because you came from network television, did you map out A, B, C, or D stories? You have Carrie and Saul (Mandy Patinkin), who are such an anchor to the story. Brody and Dana (Morgan Saylor) also became very central. Do you arc things individually character by character? Do you focus on exploring this relationship in a multi-episode arc? What is the process of breaking story on the show?
AG: It’s a combination of all the things you’ve said. A lot of it is done episode-by-episode. And, a lot of it comes out of the character. For example, if you look at Saul and his relationship with his wife. That was born out of the fact that we didn’t have a role for Saul to play over a couple of episodes. So, we thought here we have an opportunity to tell a little bit about Saul and thought the audience might be interested. But, when we pitched that story originally, people were like, “Well, who fucking cares about Saul? We don’t care about this guy and we don’t care about his wife.” So, there was a lot of investigation at the beginning of the series about what kinds of stories it could hold and what was going to be compelling. In fact, after the pilot was shot, Howard and I had a lot of disagreement about whether anyone would be interested in Brody’s family at all. Would anybody care about his relationship with his wife? Or, his kids? There was a terrorist attack up and running—would anyone even pay attention? Were the episodes going to feel unbalanced? What became interesting and evident in the first couple of episodes was that you were almost more interested in what was going on in Brody’s house than what was going on in the more traditional bad guy part of the story.
I believe it was Joseph Conrad who said: “Writing is like mining coal with your hands.” And we’re in the mines, trying to find the veins of stories to uncover. Sometimes they’re evident at the beginning of the season. We knew where the Brody/Carrie relationship was going to go. That was something that we knew we had to plot out at the beginning. We knew, for example, that Dana was going to be the character that talked Brody offthe ledge at the end. So, if you watch the pilot and you see when they meet for the first time in the waiting room after Brody comes offthat plane, you’ll see that the hug with his wife is awkward, tentative, and hesitant. But, his hug with Dana is heartfelt. And, that’s when you start to see his emotion come through. So, that relationship, we always knew was going to be central. We basically knew the Carrie/Brody arc. I’m not quite sure if we knew she was going to wind up being in electroshock therapy at the end. But we knew she was going to have a breakdown.
NL: Did you know from the beginning that Marine sniper Tom Walker (Chris Chalk) was the POW who had been turned?
AG: The whole relationship between the soldiers we really took wholesale from Hatufim. One of the soldiers was carrying around this dark secret that he beat his fellow prisoner of war to death. We thought that would be a great psychological underpinning of Brody’s captivity.
NL: Are there any story rules when you’re breaking story in terms of pacing and doling out what and when you’re revealing from episode to episode? In other words, we seem to get one major new piece of information in each episode, and they each end in a cliffhanger. Is that a very conscious approach when you’re breaking story that you need to have one of those big revelations each time?
AG: I think that was very much the strategy of our first season. And, it was a legacy of working on 24.
NL: It works very well. It’s addictive.
AG: Because we were so uncertain and so unsure whether anyone was going to be interested in the family stories or the story of Saul’s dissolving marriage. We always wanted to make sure, especially during that first series of episodes, that we would end on something that genuinely wanted to make the audience come back. It was definitely a narrative strategy and something we worked for in the room—sometimes effectively and sometimes not so effectively, in my opinion. Because thriller tropes are so universal and people have seen them so often, we knew that there were certain muscular action moves that were going to take place over the course of the season. And, what we did narratively was to have them happen before the audience was expecting them to happen. Everybody knew that Brody and Carrie were going to have some kind of an emotional/physical relationship, but the fact that it happened in episode 4, just blew everyone’s minds. Because they thought: “Wait a minute, how the fuck is that possible?” So, I think we were able to deliver the audience’s expectations before they were expecting them, which made them feel fresher than if we had dragged them out.
NL: In the episode called “The Weekend,” the scene where they go to the cabin and have tea in the kitchen is an apt example of that. I thought, “No way—he’s not going to figure this out this soon.” And then, next thing I know, Brody’s got the gun in his hand aimed at Carrie.
AG: At the beginning of the season, we were following the blogs a little bit. And, after every episode, there would be these whole lines of debate like, “They’ve painted themselves into a corner. How the fuck are they going to get out of this?” We definitely compressed the story and energized the entire season by doing that. Also, when you’re starting a series, you have no idea whether it’s going to be successful or not. So, all of us who have been around for a long time, all the writers in here—we’re all middle-aged at best—and we want it to succeed or fail on our own terms. So, we pushed the envelope, we didn’t take the safe route, we got Brody and Carrie together way before anyone saw it coming, so we had some interesting building blocks in place.
NL: How are you mapping out the next season? Is it going to pick up right where you left off? Are you going to jump ahead?
AG: We’re definitely going to jump at least six months.
NL: Will there be a main or central question? A new mystery to explore?
AG: There will be. Although it will not have the same purity of the first season’s questions. It’s the curse of a second season. You’re able to float a lot of questions in the first season, but you have to answer more of those questions in the second season. I think you have to dig deeper to create a compelling story again. You’re catching us right in the middle of breaking stories for the second season and that’s the struggle we’re engaged in.
