The Ultimate TV Pilot Checklist: Cheers

After squandering his money, ex-major league pitcher Sam Malone run the bar he bought, even though he’s a recovering alcoholic. His bartender is his old sweet-natured ex-coach, his waitress is wicked-tongued Carla, and his two best patrons are nerdy Cliff and sarcastic Norm. In the pilot, high-class Literature Ph.D. Diane stops in with her professor/fiancé Sumner, who leaves her there while he goes to get a ring back from his ex-wife. Sam figures out that she’s been abandoned and reluctantly offers her a job.

PART 1: IS THIS A STRONG CONCEPT FOR AN ONGOING SERIES? (14/20)
The Pitch: Does this concept excite everyone who hears about it?
Does the concept satisfy the urges that get people to love and recommend this type of series?	Yes, it’s hilarious and has the effervescence of a great screwball romcom.
Does the series establish its own unique point of view on its setting?	Not really.
Is there a central relationship we haven’t seen in a series before?	Yes, an earthy bar owner and his snooty waitress.
Does the ongoing concept of the series contain a fundamental (and possibly fun) ironic contradiction?	Yes, it’s about a recovering alcoholic who runs a bar (and hires a posh waitress who despises bar talk.)
Does the concept meet the content expectations of one particular intended network, venue, or audience?	No, this breaks the rule that “Nobody every really rebrands”.  NBC wanted to make a smarter, gentler show, like ABC’s “Taxi or CBS’s “MASH”, and succeeded.
Even if the setting is unpleasant, is there something about this premise that is inherently appealing? (Something that will make the audience say, “Yes, I will be able to root for some aspect of this situation to recur episode after episode.”)	Very much so.  This is a warm, comfortable blanket of a show.
Series Fundamentals: Will this concept generate a strong ongoing series?
Is there one character (or sometimes two, in separate storylines) that the audience will choose to be their primary hero (although these heroes should probably be surrounded by an ensemble that can more than hold their own)?	Interestingly, not really.  The show deliberately makes it hard to choose between Sam and Diane, even giving them weirdly co-equal name placement in the credits.  This is a not a case where they’re co-heroes, because co-heroes must star in separate storylines.  Instead, they were allowed to fight for supremacy in the audience’s affection as much as they fought for each other’s.  It was an interesting choice, and they pulled it off.
If this is a TV series, is the hero role strong enough to get an actor to abandon a movie career, come to work in TV for the first time, and sign a five-year contract before shooting the pilot? (And even if not for TV, is the hero role still that strong, simply for narrative purposes?)	Yes, both Danson and Long had budding movie careers and gave them up to do this show.
Is the show set in an unsafe space?	It’s a very safe space…until Diane walks in and ruins it.  She judges them and they judge her, making it unsafe for the first time.
Is this a setting that will bring (or has brought) different economic classes together?	Yes, very much so.
Will trouble walk in the door on a regular basis?	It certainly can, but doesn’t have to, because trouble enters the heart of the bar once Diane is hired.
Will the heroes be forced to engage in both physical and cerebral activity on a regular basis?	Yes, bartending involves a lot of physical labor, a constant barrage of quizzes, and a lot of empathy.
Are there big stakes that will persist episode after episode?	Not huge, but to a certain extent, both Sam and Diane are drowning here and throw each other a lifeline, and we sense that they genuinely need each other to be saved.
Will the ongoing situation produce goals or mini-goals that can be satisfactorily resolved on a regular basis?	Yes, Sam is dedicated to helping customers with their problems, and tries to do so before each day’s end.
The Pilot: Will this pilot episode be marketable and generate word of mouth?
Does the pilot contain all of the entertainment value inherent in the premise (rather than just setting everything up and promising that the fun will start next week)?	The premise is not established until the final moments, but Diane is already a member of the ensemble by the halfway point, though she doesn’t know it yet, so it works.
Does the pilot feature an image we haven’t seen before (that can be used to promote the show)?	Yes, the old-timey photographs that make up the opening credits, the in-show Cheers logo.
