As Seen On TV

[AS SEEN ON TV] Week Three: Showtime’s Dexter

As Seen On TV

As Seen on TV is a new weekly series of blog posts I’ll be doing in response to reading/dissecting the pilot scripts of various television programs, both old and new, and then watching or re-watching the pilot episodes they spawned, whenever appropriate.

Week One: The WB’s Supernatural
Week Two: AMC’s The Killing

Warning: spoilers up to episode 1×04 of Dexter are inevitable

This installment of ASoT is going to be considerably different than the last two because I just started watching Dexter last week and I’m only up to episode four. I haven’t read the Jeff Lindsay novel it’s inspired by either.  As a result, I can’t really speak in broader terms of series-long or even season-long arcs—spoiler-phobe that I am, I can only guess where the story might be going. This week will also differ due to the overall tone of the series.  I didn’t plan the line-up this way, honest, but Supernatural and The Killing share a lot of the same viewers—and their respective fandoms seem to overlap quite a bit from what I’ve observed.  Given some thought, it’s easy to see why.  Despite the differences between the two shows (many of which I outlined last week) both are heart-wrenching and at times devastating dramas with a pair of brooding leads who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.

From the first page of Dexter’s pilot script, it’s painfully clear that we have a different kind of animal on our hands…

[AS SEEN ON TV] Week Two: AMC’s The Killing

As Seen On TV

As Seen on TV is a new weekly series of blog posts I’ll be doing in response to reading/dissecting the pilot scripts of various television programs, both old and new, and then watching or re-watching the pilot episodes they spawned, whenever appropriate.

 Last Week: The WB’s Supernatural

Warning: spoilers through the season two finale of The Killing are more or less guaranteed.

And so we go from the series with an entirely nomadic sense of place to a series that is very much rooted in place: in this case, a moody, overcast Seattle. That initial, nearly still shot overlooking the calm lake in the pilot does wonders in establishing both the tone and the location before a single word has been uttered, or a single body shown. Unlike Supernatural, The Killing doesn’t bother with prologues. Solving the Rosie Larsen case is the focus here (as it should be) and although our protagonist Sarah Linden has an unlimited supply of skeletons in her closet, we’ll meet them later in the season—all in good time. So much of this show is about secrets, and all of the characters have them in spades: the suspects, the victims, and especially our two leads, Detectives Linden and Holder. Much of the intrigue in watching the show as the episodes unfold is witnessing the lengths they’ll all go to protect those secrets, both from the other characters and from the viewers watching from home. This becomes more and more apparent as the season progresses, but we’ll revisit that later.

The first sequence of the episode features two intercut scenes…

[AS SEEN ON TV] Week One: The WB’s Supernatural

As Seen On TV

As Seen on TV is a new weekly series of blog posts I’ll be doing in response to reading/dissecting the pilot scripts of various television programs, both old and new, and then watching or re-watching the pilot episodes they spawned, whenever appropriate.

Warning: spoilers for episodes other than the pilot are very possible.

I read two scripts for Supernatural, both the earliest draft and a much later one. I wish now that I could find more early pilot drafts for other shows, but there don’t seem to be a lot out there. What shocked me about the earlier draft was how completely different the backstory and family mythology were at that point. I’d known that Eric Kripke, the creator of the show, had originally envisioned two journalists on the road fighting evil (as opposed to the eventual Sam and Dean characters), but I had no idea that the story had still evolved so much since he’d decided to go with a pair of brothers instead. If he’d run with this earlier script, the show would’ve been a lot different. I think it would’ve been interesting to see the dynamic between the two brothers unfold, especially as they learned the trade of hunting (in this version that whole world was hidden from them when they were younger), but I don’t think that show would’ve lasted as long as the one we know has. The Winchester brothers’ complicated family history and dark, conflicted childhoods are key to the success of their characters.

The teaser of the later script opens up with a prologue depicting an incident that happened over twenty years ago…

As Seen on TV

As Seen On TV, Musings

I’ve decided to start blogging again.  Posts may initially be short and somewhat irregular, but I’ll be working up to what is hopefully a more reliable schedule. My goal is also to write more posts that are informative to a wider audience and not strictly personal.

I just graduated from California College of the Arts with my MFA in Writing this past May, and in the weeks since then I’ve had a lot of time to think about where I want to go next, both in terms of my writing and my overall career.  I’ve always wanted to work a TV-related job, but I think what held me back in the past was not knowing how to make that happen.  Now that I’m living near L.A. and have some more experience with screenwriting under my belt, I finally have a chance to start making this happen.  In the coming weeks I’ll be reading a teleplay from a current or past show that I admire on Sunday and spending the rest of the week analyzing its parts, (re)watching the final episode it spawned (if at all possible), and figuring out why it works well and what could be better.  I hope to blog about this weekly.  For the first week, I’ve chosen an early draft of the pilot episode of Supernatural, written by Eric Kripke, which was first included in the season 1 DVD set.  The first five seasons make up one of my favorite television shows and I’m looking forward to exploring it on a deeper level.

What is it about writing for television, particularly cable television, that appeals to me?  Strangely, although I’ve always loved television and dreamed of having a job in the industry, I didn’t think I would enjoy a job behind the scenes in the writers’ room.  Why?  Because as a fan and active participant in various fandoms over the years, I’ve seen how crazy the rabid fans can get.  It’s impossible to please everyone, and the ruts that happen every once in a while are often blamed solely on the writers, who get all sorts of hate on various modes of social media.  Not only are these writers trying to please the fans, but they are trying to please the network and keep the ratings up.  Not only that, but they are trying to create an organic and continuous story that appears in that magic little light box for a short time once a week, never knowing when the plug might get pulled before they have a chance to end the narrative on their own terms. Not only that, but they must compromise and work well with a large group of other writers.  And yet, I find that these seemingly negative points are challenges that I can learn from.  Not to mention that I love to work collaboratively with other people; writing fiction is far too solitary.  Ultimately, there is something fragile about writing in a serialized format that you can’t get with writing films or novels, something special about viewing the ever-fluid and unfinished product as it plays out on screen.

A lot has happened since my last post and I intend to write about those things as well: the projects I’ve completed, the ones I’ve only started, and the ones that are planned for the near future.  Until then.