NL: I would imagine that one of the biggest challenges from the get-go would be how to get Carrie back into the CIA again.
AG: It’s interesting—everybody says that, but that has been the least of our problems. (Laughs.)
NL: When Carrie has her mini epiphany in episode 8 (“Achilles’ Heel”) with Saul, it’s such a memorable moment for me. She tells Saul that she’s come to the realization that: “I’m going to spend the rest of my life alone”— just like Saul. It seems like that’s another thing you can explore in season 2, Carrie’s personal/romantic life which was left in a state of total chaos.
AG: The real trick at the center of the show is Carrie and Brody. That’s what we have to accomplish in the second season: to bring them together in a way that feels believable and dramatically pregnant—to ultimately push their doomed romance forward for another season.
10
Get to the Heart of your Story
Television, unlike films, lets us live with a group of characters over many seasons. That’s part of the attraction. We invite these same people into our living rooms every week for years and years. And, the best shows can have a hundred or more hours of story to tell. Great television writing is, therefore, all about the characters.
Certainly, the best television writing has an external dimension. In other words, we have to know what a character wants in a series, a season, a story, a subplot, and a scene. But we also need to understand who they are, what they fear, what they hope for—the subtext, the emotional challenge, the dimension of their internal struggles. We need to care.
This is what great dramatic television is really about. We tune in to feel something as we go on a journey with someone we care about.
To help you see how this all plays out, this chapter deals with the seemingly “small” example of
amazing scenes from the pilot episodes of great shows. Great scenes are examples of story in a microcosm. They have a beginning, middle, and an end. They have depth and nuance and are typically organized around a character’s attempt toward a goal, i.e., the external event and the more layered internal nuances of subtext, arc, emotional change and thematic relevance. However, unlike most big-budget films, the “event” of many dramatic shows is often fairly small, particularly once we move outside the procedural arenas of police, medical, and legal series.
Pilot episodes are the blueprints for a series and, as the first episode (the prototype), they are vital for getting a show green-lit, attracting talent and drawing in both critics and a loyal, dedicated audience. The storylines must therefore get to that core combination of both premise and characters rich enough to keep exploring for years.
Now, let’s look at some examples.
Case Study 1: Parenthood
Lesson: Make a lead character, group, or family face their greatest fears head-on.
Parenthood is a critically acclaimed drama-comedy based on a feature film written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel and directed by Ron Howard. This multi-award-winning TV series was developed and adapted by its showrunner, Jason Katims, and revolves around the Bravermans: a big, loud family of colorful and imperfect people dealing with modern life in all its messiness.
In the pilot, we see a number of the themes that will engage us as an audience for the first season and beyond. In one of the major storylines, Adam (Peter Krause) and his wife, Kristina (Monica Potter), learn that their young son Max (Max Burkholder) has Asperger’s—a disorder that impacts his emotional functioning. Adam initially refuses to accept and believe this fact about his son. Then, in the climactic scene for this storyline, Adam waits with Max outside a family event while the rest of the family watches Max’s little cousin Sydney (Savannah Paige Rae) play an angel in a recital inside. The scene begins just after Adam’s father, Zeek (Craig T. Nelson), realizes that Adam and Max are missing and goes to find them.
Zeek is a brash, tough veteran and a man’s man. His first line to his son is, “What the hell are you doing out here?” The external stakes of the scene are very simple. Will Zeek bully Adam into bringing Max inside to watch Sydney’s recital? That’s it. But, if that was all there was, we would not really care. What’s at stake is Max and Adam and their family’s future. Will Adam accept his son’s condition?
We care about these people already at this point. Adam doesn’t want to accept that his son Max has an issue. He has been fighting this. So, when Adam tells Zeek they can’t go in because there are candles inside and Max can’t walk past them—we know what he’s wrestling with. Zeek then wants to force the issue, thinking they are just babying Max. He tells Adam that he raised four kids. He knows what he’s doing. This is the “traditional” male character. Just fight through it. This is where Adam learned his model of masculinity.
Adam finally admits to Zeek, and to himself, that his son is different and they’re both going to need his dad’s help. This is all Adam can do. He’s been physically trapped by Zeek into admitting that there’s a real issue and he can’t pretend that there isn’t anymore. His son can’t walk past candles. The show’s writers backed him into a corner, where he has to face up to the challenges his son presents.
Zeek finally sees the truth, his son is hurting and needs his help, and he acknowledges the reality with a single word, “Sonny.” And he goes to him. They love each other.
Let’s review. In this simple, single scene, Adam has finally acknowledged that his son has a problem. He’s asked his dad for help. Both of these are very hard for Adam to do. They are all in uncharted territory. This single issue chosen for the Adam storyline will be something that the Braver-mans will wrestle with and come to understand more fully over the life of the show. It will exist in nearly every episode. That’s what great television does: explores the emotional and moral complexities of life as they evolve over time. And the writers explore these issues with nuance, subtext, and the specificity that grows out of each distinctive character. TV is all about the accumulation of these little moments. If you’re only gunning for plot, you’re going to be whizzing past the real drama of all stories: the emotional impact and its accompanying ripple effects. Take your time and allow each significant incident to breathe and resonate—that’s the lifeblood of all great TV series.