Is there something bold, weird, and never-before-seen about this concept and/or pilot?	Not really.  That wasn’t a selling point back then.
Is there a “HOLY CRAP!” scene somewhere along the way in the pilot (to create word of mouth)?	No.  Again, not as much of a big deal back then.
Does the pilot build up potential energy that will power future episodes (secrets that will come out, potential romances, etc.)?	Yes, Sam and Diane clearly have a potential romance.
Even if this is episodic, is there a major twist or escalation at the end (though sometimes this twist will only be new to, or only revealed to, the audience) that will kick future episodes up a notch?	Yes, against his better judgment, Sam hires Diane to work at the bar.
PART 2: IS THIS A COMPELLING HERO (OR CO-HEROES IN DIFFERENT STORYLINES)? (16/16)
Believe: Do we recognize the hero (or co-heroes) as human?
Does the hero have a moment of humanity early on? (A funny, or kind, or oddball, or out-of-character, or comically vain, or unique-but-universal “I thought I was the only one who did that!” moment?)	Yes. Same: his gentle put-down of the kid trying to get a drink proves he’s funny, ethical, and empathetic.  Diane: Her witty banter in the phone scene.
Does the hero have a well-defined public identity?	Yes: Sam: the beloved ex-relief pitcher for the Red Sox and avuncular bar owner.  Diane: the intellectual snot-nose.
Does that ironically contrast with a hidden interior self?	Yes: Sam: the melancholy recovering alcoholic, Diane: the hopeless screw-up.
Does the hero have three rules he or she lives by (either stated or implied)?	Yes: Sam: Take it easy, help everybody, any girl can be seduced, Diane: be smarter, judge everybody, maintain high standards.
Does the hero have a consistent metaphor family (drawn from his or her job, background, or developmental state)?	Yes: Sam: old-timey “Quite a fella, that fiancé of yours.” Diane: romantic literature, psychology: “What a shame such an astute observer of human nature is stuck behind a bar.”
Does the hero have a default personality trait?	Yes, Sam: avuncular, Diane: snooty
Does the hero have a default argument tactic?	Yes, Sam: announcing how the argument is going to end before it ends, Diane: making outside references others won’t get.
Care: Do we feel for the hero (or co-heroes)?
Does the hero have a great flaw that is the flip side of his or her great strength?	Sam: recovering alcoholism, sleaziness, Diane: Snottiness, naivete
Does the hero feel that this flaw cannot be resolved until it’s time to abandon the world of the show?	He actually feels that owning the bar is a bad place for him, but he chooses to stay for economic and sentimental reasons.  She definitely feels that she must hang onto those flaws to avoid becoming like the bar patrons.
Does the flaw resonate with the theme and/or setting of the show?	Yes, bars are sleazy places.
Invest: Can we trust the hero (or co-heroes) to tackle this challenge?
Does the hero have a great strength that is the flip side of his or her great flaw?	Sam: empathy, charm, Diane: intelligence, innocence
Is the hero good at his or her job (or family role, if that’s his or her primary role)?	Yes, he’s a great bartender, and she turns out to be a waitress savant, who can instantly memorize an order better than Carla.
Is the hero surrounded by people who sorely lack his or her most valuable quality?	Yes: Sam is more of a winner than the patrons, Diane is smarter than everyone else.
Is the hero curious?	Yes, Sam divines the truth about her. She is fascinated by the patrons, though she won’t admit it.
Is the hero generally resourceful?	Yes, they’re doing improv together before they’re even introduced, working together to bamboozle his floozie on the phone.
Does the hero use unique skills to solve problems (rather than doing what anybody else on the show would do)?	Yes, he uses his astute perspective (partially derived from his personal pain) and she uses her vast knowledge.
PART 3: IS THIS A STRONG ENSEMBLE (BEYOND THE HERO OR CO-HEROES)?  (13/13)
Powerful: Is each member of the ensemble able to hold his or her own?
If this is a network TV series, are there at least two more roles that are strong enough to get TV veterans to sign their own five-year contracts? (And even if not for TV, are the characters still that strong, simply for narrative purposes?)	Yes, Coach and Carla were both veteran character actors.
Are all of the other regular roles strong enough on the page in this first episode to attract great actors? (ditto)	Yes, Cliff and Norm were great finds.
