Category: Television

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The Shield – In Memorandum

Six years I’ve waded faithfully – or is it blindly? – through The Shield‘s rising turpitude, its serpentine storylining brushing unseen against my immersed body, the show’s writing satisfying the need to resolve each ep’s crime-of-the-week while each season’s caper escapade escalating crisis builds towards a season ending that’s as welcome – and inevitable – as dementia. Lately I’ve been flashing on Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman‘s comics runs in the eighties and nineties – each and every ep, I’m led down back-of-my-hand familiar back- and dead-end-alleys, and each time I reach the end, whatever I find is a). not what I expect and b). the most obvious or logical thing in the world.

My TradeMe connections brought me right up to Season 6. The final season (Season 7) is half-way through its run in the States as I type this. And thanks to my leetle frien’, I’m just a few days behind them.

It’s all building towards a James Ellroy ending. And just like in Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet, the following thoughts are uppermost in my mind with this final season:

  • no good turn goes unpunished;
  • the rule of unintended consequences applies supreme;
  • things, no matter the best of intentions, will not – can not – end well.

So often in film and television these days, I recognise the portents and the foreshadowing, and can comfort myself that, even if/when things go bad, I was braced for it. But now, despite six seasons of faithful viewing, and with only seven eps to go, my sleeps in between are fitful with drowning dreams…. I can’t contemplate the show ending. It has to, I know that. I accept it. It’s the how that scares the bejesus out of me.

… Mr Ryan – I’m in. All the way.

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Point & Click

‘S been a while since I’ve done one of these.

  • I wish I could break down my projects like this:
… The Mentalist is no different from any of its mediocre-to-lousy brethren.  You’ve got Simon Baker as the TROUBLED HERO WITH A TRAGIC PAST, who is BRILLIANT IN A DISTINCTIVE AND UNUSUAL WAY.  He has a flirty, clashing rapport with Robin Tunney, the NO-NONSENCE LAW ENFORCEMENT GAL WHO SECRETLY WANTS TO BONE HIM SENSELESS, YOU CAN TOTALLY TELL.  She works with her TEAM OF MISMATCHED SUBORDINATES, including the BIG LUG (Owain Yeoman), the UNEXPECTEDLY FUNNY GUY (Tim Kang), and the HOT, WIDE-EYED ROOKIE GIRL (Amanda Righetti).  A baffling crime is committed, to and by rich people living someplace sunny and appealingly photographed, and involving a beautiful-yet-mutilated lady-corpse and a TAUNTING SERIAL KILLER ARCHENEMY.  One hour later, after the hero has a few opportunities to DO QUIRKY THINGS, BROOD ABOUT HIS SECRET PAIN, and DEMONSTRATE HIS UNIQUE GIFTS, guns are drawn, people are shouting authoritatively, the hero is smiling, and the case is neatly wrapped up.

For the rest of the article, click on over to Teevee.org.

  •  Over at The Rouge Wave, Julie Gray wrote up a list of writerly traits, amongst them:
    • Many writers, regardless of age, have not seen the classics
    • No new writer is realistic about breaking into the business
    • Action scripts are almost always written by men of any age

    Guilty as charged. Let’s see how you fare. (Fedora-tip: Jill Golick.)

  •  Speak of the devil – Ms Golick recently wondered aloud about a world where you only got nice notes.
  • In these uncertain post-West Wing times, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd writes how got Aaron Sorkin to script some face-time between Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and former president Jed Bartlet might go. (Fedora-tip: Dan Slevin.)
  • And over at What I Write, Sean Molloy provides some pretty detailed insights into one of his script projects (in five parts, with addenda).
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Kev and Me

I have fond twentieth century memories of an above-average cop show where Ken Wahl and his eyebrow went undercover to fight crime, befriended the bad guys, and becoming increasingly conflicted about his work with each season. It was called Wiseguy. This (and the long-lamented Unsub) plumbed moral ambiguities and twisted the TV-cop-show genre before the likes of X-Files and then CSI made ‘dark’ and ‘gritty’ cool.

Each season of Wiseguy concentrated on one big-cheese villain that had to be taken down. Of all the mobsters and politicians and teamsters who would go into Mr Wahl’s little black book, two villains stood out for me: Tim Curry‘s rogueish music exec who was a hoot to watch; and Kevin Spacey‘s enigmatic and downright creepy criminal mastermind (and his too-intimate-for-comfort relationship with his sister played by Joan Severance).

Now that I think of it, maybe it was the actors’ approaches that were so memorable. At one end of the spectrum was Curry’s big-toothed scene-chewing, and at the other was Spacey with his looks, glances and loaded pauses. I think it was Spacey – and the writing of course – that forced me to think things like what did he mean by that? and I just missed a major clue, didn’t I?

