The TV Showrunner's Roadmap

by Neil Landau

  NL: And Emma and Regina aligning against a common enemy.

  AH: What was cool about that for us was finding this idea that your protagonist and antagonist both want the same thing which is this kid. In many ways, their motivations are both laudable, but it’s how they are going about earning Henry’s trust that creates conflict between Emma and Regina. Then it’s fun to find situations where the two of them do have to work together for the common good.

  NL: It’s interesting that you said that Henry was not part of the original concept because his book and his role in the show is so significant in terms of explaining things and getting us up to speed.

  EK: Yeah, that was the breakthrough when we realized that we needed to write a ten-year-old version of ourselves coming to get our mom. Henry is the heart and soul of the show. He’s the true believer. Our show is for believers. We wanted to make this show about hope and not be cynical—which is tough in today’s world when usually anything that is cool is cynical. We wanted people once a week to feel the way I felt when I watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the boy got the golden ticket. For me that personally was important. I like that feeling and it’s important. Henry embodies that.

  NL: When you conceived of Storybrooke, this weird combination between a 2012 beach town and something stuck in the 1950s where there are rotary phones, but are there also cell phones. How did you make that decision?

  EK: We felt that these stories were timeless, so Storybrooke had to be timeless. Originally, when we set it, we said that the fairy tales would be the Spielberg side and that the town would be our [legendary film director] Hal Ashby side. But then we realized that Storybrooke became our childhood. A lot of it is little things from our youth that we may remember or that stuck out at us. We just love the metaphor that Storybrooke is timeless because these stories are timeless. We loved the aesthetic of both a rotary phone and that someone could still check their e-mail. We called it faded glory. There was this Reagan documentary that the two of us and Mark Worthington, our production designer, saw. They went back to Reagan’s town where he grew up and there was a bandstand—it was the way downtown Disney is. And now, it’s abandoned like a ghost town. For us, it was the way you would go see a band in an old theatre. In the 1920s, it was beautiful, but now it’s been shit on with stickers. That was Storybrooke. So Emma’s car coming in was the first bit of color—and that’s why we had the yellow bug coming in.

  AH: One of the challenges was, how do you make a cursed town a place people want to spend time in?

  EK: Yeah, it was cursed, but not so cursed that you wouldn’t want to be there.

  AH: For us, the answer was making it reminiscent of places we love, but not quite able to get back to. Emma becomes the catalyst for revitalization.

  NL: Theme has been the most polarizing topic for both this book and my last book on film. Where do you stand on theme?

  AH: We’re theme guys. There’s this balancing act, too, between theme and story. For us, if you get them to all coincide, that’s the greatest thing for us. And some work better than others. Ultimately, you want the audience to be engaged to care about the story. For us, theme is a means to that end.

  EK: It’s a unifier. We don’t sit down and say, “What’s the theme about?” We actually talk about the character. What does the character want? “Well, this week, Regina needs to do _______.” And then you start talking about what she wants. And then you say, “What’s the theme? What is she learning?”

  AH: We’ve done it many different ways. Sometimes the theme reveals itself clearly.

  EK: Beauty and the Beast is the easiest example because Rumple [Robert Carlyle] couldn’t love himself.

  AH: Sometimes we have an idea that we think is really cool for a story with these characters and then we try to figure out what’s the theme. Once we do that, then sometimes the story changes and molds to it. Ultimately, we like to land on a theme which can unify things which helps guide us into making each scene feel like it fits into the show and feels necessary.

  NL: It seems like in the Hansel and Gretel episode that you start off with the children planting the candy bars in the backpack, and then you have the kids in the other realm who are told they have to go into the house made of candy. So sometimes the stories between the realms feel very parallel and sometimes they’re not.

  EK: Some of my favorite ones are when they are not parallel, but the Hansel & Gretel one, we felt that these kids were homeless and they needed their dad, so it had to carry through.

  AH: Sometimes you can do it, but sometimes it’s too matchy. You can have the connective tissue be more of an emotional issue that both characters are going through in each world or even a thematic question that they’re both dealing with. It doesn’t have to be so literal.

  EK: In the Dreamy episode in the past, all he wanted to do was run away with the Blue Fairy and everyone was telling him not to do it. And in the present day, it was a festival where he had to sell candles. And people were like, “What?” But we said it would work because you’re seeing the dream right now. And one of my favorite moments was when we were at the Paley Festival and we were showing that episode. One of the act outs was when Grumpy [Lee Arenberg] smashes all the lights in the town and Mary Margaret [Ginnifer Goodwin] says, “What are you doing?” And he says, “I’m selling candles, sister.” And the whole audience started to cheer as if Spider-man had just saved the bus. I looked at Adam and I said, “I can’t believe it worked.” Because really the story was he’s selling candles.

  AH: That was a case of us trying to attach it to something emotional. He was in love with this woman. And he didn’t think that he could be with her, so he was trying to find a way. It was also that he and Mary Margaret were trying to redeem themselves in the eyes of the town, so that was also the connective tissue.

  NL: Once you have an arc and you know where this is going, how do you make the decisions of breaking them down? Are you trying to get them all to dovetail at a certain point?