Does each member of the ensemble have a distinct and defensible point of view?	Very much so.  In a way, each of them is proven right: Carla’s cynicism and Coach’s open-heartedness are both validated.
Is each character defined primarily by actions and attitudes, not by his or her backstory?	Very much so.
Do all of the characters consciously and unconsciously prioritize their own wants, rather than the wants of others? (Good characters don’t serve good, evil characters don’t serve evil.)	Yes, although they care about each other (and even strangers entering the bar) very much.
Do most of the main characters have some form of decision-making power? (And is the characters’ boss or bosses also part of the cast, so that major decisions will not be made by non-regulars?)	Yes, Sam owns the bar, and the others can all stand up to him.
Balanced: Do the members of the ensemble balance each other out?
Whether this is a premise or episodic pilot, is there one point-of-view who needs this world explained (who may or may not be the hero)?	Diane
Does it take some effort for the POV character to extract other characters’ backstories?	Yes, Diane does have to extract their backstories with some effort.
Are the non-3-dimensional characters impartially polarized into head, heart and gut (or various forms of 2-way or 4-way polarization)?	Yes, it’s the rare 5 way: Diane is head (so is Cliff, but he’s just a day player at this point), Coach is heart, Norm is stomach, Carla is spleen, Sam is crotch.
Does each member of the ensemble have a distinct metaphor family (different from the hero’s, even if they’re in the same profession)?	Yes: Coach: sports, Norm: “grumbling husband”, Carla: Southie
Does each member of the ensemble have a different default personality trait?	Yes: Coach: sweetly dopey, Norm: proletarian, Carla: hostile
Does each member of the ensemble have a different default argument tactic?	Yes: Coach: agreeing with everybody, Cliff: making up phony trivia, Carla: reversing your turn-of-phrase in a crude manner.
Is there at least one prickly character who creates sparks whenever he or she appears?	Carla
PART 4: IS THE PILOT EPISODE A STRONG STAND-ALONE STORY AND GOOD TEMPLATE FOR THE ONGOING SERIES? (21/22)
Template: Does this match and/or establish the standard format of this type of series
Does the pilot have (or establish) the average length for its format?	Yes.
If this is intended for a form of commercial media, does the pilot have the right number of commercial breaks for its intended venue?	Yes, one after the teaser, one in the middle, one before the tag.
If this is intended for commercial TV, does every act end on a cliffhanger or escalation, especially the middle one (and, if not intended for commercial TV, does it still have escalations happening in roughly the same places, simply for narrative purposes)?	The show was somewhat unique at the time for having a teaser unconnected from the rest of the show, but the only “true” act break, in the middle is a nice escalation of the tension.
Does the pilot establish the general time frame for most upcoming episodes of this series?	Yes, we will often follow events from opening time to closing time, beginning with a stand-alone gently-humorous bar interaction.
Do all of the pilot’s storylines intercut believably within that time frame?	There is just one storyline and a bunch of running gags.
If this is a premise pilot, is the basic premise established by the midpoint, leaving time for a foreshortened typical episode story in the second half?	No, but it’s fine.
Pilot Story Fundamentals: Does the pilot episode have a strong story?
Does the pilot provide at least one satisfactory stand-alone story (even if that story is just the accomplishment of a mini-goal)?	Yes, very much so.  Diane is totally transformed.
Is this episode’s plot simple enough to spend more time on character than plot?	Yes.
Is the pilot’s challenge something that is not just hard for the hero to do (an obstacle) but hard for the hero to want to do (a conflict)?	Yes, Sam gradually comes to the realization that the only way to help this customer is to offer a job, despite the fact that doing so will make this no longer a safe space, and her decision is even harder, since it means totally going against her values.
First Half: Is the problem established in a way that reflects human nature?
Does the hero start out with a short-term goal for this episode?	Yes, Sam: serve drinks, Diane: stop in for a quick drink.
Does a troubling situation (episodic pilot) or major change in the status quo (premise pilot) develop near the beginning of the episode?	Yes, Sam has a customer in more trouble than she realizes, Diane is suddenly abandoned there.