Did Wiseguy really introduce me to my screenwriting friend, Subtext? I don’t know. But something happened when Spacey started running his lines in that show. It’s where an actor elevates the script without drawing attention. People thought that Spacey was the bee’s knees when they saw him in either The Usual Suspects or American Beauty.

I knew that already from his tour of duty on Wiseguy.

(And here’s an entertaining few minutes of Spacey and his imaginary friends. Fedora-tip: Eyes Wired Open.)

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Box Watch – “Mad Men”

When watching movies, I know I’ve found a new personal favourite when I’m grinning from ear to ear as the credits roll. It’s a recognition of the craft – the art – that went into what I’ve just witnessed. It’s the realisation of how slickly I’ve been played as an audience member. And the jaw-stretching grin is all the more sweeter if my expectations were pretty high beforehand.

In the last five years, that credit-roll grin has been hurting my face after just an hour – sometimes only half that – of television drama. From the oh-my-gods-I’m-exhausted elation/relief of The Shield and Bodies, to the what-the-heck-happens-next-gods-dammit addiction of The Wire and Sports Night – and let’s not forget the hot-damn!-that-was-good enjoyment from The Closer, The West Wing and the occasional Burn Notice episode.

So what is it about Mad Men that makes me griiin and whine cry out Finished already? each week?

Nothing happens. It’s about relationships – between a bunch of distinctly unlikeable rogues bastards in an era where women were little more than chattels, blacks were invisible, and every damned one of the characters smokes.

It’s those very things that I savour about Mad Men.

Nothing much may happen in an ep but we’re learning more and more about Don and Peggy and company – and what we learn not so much answers questions about them but deepens what we know about their characters. Where most other television dramas would portray the dick-swinging camaraderie with a post-Top Gun homoeroticism or symbolic gunfights and car-chases, the male relationships in Mad Men are so finely detailed that even The Goddess is forced to ask me What was that all about? And as for the show’s portrayal of the time and place: I salute creator Matthew Weiner‘s unflinching lack of gloss or veneer – ‘S how it was, baby.

In portraying a period of history as unflatteringly as one might cover current events, Weiner’s genius is in showing us that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Where the choice on the box is usually between procedural (or procedural with a twist) and soap (or soap with a twist), it’s great to have a drama that – just like its characters toil at in advertising – gives more of the same, but different.

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Point & Click

Ah, winter. That time of year when staying inside with as many DVDs as your video library memberships will allow would be So Right…

Ah well.

(Courtesy of Mr Tripuraneni, The Goddess and I have been ripping through his copy of Battlestar Galactica Season 3. Such focus might be at the expense of the excellent Mad Men but that’s what VCRs are for.)

(And riffing on things television, I’m looking forward to tonight’s premiere of The Jacquie Brown Diaries, from those freakishly talented BunkerMedia boys.)

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Point & Click

Okay, the short didn’t make it into the local festival but – half a kilo of Whittakers‘ finest later – life. Goes. On.

Mm. This week, for your infotainment:

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Box Watch Update – “The Sarah Connor Chronicles”

Encouraged by Mr Reid‘s remarks, The Goddess and I watched the second and third episodes of The Sarah Connor Chronicles the other week. The promising story threads – like the possibility of Summer Glau’s cyborg growing a heart a la T2, and the ticking clock of Sarah Connor’s terminal cancer – were a little undone by small details regarding the ‘mystery’ terminator: if it’s putting itself together Iron Giant-style, how the hell does it ‘see’ to find its missing head? and what happened to the “only living flesh can be temporally displaced” rule, hm?

After the second ep:

ME: That was better than the pilot.
GODDESS: I’ll try another episode.

After the third ep:

ME: Okay, it slid back a bit –
GODDESS: You’re on your own.

Now, with the fourth and fifth eps under my belt, I have these to say about the series:

    • Those annoying little details are accumulating. When you’re about to pull back from recce-ing your enemy’s lair, having a loud argument over what to do next instead of getting the hell out of there is Asking For Trouble. As for Master Connor, after leaving the house in ep two, wanting to save the suicidal teen in ep four, and getting locked in a bomb shelter with a terminator in ep five, is he really our only hope? Not a quick learner, our John.
    • But the storylines have me hooked: how will the black FBI agent put the clues together? who’s got the Turk CPU? how many more resistance fighters and terminators are out there? how much more sentient will Cameron become? how will Sarah get cancer? how’s it going to work with her lover From Before and Kyle Reese’s brother? how many time-travel conundrums can you squeeze into a television series?

It’s not appointment television but I’ll hang in there. Maybe my expectations of a television spin-off of a (two-thirds) great film franchise are a bit high. But if John goes off the reservation one more time, the Connors are on their own.