  EK: I feel that oftentimes the episode dictates it. It’s an organic process where you want to reveal why the Queen hates Snow White. You plan to do it in episode 15, but then you start to tell the stories and you go, “Oh, there’s a little piece before that happens that you want to get to, so then it gets pushed.” As you’re telling the story, the story starts to reveal itself with what is necessary to be told. You have to be flexible about your plans with what the needs of the stories are.

  NL: What I love about your series is that you don’t rush things. When you’re a kid having a story read to you, you don’t want it to end.

  EK: That was something we learned on Lost. It’s funny because in today’s world of the Internet, there’s a more impatient public. For us, we had a plan for the season and we wanted to give each story its due. People come along for the ride. They are not watching your show for answers because once they do that, then they don’t care about anything but the answers. We never want mythology to overwhelm character. We always felt that at the end of season 1 we were going to break the curse because we didn’t want every episode to be, “When are they going to break it?” We want people to enjoy Grumpy and enjoy Ruby.

  One of the greatest lessons that we took from Lost was that the most engaging mysteries are character mysteries. Why people do the things they do? Whether an audience knows it or not, that’s what I think they find most engaging. All the other mythological questions are cool and fun, but if they’re not attached to engaging character mysteries, then they’re not nearly as satisfying.

  EK: Exactly, so for me, one of my favorite scenes is when Emma wakes her son up—now she believes. Yes, it broke the curse, but that’s secondary to the fact that she saved her son’s life. To me, that is the perfect blend of character and mythology.

  NL: How much do you trust that your audience is going to be able to keep track of the mythology? Do you put little reminders in?

  EK: Sure. You try to build in little reminders, but ultimately, I feel l
ike if you can create within the episode, an engaging story for that character in that episode, the audience will go along for the roller coaster ride—even if they don’t remember every detail. For the audience who wants to go closer, then you reward them by saying, “Look, this is how it fits into the larger tapestry.”

  NL: Audiences are really smart.

  EK: Yes, Lost was intricate, but go look on the blogs. Everyone got everything. Everything. People loved that the show wasn’t dumbing down for them. As long as you do what Adam said and give them something engaging, then they can enjoy it.

  AH: Audiences crave meaning. They want things to matter. They want there to be something more to everyone. I think it’s that questioning nature that makes people like stories. If you can dig a little deeper and find something behind the story, I think that’s very rewarding and makes an audience want to see more.

  EK: It’s funny because one of the greatest lessons we learned on Lost was what Damon and Carlton said when we joined, “This is a character show. Mythology cannot overrun character.” We’ve taken that to heart on this. And when you think about Lost and your favorite moments, at least for me personally, it’s the character moments.

  AH: Or the episode where Sun [Yunjin Kim] goes to the Medical Hatch and sees the ultrasound that says she is pregnant which is super emotional, but then we’re also in a Dharma Hatch and there’s all this other stuff that’s unfolding about the larger mythology, but it’s attached to a story of a woman who didn’t think she would be pregnant and then realizing it is Jin’s [Daniel Dae Kim]. It was based on what a character wanted—and yes, in that episode, you may have gotten a download about the Dharma Initiative, but it was always tied to a character mystery. For us, that’s how we try to approach this show with thematic character-based storytelling.

  19

  Push them Off a Cliff

  A cliffhanger is a plot device that leaves a character or characters facing either a dangerous situation or a shocking revelation. As all drama is essentially manipulation (and not reality), a cliffhanger leaves the audience asking, what’s going to happen next? Or a version of “holy crap!”

  Broadcast networks also try to use their strongest cliffhangers during sweeps periods (February, May, July, and November) when advertisers calculate ad rates. “Sweeps” is calculated using Nielsen ratings. The better the ratings, the more networks can charge.

  So let’s start with this basic question: what are the ingredients of an amazing cliffhanger?

  Character in peril. Think of the timeworn image of the damsel in distress tied to the railroad tracks, with the train barreling toward her as the hero rushes to the rescue. It’s the classic “ticking clock,” and the serial ends with the woman in danger. This tried-and-true device is a mainstay of TV show endings.

  Probably the ultimate cliffhanger was “Who shot J. R.?” from the original Dallas nighttime soap. In the final scene of the 1979–1980 season, J. R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) was shot twice by an unseen assailant. Audiences had to wait until the next season premiere to learn whether J. R. would survive and who was responsible. The cliffhanger made an indelible cultural impact.

  An oldie but a goodie was “The Best of Both Worlds,” the third season finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) was captured by the Borg and assimilated.

  Ticking bomb. There is no easier and more effective way to create a cliff-hanger than to have a ticking time bomb.

  In the season 1 finale of Homeland (titled “Marine One”), after a sniper attempts and fails to assassinate the vice president during a press conference, the scene turns into chaos. Emergency protocol measures are initiated. The V.P. and other top-level government officials, including military “hero” and congressional candidate, Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), are immediately ushered to safety inside a basement bunker. They hunker down until they can be given the “all-clear” signal. The perceived threat is from a terrorist outside the bunker. But what they don’t realize is that Brody is wearing a vest laden with explosives. The enemy is among them—and he’s on a suicide mission to kill not only the V.P. but also to destabilize the U.S. government.

