by Neil Landau
JK: And, there’s usually only a few characters that you can genuinely tell stories about. But, in television, the person who’s eleven on your call sheet could wind up being number one on your call sheet for an episode. You end up getting to know so much about all of these people. This is the beauty and the fun of doing TV.
NL: In your ensemble shows, are there any rules like the A story always has to be Eric and Tami or is it more fluid than that?
JK: It’s way more fluid than that. We definitely didn’t have the feeling that the A story was always Eric and Tami, and it certainly wasn’t, if you look at it. As much as they were the core of the show, it just wasn’t natural that they would have all the A stories because you’re dealing with a bunch of teenagers. Teenagers are going to have the crazy A stories. They’re going to have the stuff going on in their lives all the time. The married couple has the bigger story because it’s about their lives and their marriage, but they don’t literally have the stuff that’s the engine for the stories each week.
NL: In Friday Night Lights, they anchor the story, but in Parenthood, the siblings primarily anchor the show. It seems that the A story is always going to be about one of the brothers and sisters in that show.
JK: Typically. I felt like when I started Parenthood, I just needed a way to think about it because it was such a big cast with so many possibilities. I basically decided that I was coming at it from the point of view of these four siblings. When I started breaking stories, it was always from them. As a show evolves, you’re able to do stories that are still about that, but able to shiftpoint of view—it’s more of Kristina’s [Monica Potter] point of view than Adam’s [Peter Krause]. You’re telling a story that’s more Zeek [Craig T. Nelson] and Camille’s [Bonnie Bedelia] story than the kids or you tell stories from Max’s point of view. It’s always good to have a place to start from just so you don’t confuse yourself too much, but then you can expand that as time goes on. You’re always balancing what’s expanding with what’s just not in keeping with the show. And, that’s a decision that is really left for the showrunner. Writers will pitch a lot of different ideas which are very good, but the showrunner has to be the one to say, “Yes, that’s a good idea, but it’s not this show.”
NL: When I watch Parenthood, there’s always at least one moment where I get teary-eyed. There was one particularly heartrending scene in the first season where Kristina and Adam must come to terms with their son’s Asperger’s. Here is their energetic, curious, sweet, innocent little boy—and they’re confronted with the reality that he’s struggling with impairment. It breaks their hearts because they know it’s going to be a road difficult for him (and them) to navigate. And Kristina and Adam are so emotionally raw as they move from denial to acceptance of Max’s condition. My question for you: when breaking stories, is your barometer that a worthy plotline must be capable of pushing your characters to become vulnerable?
JK: Absolutely. Both when I’m thinking of story and I’m in the room talking about it. I’m always looking for when am I feeling something. And, again that’s personal to me—the stories that I’m attracted to. I feel like when you know the core of what the story is about emotionally than you’re better able to more easily break that story. And, also, by the way, to find the humor in it. To me, the humor comes after you figure out what you’re getting to emotionally. It’s easier then to find what’s funny because you’re talking about working through some sort of conflict. And, out of conflict, comes humor.
The example that you brought up became an issue when I was developing the pilot of Parenthood. The idea of having a kid with Asperger’s was a debate within myself. I have a son with Asperger’s and I didn’t know if I wanted to go there. Whether it was a violation of privacy for my son and my family, number one, and number two, whether I wanted to talk about it every day when it was already such a big part of my home life. But, what I felt ultimately is that
If I’m going to do a show about parenting called Parenthood, I should probably look for stories that I’m going to be able to tap into myself and that are going to scare me a little to tell.