Case Study 2: Shameless
Lesson: Make characters live and confront socially combustible issues in interesting ways that fit who they are.
Tonally, Shameless is a harder-edged series than Parenthood. Whereas Parenthood is a series parents can watch with their kids on NBC, Shameless airs on the premium cable Showtime network, which enables its showrunners to push the boundaries of nudity and coarse language. Parenthood is evocative. Shameless is a provocative, one-hour dramedy developed and adapted by Paul Abbott and John Wells, based upon an award-winning series created by Paul Abbott for the BBC. Shameless is about a family of six kids and an alcoholic, drug-addicted, absentee, and exploitative dad, Frank (William H. Macy). These are the Gallaghers. And on most days, all they have is their love for each other as they struggle to make it through life in a tough section of below-working-class Chicago.
In the pilot episode, we have a number of storylines, but let’s examine the one that revolves around two of the brothers, Lip (Jeremy Allen White), age seventeen, has just learned that his younger brother, Ian (Cameron Monaghan), is gay. Despite the fact that the two brothers share a room, Lip never had a clue. They’ve fought badly over this earlier in the episode. It was at least a draw. Now we need to know, what happens next? Does being gay cost you your family if you are a Gallagher?
Ian is outside, smoking in a van. Lip arrives with a magazine of gay porn. He slaps it down in front of Ian. “How can that be good for you?” Is the fight gonna continue? Is this new fact gonna drive these two apart permanently? That’s the question of this scene. That’s real stakes. And, it’s in the “how it plays out” that everything about these two characters, both as individuals and as brothers is revealed.
Lip begins to ask questions. “Was Kash your first?” Kash (Pej Vahdat) is a grown man, and Ian’s boss. Lip learned Ian was having sex with him, earlier. He’s asking about his brother’s love life. His brother doesn’t want to talk. He’s angry. But, then Lip asks the question that turns the scene, and gets to the emotional heart of these two: “When have I ever let you down?” With Ian’s response we have our answer—Lip has never let him down.
Lip teases him about it, but the hard edge is gone. They share a smoke. Make jokes. It’s going to be OK. It’s not going to be easy for Ian in this neighborhood. But his brother’s got his back. This reality is a central conflict and source of support in his storyline for the next several years. Bottom line, no scene is just a scene. Not in a pilot or over the course of a great series. And no scene is just about “an external objective” if we want the audience coming back and caring.
Case Study 3: The West Wing
Lesson: Never make it too easy for your main character; keep the pressure on, and the complications and reveals coming.
The West Wing was created for network television by Aaron Sorkin, a prolific and highly decorated writer in both film and television. The show ran for seven seasons and won two Golden Globes and twenty-six Emmy awards.
Let’s examine a single, small scene from the series pilot. This scene occurs at the beginning of act 4, which is the final act of the pilot. Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) is the White House deputy communications director. The show was initially intended to focus on him with his co-workers being the secondary stories. In this scene, Sam is having a really bad day. Politically. Personally. All around. His best friend might get fired over something he said on Meet the Press. Something Sam thinks is true. There are Cuban refugees off the coast of Florida, with a giant storm coming and the Governor of Florida is refusing to let them land. And Sam unknowingly slept with a prostitute.
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Now, he’s been asked by his boss, Chief of Staff Leo McGarry (John Spencer) to show his daughter’s fourth-grade elementary class around the White House. And he really needs this to go well. So what happens? Sam knows nothing about the history of this building. He begins to talk about himself, but the Teacher calls him out and pulls him aside. This brings us to our scene.
The scene opens in a hallway. And the teacher immediately blasts him: “I’m sorry to be rude, but are you a moron?” How’s that for a scene opening?! She’s not going to make this easy for him. Why should she? Conflict is the heart of drama. The teacher goes on to list the extensive number of historical facts he just got glaringly wrong. This brings us to the heart of the scene for Sam. He asks her if she could just point out his boss’s daughter. If she could, it would really make his life easier. She tells him the kids worked hard. They wrote essays. She’s not inclined to make his life easier.
He then goes on to explain how bad his day has been. Including the prostitute. At which point, she informs him that she’s his boss’s daughter, Mallory (Allison Smith). Ouch. This, like the entire pilot, is a terrific scene.
Look how little of it is about the “external motivation.” On the outside, Sam just wants to figure out which fourth grade elementary school girl he needs to impress to get back in good graces with his boss. He’s dealing with macro-level fires, but is not up high enough to avoid these micro-issues. Because he has assumed that the daughter is one of the students, he makes a series of blunders. These anger and upset the teacher. He then confesses things he absolutely doesn’t want his boss to know, and it unexpectedly turns out he’s confessing them to his boss’s daughter. That’s great writing. Internal complications. Faulty assumptions. Real emotions of frustration, anger, etc. We believe and feel for Sam—even as he digs himself that much deeper.