Does the hero eventually commit to dealing with this situation personally?	Yes, Sam becomes proactively protective of Diane, Diane decides to confront Sumner if he comes back.
Do the hero’s efforts quickly lead to an unforeseen conflict with another person?	Yes, Diane rejects Sam’s protectiveness.
Does the hero try the easy way throughout the second quarter?	Yes, Sam leaves Diane alone, Diane insists Sumner is coming back.
Does this culminate in a major midpoint setback or escalation of the problem (whether or not there’s a commercial break)?	Yes, they both realize that Sumner probably isn’t coming back, or at leas not to stay, and they both know the other knows it too.
Second Half: Is the mini-goal resolved as the ongoing trouble escalates?
Does the hero try the hard way from this point on?	Yes, he determines to make her see the truth.  Sumner comes back briefly and Diane confronts him, unsuccessfully.
By halfway through, are character decisions driving the plot, rather than external plot complications?	Yes.
Are the stakes increased as the pace increases and the motivation escalates?	Yes, the day is ending, and with it the chances that he will return.
Does a further setback force the hero to adopt a wider view of the problem?	Yes, they both hear that Sumner has gone to Barbados with his ex-wife and they both come to realize that she needs to be there.
After that setback, does the hero finally commit to pursuing a corrected goal?	Yes, he offers her a job, but she seems as if she’ll never accept.
Before the final quarter of the story begins, (if not long before) has the hero switched to being proactive, instead of reactive?	Yes for him, he’s actively courting her.  She becomes proactive at the very end when she enthusiastically commits to waitressing.
After the climax, does either the hero, the point of view character or a guest star have a personal revelation and/or life change, possibly revealed through reversible behavior?	Yes, Diane has a total life change and Sam quietly has a personal revelation when he comes to suspect he needs a woman like Diane.
PART 5: IS EACH SCENE THE BEST IT CAN BE? (20/23)
The Set-Up: Does this scene begin with the essential elements it needs?
Were tense and/or hopeful (and usually false) expectations for this interaction established beforehand?	NA, this is the first scene of the whole show.
Does the scene eliminate small talk and repeated beats by cutting out the beginning (or possibly even the middle)?	No, it begins at the beginning.
Is this an intimidating setting that keeps characters active?	Yes, a bar is an intimidating place for an underage teen.
Is one of the scene partners not planning to have this conversation (and quite possibly has something better to do)?	No, they both want to be there.
Is there at least one non-plot element complicating the scene?	Yes, it’s all non-plot.
Does the scene establish its own mini-ticking-clock (if only through subconscious anticipation)?	Yes, can he get the drink before Sam examines the ID?
The Conflict: Do the conflicts play out in a lively manner?
Does this scene both advance the plot and reveal character?	It’s all character, no plot.
Are one or more characters in the scene emotionally affected by this interaction or action as the scene progresses?	Yes, Sam is oddly upset by it.
Does the audience have (or develop) a rooting interest in this scene (which may sometimes shift)?	Yes, we’re rooting for Sam to give this kid his comeuppance.
Are two agendas genuinely clashing (rather than merely two personalities)?	Yes, the kid wants a drink, Sam wants to let him down gently.
Does the scene have both a surface conflict and a suppressed conflict (one of which is the primary conflict in this scene)?	Yes: The surface conflict: is this a valid ID?  Suppressed conflict: should you be drinking? Can I run a bar ethically?
Is the suppressed conflict (which may or may not come to the surface) implied through subtext (and/or called out by the other character)?	Yes, by echoing back the kid’s claim that “war is gross”, he implies that the kid is woefully naïve about the dangers of adult life.
Are the characters cagy (or in denial) about their own feelings?	Yes, Sam’s gentle good humor masks the feelings of melancholy this scene clearly brings up for him.
Do characters use verbal tricks and traps to get what they want, not just direct confrontation?	Yes, the kid attempts to trick Sam into not checking the ID “I’ll have to tell the mrs!” and Sam tricks the kid into lying more, “What was Vietnam like?”
Is there re-blocking, including literal push and pull between the scene partners (often resulting in just one touch)?	Just the object exchange.