And, ultimately I did that—not knowing if I could find an actor who could pull that off. How we would be able to tell this story in a way that felt real. When neither of the actors doing it knew the particulars of what this situation was like. It would be terrible to me—the idea of doing it and having it look fake and stupid. I went into it not knowing how well we’d be able to pull it off. It became one of the most profound experiences of my career in telling that story. We were lucky enough to get Max Burkholder to play this kid, and he’s just done such a great job, but also watching how Monica Potter and Peter Krause have grown. They’ve just so invested themselves in that storyline. It’s just amazing and then to see the response that people have to it has been great. Sometimes you want a storyline that’s a little scary to you—it’s a good thing. It means you’re pushing yourself and you’re getting out of your own comfort zone. Especially in television now, where drama is written at such a high level. The audience’s expectations are so high. They have so many choices. It’s endless amounts at their fingertips—anytime they want to watch stuff. It’s a requirement for people doing television to dig deep and find those stories that are ambitious.
NL: That’s another thing about your work—it’s surprising. I can’t get ahead of you—which I so appreciate. I want to be surprised more than anything. I like not knowing where things are going.
JK: That brings up a good point too which is that I get excited about a story when we’re in the room, and you’ve got eight people with eight different passionate opinions. And, when some of them say, “Oh, I would never do that…”—that’s when I always feel like we’re on to something. I know this is an issue where you don’t know what the ending is going to be. If there’s eight people in the room and they’re all arguing about the answer, then the people watching will feel the same—that they’re not sure where it’s going to go. The way to tell stories where you don’t know where it’s going to lead is by coming up with things that are genuinely the stuff of life. Sometimes we have to stop ourselves from having too many twists and turns in the story because when plot gets too big—sometimes it gets in the way of what’s real.
I’m very lucky to have shows like Friday Night Lights and Parenthood, where the cast is so good and so strong. A little bit goes a long way with them. You don’t have to have these huge turning points within a scene for them to find stuff. It just needs to be real as opposed to feeling fake, so we try as best we can as writers to give the actors material where they are not hitting false notes as they are doing it. The actors help a lot with that too— making sure this is grounded and true to their characters. It truly is a collaboration. When you all feel you’re after the same thing on the same show, that’s when you have a possibility of succeeding. It’s very hard to do television. You’re telling lots of stories in a short amount of time and you make those episodes very fast. I feel like where TV goes off the rails a lot of the time is when the network thinks the show is one thing and the writer thinks it’s something else and the actors think it’s a third thing. And the result is that the audience is not being served. What’s important as a showrunner is to make sure you’re doing everything that you can so that everybody feels that they’re doing the same show. Everybody is excited about it and there’s ownership in that. They feel like they are invested in it. To this day, one of the things I love so much about Parenthood is when I’ll talk to the actors after they’ve gotten the script, and they’ll say how much they love another character’s story. They’re into the show. They’re not just going through and looking at their pages. They are into the show as a whole. And, that’s what keeps the show feeling real and fresh.
11
Know who and what they’re up Against
Creating stakes: Give your protagonist(s) something to gain and something to lose. The antagonistic forces on a series will serve to escalate the stakes and intensi
fy the urgency to solve a given problem. Think about the role of time in your series. Notice how characters in all genres are always rushing somewhere—they must hurry and do something or else.
In The Killing, detective Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) is all set to move to California with her fiancé and her teenage son when she gets assigned a murder case. Sarah plans to wrap the case up quickly so she can move on with her life, but the case gradually turns into a sprawling conspiracy that drags on for weeks. The case ruins her relationship with her fiancé, jeopardizes the custody of her son, and puts her life at risk. And those are just the stakes for one of the characters. This case destroys many lives and careers as it changes the political climate of the city.
In Homeland, the stakes intensify for Carrie (Claire Danes) as her feelings for Brody (Damian Lewis) complicate her mission to protect America from a developing terrorist plot. Carrie’s affection for Brody turns into love, which compromises her judgment and puts her career and reputation at risk. The stakes are heightened for Brody as well, who finds himself at odds with his new celebrity status as an American hero, his conflicted allegiance to terrorist Abu Nazir (Navid Negahban), and the disconnect with his family who learned to live without him.
