Episodic vs. Serial: FRINGE

I just watched a slew of FRINGE eps. I'm at the point where, having issued a Big Revelation with Earthshattering Consequences, the series goes back to being almost entirely episodic: weird cases with small consequences. Procedural stuff. A monster attacking people. A Bad Scientist.

I'm trying to thread this needle with a show I'm developing, but it's difficult, because once you introduce the Earthshattering Consequences, what are the heros doing fooling around with these minor cases? It was a problem we faced on Charlie Jade: once we establish that the stakes are the destruction of our entire universe, how can Charlie do anything that isn't directly related to stopping that from happening?

In the third of several episodic episodes (DREAM LOGIC, EARTHLING, OF HUMAN ACTION), there was a last minute tie-in to the uberplot, but it seemed fairly vague.

Is this some sort of fight between the network wanting an episodic weird-science-of-the-week show, and writers wanting a Big Season Arc? I don't know, but I know which show I'd rather watch.

Episodic vs. Serial

There is currently a pretty big disconnect, as far as I can tell, between the kind of tv shows that writers love to watch, and the kinds of tv shows that networks want to be pitched.

Ask anyone, the networks want episodic shows. They want shows you can tune in for episodes 5 and 8 and 11 and not feel you missed anything.

The kinds of shows I like are, oh, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and DEXTER and MAD MEN. Sure, each episode tells some kind of story that completes by the end of the hour. But you really can't appreciate what you're seeing if you haven't seen a few recent episodes.

For sure, serial shows are harder to write. We painted ourselves into one or two pretty tight corners on CHARLIE JADE. Expectations are higher. No one would have minded the mess at the end of BSG if it hadn't been the culmination of years of story arcs.

But serial shows are more satisfying to write. You get to take the characters places. We got the BUFFY boxed set and we're watching Willow change from Hacker Girl to Cute Teenage Witch to Power in Her Own Right to Big Bad. And that's on a show that strives to give you an hour's complete entertainment.

Network execs will tell you that even viewers who say they watch a show tend to watch only about 1 out of 4 episodes. (That's hard to fathom because when my friends watch a show, they watch every episode or stop watching it. They buy the DVD or TiVo the whole thing. But I've heard this from several people who ought to know these things.) The danger with a serial show is that every time you lose a viewer, they don't come back; while it's very hard to get new viewers in mid-season. Who's going to start watching 24 in the middle?

When I'm pitching, I'm continually trying to thread the needle. So are many of the writers I know. We talk about X-FILES and how there was always an episodic story but it often contributed a clue to the überplot; or VERONICA MARS. We try to stay away from mentioning LOST; apparently it doesn't count because no one knows why it's working in spite of its ridiculously complex story arcs. (Maybe because of the ridiculously complex story arcs? But you can't say that.) And we try very hard to make sure there is a strong episodic story motor in the template of the show.

It's frustrating, because you can point to any number of successful shows that are blatantly serial. Soaps, even. DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES. GRAY'S ANATOMY. GOSSIP GIRL. Anything on HBO or AMC.

I dunno, maybe there's a list of showrunners who are approved to write serials. Obviously, serials get made. Maybe it's like movies and hooks: it's not that movies don't get made without hooks, it's just that you can't get a movie made without a hook.

But the moral of the story is: the TV you love may not be the TV network executives want more of. Serial shows are a pain in the ass. You lose audience when you preempt them. You lose audience when you move them. And then if you cancel then, people mail you boxes of nuts. Safer to license CSI: WASILLA.

Or you can just go ahead and pitch what you love, and hope it comes out all right in the end.

"Write what you know ... hurts."

I haven't been blogging lately because I am plumb out of new things to say. So here's someone's else's words of wisdom...

"Write about what you know hurts," [Paul Castro, writer of AUGUST RUSH] told students Monday in the Career and Technology Center's TV and multimedia production program. "If you explore that pain, if you get to the belly of the beast that is that pain, you'll have the keys to the castle as an artist. ... They don't buy screenplays in Hollywood, they buy emotion."

"Here's to us, there's few like us, and they're all dead!"

That was Douglas Campbell's fitting toast. (Mine is "Outrageous happiness.") I met Douglas only at the end of his long and rich life; he and Moira graciously lent their townhouse to us for the FALLEN writing room. But you only had to meet him to know immediately that this was a grand old Shakespearean.

Douglas was a truth-teller, as one friend after another told us, always willing to bust a bad production, but always willing to explain exactly what was wrong. (I got a bit of his truth when I tried to get him to come to a Justin Trudeau fundraiser once.) I wondered whether he got in a lot of trouble for that. I have the same ailment -- I find it extremely hard to say something is good if it's not, and I've pissed off any number of people for it. I suspect Douglas got away with it better, as a theatrical man can.

The memorial reminded me of the memorial for Robin Spry, who was another grand old man, always helping other people get their careers started, always trying to get something going, whether it was a theatre in North Hatley or a film company. I think Douglas was someone who brought you up to his own level, by criticizing, by advising, and by simple demanding it. I hope if my life and career last as long as Douglas's, people will remember me for helping them break in, or get to the next step.

It was a memorial more joyous than sad. Douglas was never about the past, we heard. He was always about what was next. So we drank a spot of whiskey and sang Auld Lang Syne with all the words, and walked out into the warm night determined to do something great tomorrow.

Trade War, Much?

Jim Henshaw points out that the Stimulus Package passed by the US Congress prevents US companies that get stimulus money from buying Canadian, and proposes that Canada retaliate.

I'm down with that.

Pilot School

Pilot School is a terrific collection of pilot scripts. Lisa says the pilot script for MAD MEN is laugh out loud funny -- quite a change from the dry way it came out, eh?

Style Sheet?

Q. Your website no longer has available the Word style sheet you mentioned in your book. Is it no longer available?

It's been superseded. There are free screenplay formatting programs around, like MindStar's Script Editor and Celtx and Scripped and Zhura. Check'em out.

Show Us How Clever You Are, If Necessary

When you're writing a spec, you try to nail the template. You try to get the character voices right, and the pace of the show, and the sets they use. You try to internalize the do's and don't's of the series you're speccing.

What about when you know the show better than the reader? Won't that get you into trouble? Say, for example, you're doing a SPONGEBOB spec, as Lisa recently did. If you know your SPONGEBOB, you know that the adorable-yet-slightly-irritating young sponge frequently gets worked up over the crabby patties he serves, and often calls them "Patty."

If your reader has only seen a few SPONGEBOBs, that may seem weird. Or to take another example that came up in these pages, lately there have been a lot of new assistants on BONES; they don't last long. It's generally considered bad form in a spec to introduce new characters, other than the episodic characters every procedural has (the victims, the perps). But in the case of BONES, you have to.

If you're doing something that is correct for the show, but which a casual viewer of the show may not realize is correct, my advice would be to hang a lantern on it. In the case of BONES, have a character say, "Oh God, not another new assistant. What is that, three this week? One more and we've got a dining room set." (Or, the good version of that.)

In the case of SPONGEBOB, you could have a character say something on the order of, "You sure do get worked up about Patty."

Obviously don't do a lot of this, or it will get annoying. But if there's something important that you feel a casual viewer may not realize actually is the show, feel free to make sure we know how clever you are.