Are objects given or taken, representing larger values?	Yes, the ID is offered and then taken back.
If this is a big scene, is it broken down into a series of mini-goals?	It’s a very small scene.
The Outcome: Does this scene change the story going forward?
As a result of this scene, does at least one of the scene partners end up doing something that he or she didn’t intend to do when the scene began?	Yes, the kid leaves empty-handed.
Does the outcome of the scene ironically reverse (and/or ironically fulfill) the original intention?	Yes, the kid doesn’t get what he wants but he gets what he needs.
Are previously-asked questions answered?	It’s the very first scene, but given that this is a show about a bar owner, the audience is automatically going to have the question, “Is this going to be a rotten guy?”  This scene immediately shuts that question down.
Are new questions posed that will be left unanswered for now?	Yes, why is this bartender so melancholy and compassionate?
Is the audience left with a growing hope and/or fear for what might happen next? (Not just in the next scene, but generally)	Not really.
Does the scene cut out early, on a question (possibly to be answered instantly by the circumstances of the next scene)?	It ends on a great punchline.
PART 6: IS THIS POWERFUL DIALOGUE? (13/14)
Empathetic: Is the dialogue true to human nature?
Does the writing demonstrate empathy for all of the characters?	Very much so.
Does each of the characters, including the hero, have a limited perspective?	Very much so.  If the show was about just Sam or Diane, we would go crazy.  Each can see what the other can’t.
Are the characters resistant to openly admitting their feelings (to others and even to themselves)?	Yes, they each attempt to hide their baggage, except Carla, but the others drag it out.
Do the characters avoid saying things they wouldn’t say?	Yes.  Nobody directly confronts Coach on his senility, or Norm on his alcoholism, or Carla on her bad home situation, but they do it through sympathetic looks.  Diane doesn’t want to acknowledge an attraction to Sam, but the situation forces her to say, “You’re a magnificent pagan beast.”
Do the characters listen poorly?	No, some do, but the others are great listeners, even Diane.
Do the characters interrupt each other more often than not?	Yes.
Specific: Is the dialogue specific to this world and each personality?
Does the dialogue capture the culturally-specific syntax of the characters (without necessarily attempting to replicate non-standard pronunciation)?	Yes: “What are you, nuts?  They’re up to their ears in linebackers!”
Does the dialogue capture the jargon of the profession and/or setting?	Yes: sports: “You call that a football team?  Did they get a jackrabbit for the back field?  No.  Did they get a gunslinger for quarterback?  No,” and bartending (elaborate drink orders galore)
Does the dialogue capture the tradecraft of the profession being portrayed?	Yes, Sam not only does the job, he astutely evaluates and helps everyone with their personal lives, and steers bar conversations in fun directions.
Heightened: Is the dialogue more pointed and dynamic than real talk?
Is the dialogue more concise than real talk?	Yes.
Does the dialogue have more personality than real talk?	Yes.
Is there a minimum of commas in the dialogue (the lines are not prefaced with Yes, No, Well, Look, or the other character’s name)?	Yes.
Do non-professor characters speak without dependent clauses, conditionals, or parallel construction?	Yes, Diane, a would-be professor character, frequently begins parallel constructions only to be cut off by Sam halfway through.
Is there one gutpunch scene, where the subtext falls away and the characters really lay into each other?	Yes, Sam finally yells, “That goof will probably be in Barbados tomorrow rubbing suntan oil on his ex-wife!”
PART 7: DOES THE PILOT MANAGE ITS TONE TO CREATE AND FULFILL AUDIENCE EXPECTATIONS? (9/10)
Genre and Mood: Does the series tap into pre-established expectations?
Does the series fit within one genre (or compatible sub-genres)?	Semi-serious workplace comedy
Are unrealistic genre-specific elements a big metaphor for a more common experience (not how life really is, but how life really feels)?	Yes, our pov character gets a useless degree and has to work in a bar, which happens to a lot of people, but it happens in a more extreme way, with her boss / thesis advisor / fiance dumping her (in more ways than one) in the bar on the eve of their wedding.
Separate from the genre, does the pilot establish an overall mood for the series?	Yes, warm-hearted.