Weeds raises the stakes for protagonist Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) with each passing season. Recently widowed Nancy operates a modestly successful marijuana business in the upscale suburban-gated community of Agrestic, and as her business literally grows, so do her problems. Among other challenges, Nancy faces off against rival dealers, a shrewd DEA agent (whom Nancy eventually marries, complicating matters), and the leader of a drug cartel (whom Nancy also marries and bears his child, further complicating matters). Also at stake is the welfare of her two sons. The dysfunction caused by the drug trade ropes her eldest son Silas (Hunter Parrish) into the business, and leads her youngest son Shane (Alexander Gould) to sociopathic behavior and, ultimately, murder.
In sitcoms, the stakes aren’t “life or death,” but they should feel like it. In the season 4 finale of Friends, Ross (David Schwimmer) calls his bride Rachel at the altar, but her name is Emily! It’s a gut-wrenching moment that dooms his marriage and further muddles his complicated relationship with Rachel (Jennifer Aniston).
In How I Met Your Mother, Ted (Josh Radnor) learns that his fiancée has never seen Star Wars, his all-time favorite movie. Ted says to his friend Marshall (Jason Segel), “If Stella doesn’t like this movie, I can’t marry her.” Ted anxiously observes his fiancée as she watches the film, hoping they’re compatible. This is a trivial problem linked to a much larger, deeper fear of intimacy—and the stakes of a lifelong commitment could not be higher for Ted.
Man against man. The most common obstacle comes in the form of a person—the antagonist. The goals of the protagonist and antagonist come into direct conflict with each other. In 24, the antagonist is almost always a terrorist with a specific anti-American agenda. Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) must foil a series of escalating attacks carried out by the antagonist and his henchmen.
Sometimes the identity and motivation of the antagonist are unknown. In Person of Interest, a complex machine predicts murders before they happen, but the machine only delivers the identity of a person. The protagonists are tasked with discerning if that person is the potential victim or the antagonist.
The antagonist could also have supernatural abilities. In the fantasy series Once Upon a Time, protagonist Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) struggles to break the curse that the Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla) has cast on the town of Storybrooke.
Sometimes the antagonist might be someone that the protagonist is trying to help. In the pilot for Scandal, political fixer Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) must prove that a decorated war hero didn’t commit a murder. Olivia discovers the veteran’s alibi, but revealing the alibi would out him as being gay. In order to complete her mission, Olivia must convince the reluctant war hero to tell the truth.
Man against society. Characters often have the burden of facing a social construct far beyond their control. In The Wire, the drug trade systemically corrupts the city of Baltimore. In season 3, disaffected policeman Major Bunny Colvin (Robert Wisdom) secretly legalizes drugs in the most abject areas of West Baltimore in a desperate attempt to curtail the growing drug violence. Even though his plan works, the societal pressure requiring a hard-line stance on drugs ultimately destroys his experiment as well as his career.
In House of Cards, the social construct standing in the way of protagonist Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) is Beltway politics. After failing to receive his promised appointment to secretary of state, Frank schemes to get more power. However, he can’t simply take the president’s job. Instead, he must orchestrate a byzantine plot to become vice president in order to position himself to win the presidency in eight years.
In Game of Thrones, the political barriers are medieval. Ned Stark (Sean Bean) agrees to become Hand of the King, the king’s trusted adviser. Ned eventually learns the king’s heir, Joffrey (Jack Gleeson), is illegitimate. He was the product of an incestuous affair between the queen and her brother. As the king’s health fades, Ned honorably tries to find a righteous succession plan, but he’s betrayed by his allies and sentenced to death by Joffrey after he’s dubiously crowned king.
In The Walking Dead, the zombie apocalypse creates a society completely devoid of laws. It’s purely survival of the fittest. In the season 2 episode “Nebraska,” protagonist Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and two of his cohorts encounter a pair of survivors in the bar of an abandoned town. The survivors implore Rick to allow them to join his group, but Rick refuses. As their anger swells, Rick shoots them dead before they have the chance to shoot him.