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I Heart “Sports Night”

Watching Sports Night with The Goddess followed Cameron’s Logarithmic Curve. We started back in February, watching about an ep a week. March was the same. April was a wash-out. But as we entered May and The Goddess got to know the characters – in particular their relationships – as an ep’s end credits rolled, I would hear a Little Voice beside me: Can we watch another one?

Such requests are unheard of in the Mamea household.

In between, amongst others, Desperate Housewives, Lewis and Build A New Life in the Country, an evening with Dan, Casey, et al, became two-ep affairs. Then last week, on a couple of nights, we watched three eps in a row. And only two nights ago, we watched five.

Then I had to explain to The Goddess why there were no more eps to watch.

In the after-match debrief – and also while we worked our way through the DVD set – it’s the little details that stand out. How less is more – where what’s not said can define a relationship far better than declarations of loyalty or bemoanings of betrayal. How a certain behaviour can really be mere displacement. How expectations of standard TV drama situations and relationships were not met because they were handled with wit, intelligence and compassion. It’s safe to say that for all the verbosity, wit and good intentions of the characters, they’re as inhibited, neurotic and selfish as anyone in the real world.

I could go on and on about Sports Night but others have said it better in the nine years since it was first aired. As sad as it was that it got canned after only two seasons, it ended as well as it started, and you can’t say that of many television series.

POSTSCRIPT: The Goddess is quite reluctant to try Mr Sorkin’s West Wing because, for all my arguments that politics is merely behaviour and relationships on a different scale and plane, it’s about politics.

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Break It Down

Whenever I drag myself out for a run, the Dog usually accompanies me. Taking the Dog means having her on the lead, factoring in stops for toileting and meeting other dogs, and waiting for traffic. When it’s a hard run, I welcome each and every excuse to stop. But when it’s a run where I’m in the zone and I do not want to stop, I grit my teeth and wait on the bitch as she wees and poos and smells other dogs’ bottoms.

Sometimes things have to happen in their own way, no matter how much I want to beat my last time.

I’ve been gritting my teeth a bit with the television pilot lately. I’ve written a couple of pilots before but those were for half-hour shows; this puppy’s an hour-long drama.

I’ve read a heap of hour-long pilots*. I’ve got Jill Golick, John August, John Rogers, and Lisa Klink on my RSS feeds. I’ve been perusing my West Wing, Shield, Law & Order and Sports Night DVDs. (Yes, Sports Night is half-hourly but it’s so freakin’ good!)

Unlike a feature script where I can leap in – within reason and/or time constraints – keyboard blazing tight groups of sluglines and cut-to’s, a television script is much more rigidly structured. For starters, there are ad breaks to take into account. And there’s the (currently imaginary) budget to consider – no CUT-TO’s to the Iraq occupation or Victorian London for this show. And I have to establish some sort of feel or style or look – or all of those preceding words – to reinforce the show and concept as being unique and individual.

Right now, feature scripts are looking easy-peasy: I only need to keep the audience nailed to their seats for ninety-plus minutes and then they’re free to go.

The pilot has forty-five or so minutes with which to engage/enthrall/hook/addict the viewer and make them look forward to next week’s episode.

I can see the ep doing that – but only in my mind’s eye. In order to get it Out There, I have to write it all up – and to do that, I have to break down the ep:

  • thumbnails: intro the team; establish their work;
  • synopsis: meet the team; they save the world; it’s all in a day’s work;
  • breakdown: the TEAM LEADER is about to retire; his NEMESIS breaks out of maximum security prison; the game is afoot!
  • character descriptions: the Team Leader is square-jawed but has an in-grown toenail; his Nemesis looks pudgy but is all muscle, baby!; they have a history….

Long-suffering-time readers will know how much summarising Turns. Me. On.

Having written many, many pages of notes like “HERO’s only childhood memory is of when his mother dressed he and his dog, Bingo, in matching sailor suits” and “NEMESIS destroys SIDEKICK in best-of-three pinochle”, I must confess: I’m beginning to see the attraction of index cards.

They just seem so… unromantic.

*  Big ups to Mr Lee for his stash.

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Point & Click

I’ve got three, no, four, posts that I’m having trouble getting over the finish line, so it’s lookee what i found! time:

  • My awareness of the New Zild screenwriting blogosphere has just increased by 33%: Shortland Street scribe Edwin McRae blogs about his process at Fiction Engine. (Fedora-tip: Mr Reid.)
  • Someone went to the trouble of typing in each and every title listed in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. Hollywood screenwriter John August has read 38 of them but would’ve scored higher if non-fiction was included. I scored 41 but would’ve scored higher if they included more comics. The Goddess, a enthusiastic avid voracious reader, scored 115. (Fedora-tip: John August.)
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