If there are multiple storylines, do they establish the spectrum of moods available within that overall mood?	Sort of: the runners are very light and the main storyline is actually fairly heavy.
Is there a moment early on that establishes the type and level of jeopardy?	Yes, Sam turns the kid down for a drink, doing the kid a favor, and the kid resents it, foreshadowing that Sam will help his customers with gentle fairness, but always be left behind after he helps them move on.
Framing: Does the pilot set, reset, upset and ultimately exceed its own expectations?
Are there framing devices (flashforwards, framing sequences and/or first person narration) to set the mood, pose a dramatic question, and/or pose ongoing questions?	Not really.
Is there a dramatic question posed early on, which will establish in the audience’s mind which moment will mark the end of the pilot?	Yes, will Sumner and Diane make that plane?
Does foreshadowing create anticipation and suspense (and refocus the audience’s attention on what’s important)?	Yes, the phone becomes more and more ominous.
Are set-up and pay-off used to dazzle the audience, distracting attention from plot contrivances?	Yes, he has predicted that Sumner will fly to Barbados with his ex-wife, and that turns out to be true, which distracts us from the fact that it’s a bit of a plot contrivance for him to overhear the final phone call.
Is the dramatic question of the pilot episode’s plot answered near the end of the story?	Yes, the plane takes off with Sumner, but without Diane.
PART 8: DOES THE PILOT CREATE A MEANINGFUL ONGOING THEME? (14/14)
Pervasive: Is the theme interwoven into many aspects of the show?
Does the ensemble as a whole have a unique philosophy about how to fill their role (and competition from an allied force with a different philosophy)?	Yes, they’re the friendly bar.  We don’t find out about their competition yet, but we sense that this bar is different.
Does the pilot have a statement of philosophy and/or theme, usually either at the beginning or ¾ of the way in. (Sometimes this will be the ensemble’s statement of philosophy, sometimes this merely be the implied theme of the series itself.)	“What are you doing?” “Just trying to cheer you up a little bit.” “What a shame such an astute observer of human nature is stuck behind a bar.”
Can the show’s overall ongoing theme be stated in the form of a classic good vs. good (or evil vs. evil) dilemma?	Yes, goods: winning vs. community-building, evils: alcoholism vs. loneliness.
Throughout the pilot, do the characters have to choose between goods, or between evils, instead of choosing between good and evil?	Yes, for Diane: faith vs. wariness, for Sam: bragging rights vs. compassion.
Are the storylines in the pilot thematically linked (preferably in an indirect, subtle way)?	There’s only one storyline.
Are small details throughout the pilot tied into the theme?	Yes, it’s great that Sumner knows the sweatiest movie, tipping us off that he’s sleazier than the bar customers.
Will the heroes grapple with new moral gray areas in each episode?	Yes, Sam is peddling the poison that ruined his life, and trying to gently protect his customers from his fate while profiting off their self-destructiveness.
Grounded: Do the stakes ring true to the world of the audience?
Does the series’ set-up reflect the way the world works?	Yes.
Does the series have authentic things to say about this type of setting?	Yes, lots.
Does the ongoing concept include twinges of real life national pain?	Yes, as the episode begins a kid pretends to be a Vietnam veteran, and then when Sam rejects this, the kid says “This is the thanks we get.”  This ties the show into the heart of the ‘80s: which was all about America turning its back on the working class.  Our heroes will spend the next 11 years huddled down in this underground bunker as their proletarian world is dismantled above them.
Are these issues presented in a way that avoids moral hypocrisy?	Yes.
Do all of the actions in the pilot have real consequences?	Yes.  This is one of the few episodes where they worry about Norm driving drunk.
Untidy: Is the dilemma ultimately irresolvable?
Do the characters refuse (or fail) to synthesize the meaning of the pilot episode’s story, forcing the audience to do that?	Yes, Sam doesn’t try, Diane tries and fails, in her speech to the tourists.
Does the end of the pilot leave the thematic dilemma wide open and irresolvable?	Yes, in getting her to stay did he win power (putting this posh woman under his thumb) or surrender power (inviting her to enrich him and his community with her higher ambitions)?