Man against self. Sometimes the main character is his own worst enemy. In Mad Men, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) fights to conceal his checkered past, a far cry from his urbane advertising executive persona. Don also grapples with his serial philandering, which comes into conflict with his role as husband and father.
In Breaking Bad, Walter White (Bryan Cranston) constantly battles his own hubris. Instead of taking money from his former colleague for cancer treatment, Walter embarks on the reckless journey of becoming a meth kingpin. Presented with several opportunities to walk away, Walter forges ahead. He doesn’t quit until his wife finally gets through to him and shows him that he’s accumulated too much money to count—far more than his initial goal of $737,000.
In Nashville, Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere) is the young country superstar who wants to be taken more seriously, but is plagued in both the past and the present by her drug addict mother. She is both independent yet vulnerable which causes her to be reckless and angry all the time. Her inability to admit she needs help and wants love may just keep her in the one place she doesn’t want to be—alone.
In Revenge, Emily Thorne (Emily VanCamp) is similarly trapped by her anger at both the death of her innocent father and her terrible memories of an abusive childhood full of foster homes and juvenile prison. But where Nashville’s Juliette lashes out, Emily is cool and reserved. Her intense focus on revenge has made her numb and is also blinding her from seeing that it’s coming at the cost of other people she cares about—including her long-lost love, Jack Porter (Nick Wechsler). In the season 2 finale, Emily finally admits who she really is to Jack, so we’ll have to see what they’ll do. Will he feel betrayed and turn against her, or will they join forces and align against their mutual adversaries?
Man against nature. Mother Nature can serve as a powerful adversary to the main characters. In Lost, the survivors battle mysterious forces, but they also encounter the pitfalls of being stranded on an island: scarce resources, rough terrain, and dangerous wildlife.
In medical dramas such as House, M.D., doctors continually face an array of deadly organic pathogens moving through the atmosphere invisibly.
Mother nature can also be an ironic adversary, incidental to the main obstacle. In Breaking Bad, Walter and Jesse (Aaron Paul) cook meth in an RV in
the middle of the New Mexico desert for the purposes of privacy. However, in the season 2 episode “4 Days Out,” Walter and Jesse almost die of heat exhaustion as a result of being accidentally stranded in the solitary desert.
Man against fate. The main character may find himself against an inevitable outcome. In Boss, unscrupulous mayor of Chicago Tom Kane (Kelsey Grammer) receives a diagnosis of Lewy body dementia, an incurable disease that causes hallucinations and loss of motor skills. Tom battles uncontrollable delusions, which affect his perception, judgment, and memory.
Characters often suffer the consequences of random fateful events. In Friday Night Lights, star quarterback Jason Street (Scott Porter) gets paralyzed from the waist down after a brutal hit on the football field. The harrowing injury causes a ripple effect in the football-crazed town of Dillon, Texas. Jason’s promising football career is over, ill-prepared backup quarterback Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) is thrust into the starting role and searing spotlight, and head coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) suddenly finds his job in jeopardy, which could mean uprooting his family yet again.
In sitcoms, the characters are often ill-fated by the construct of the show. The passengers of the S.S. Minnow are not going to get off Gilligan’s Island.
In Married … with Children, Al Bundy is fated to be a sad-sack loser, pre-destined by the “Bundy Curse.” In the season 8 episode “Luck of the Bundys,” everything suddenly goes Al’s way, much to his skepticism. Once Al finally embraces his good fortune and declares, “Al Bundy is a winner!” everything immediately falls apart.
In My Name Is Earl, petty thief Earl Hickey (Jason Lee) attempts to avoid a grim fate by embracing karma and making amends for all the wrongs he’s committed in his lifetime. Earl reaches this epiphany after losing a $100,000-dollar lottery ticket—and only finding it after selflessly picking up trash to atone for years of littering.