  In this excruciatingly suspenseful sequence, Brody tries to detonate his vest, but it doesn’t work. The activation switch malfunctions. Sweating profusely, Brody surreptitiously goes into the bunker’s bathroom to repair the switch. Meanwhile, discredited former CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) frantically tries to alert the government to Brody’s real mission— only no one believes her. Desperate, Carrie drives to Brody’s house and appeals to his daughter Dana (Morgan Saylor). Dana doesn’t believe Carrie either, but Carrie’s intense warning motivates Dana to call her father on his cell phone, begging him to come home—now. In this cliffhanger moment, Brody is torn between his loyalty to his jihad mission and his duty as a father. Brody’s bond with his daughter is strong, and he promises her he’ll come home. As he ends the call, sweat and tears run down his face—just as the personnel in the bunker get the “all-clear” signal. Brody will go home to his estranged wife and concerned daughter and son. He’ll make good to her on his promise. Meanwhile, Carrie will be arrested for harassing Brody’s family.

  Outside the police station after her sister bails her out, Carrie is humiliated by her erratic paranoia and apologizes to Brody for her behavior. He once loved her, and probably still does. But she got too close to his true agenda for comfort. Now it’s Brody’s turn to issue a warning: stay away from me and my family. And now Carrie feels that she has no other choice but to admit herself into the hospital for E.C.T. (electroconvulsive therapy).

  The ultimate cliffhanger of this first season finale occurs when [SPOILER ALERT] the audience realizes that although Carrie was right about Brody’s terrorist mission, she’s now convinced that she was wrong. Just as she realizes that Brody had met terrorist Abu Nazir’s (Navid Negahban) son, her memory is being erased. She was the only one who could thwart Brody, but now she’s being neutralized. Like all great cliffhangers, the season ends on the highest level of conflict imaginable. The cliffhanger is literally shocking.

  Love is in the balance. Like the saying “all’s fair in love and war,” love makes for good drama, and when star-crossed lovers finally realize their true feelings, it can make for a good cliffhanger.

  In the season 4 finale of Friends, “The One with Ross’s Wedding,” Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) finally realizes she’s in love with Ross (David Schwimmer) and rushes to London to tell him before he gets married to Emily (Helen Baxendale), but she’s too late. The wedding goes as planned until Ross utters Rachel’s name instead of Emily. It’s a Freudian slip because he truly still loves Rachel, and this is certainly a deal breaker “I don’t” moment for Emily.

  Surprise/twist. A surprise or twist, seeded correctly, provides a jolt to the audience, leaving us saying, “I didn’t see that coming!”

  Many Spoilers to Follow

  In the season finale of the first season of 24, we see that Nina Myers (Sarah Clarke), an employee at CTU (Counter Terrorism Unit) is actually the mole. Trusted throughout the season, Nina ends up killing Jack Bauer’s wife, Teri (Leslie Hope).

  In Downton Abbey, Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay) dies in childbirth halfway through season 3, a death that took the audience completely by surprise.

  At the end of season 1 on Mad Men, Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) heads to the hospital thinking it’s due to bad office food, only to realize she’s pregnant and gives birth to a healthy baby boy. The pregnancy was not only a surprise to the audience; it was a surprise to the character, as well.

  Death of a character. Sometimes the death of a character provides an emotional cliffhanger at the end of a show, figuratively resetting chess pieces and altering relationships. Ultimately, the lives of the remaining characters will never be the same.

  In NYPD Blue, Detective Bobby Simone (Jimmy Smits) dies after a heart transplant, and his partner, Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) will never be the same u
ntil his own demise.

  In Lost, Charlie Pace (Dominic Monaghan) died so that his fellow survivors might be rescued.

  In E.R., Dr. Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards), a main character, dies of brain cancer while in Hawaii. The emotional send-offreverberated throughout the next season.

  In Breaking Bad, Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) is shot and killed by Walter White (Bryan Cranston). It’s less about him dying and more about the unexpected execution: after a life of murder and mayhem, Mike dies almost Buddha-like sitting in the reeds.

  Discovery of a secret. Characters with secrets make good dramatic fodder because so much is at stake if the secret is revealed. Series that correctly use this device tease the audience with the tension of will-they-find-out-or-not anxiety. Examples include cop shows where someone is undercover, or character dramas where a secret affair or the object of affection becomes clear.

  A good rule of thumb is that a strong, viable cliffhanger should grow out of character jeopardy, risk, or fear. A bad cliffhanger is just a plot point that comes out of nowhere solely for shock value. So even a “surprise” cliffhanger needs to be (subtly) set up so that the audience feels they should have seen it coming—but didn’t. Or, at the very least, the surprise is credible within the rules and tone established for the series. Soap operas, in particular, have a tendency to overuse cliffhangers in every episode, sometimes multiple times, which leads to a lack of storytelling credibility.

  For most of its seasons, Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) keeps his life as a serial killer a secret. At the end of season 6, however, his sister Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter) discovers his Dark Passenger, forever altering their relationship.