Total Score: 120/133

What's the Matter with Hollywood in 2013, Part 5: Hollywood vs. The Hobbit

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is a more extreme example of some of the trends we’ve discussed this week, especially contempt for the original source material.

J. R. R. Tolkien’s novel was written in 1937, and expresses the antiwar sentiments prevalent at the time, which were informed by memories of World War I. In the book, a bunch of petty and short-sighted kings want to gobble up as many resources as possible, until the moment that all of their fragile truces fall apart. At that point, our Hobbit hero nobly betrays his side to the others in the name of peace, but he’s unable to stop the oncoming war, so he hides from the pointless fighting until it’s all over, shaking his head at the folly of it all.

The novel was quite successful and highly acclaimed, but then World War II came and went, and Tolkien, along with many of his antiwar contemporaries, began to see things very differently. All of a sudden, war had been ennobled again. The world had finally met a villain powerful and evil enough to justify total war, with no regrets afterward. (In fact, after the war was over, they discovered the bad guy was even worse than they had assumed, which is not what usually happens!)

Tolkien decided that it was time for a very different follow-up story. In “The Lord of the Rings”, the rise of a huge new evil causes those squabbling kingdoms to finally unite in a righteous cause, and our Hobbits gravely shed their pacifism and march to the front.

There were other pointed contrasts: In both stories, a Hobbit joins the cause of a long-exiled king and helps restore him to his throne, but in the first, the exile lies, cheats and steals his way back to power, and our Hobbit comes to regret his role in restoring the kingdom, while in the follow-up, the exiled king retakes his throne only reluctantly, and proves to a paragon of honesty, wisdom and valor.

Not surprisingly, the two stories, with their contrasting morals, tend to attract different sets of fans, despite being two parts of one huge epic. Fans of the first find the second to be too long and dark, fans of the second find the first to be too light and frivolous.

Director Peter Jackson has never hidden the fact that he is squarely within the latter camp. While making his original screen epic, he happily skipped over the first book, and frequently spoke dismissively of it. When he had run out of later books, and the fans demanded more, he tried for years to find someone else to direct The Hobbit so that he could retreat to a producer role, but that didn’t work out.

In the end, Jackson decided that, if he had to adapt that damned book, he would do it the way it should have been done: He would turn it into another long, dark slog with pure good on one side and pure evil on the other. In other words, the opposite of what it was intended to be.

(This is the exact same thing that happened with Man of Steel: Christopher Nolan ran out of Batman movies, so he reluctantly came back around to DC’s original superhero on the condition that he could inject the bleakness and misanthropy of the latter into the former, even though that would totally betray the source material. In this case, however, he did manage to hand off the directing duties and restrict himself to producing.)

The first thing Jackson did was inject the Hitler character, Sauron, back into the original story. In addition to all of the scenes from the original, he’s added a lot of new scenes in which the Hobbit and dwarves fight a running battle against Saruon’s army of orcs, who were nowhere to be seen in the book.

Of course, as anyone who’s ever read the internet knows, the one sure-fire argument against non-violence (or de-escalation of any kind) is always: “Oh yeah? Well what about Hitler??” Hitler is the best thing that ever happened to violence fans, the trump card they always have up their sleeves to win every hand.

So what happens when you inject Sauron into The Hobbit, but still have the same people doing the same stuff? The whole thing now seems disturbingly frivolous, which is exactly Jackson’s point. “Why are you people having adventures and singing?? Don’t you know that the worst evil ever is rising??” This version of The Hobbit is an argument against the existence of “The Hobbit”.

But what really kills the story is Jackson’s determination to transform bad exile-king Thorin into a carbon copy of good exile-king Aragorn. Thorin’s quest to claim that mountain of gold has been transformed from a greedy folly into a righteous restoration, and all of the other squabbling kings who stand in his way have become monstrous villains. In this version, our Hobbit forms a deep bond with this noble dwarf-king as they share the burden of his crusade against evil.

In theory, this might have worked, but there’s just one problem: none of the events of the novel make sense in this context. In the book, the dwarves are assholes, who keep attempting to send Bilbo to his death while they keep themselves safe, and he only puts up with it because he’s being paid for his time.

In the movie, they’re treated like a band of brothers, but they still send Bilbo off alone to fight the humongous trolls and, later, the dragon! They do all this after they already fought valiantly side-by-side against Jackson’s orcs! It’s utterly bizarre. Here is how Tolkien, as omniscient narrator, describes the moment when the dwarves send Bilbo in alone to face the dragon:

• “There it is. Dwarves are not heroes, but a calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don't expect too much.”

This doesn’t fit Jackson’s characters at all ...and yet he presents the scene as written.

Jackson could have solved these problems easily. If he was going to take away original motivation (greed and cowardice on the part of the dwarves, salary and a resulting desire to be a good burglar on the part of Bilbo) then he would have to rewrite those scenes only slightly…

Instead of having the dwarves send their good friend off to fight those trolls alone, Bilbo could have simply run into those Trolls accidentally. As for the dragon, by that point in the book, the dwarves know Bilbo has the ring so that’s an easy fix: send him alone because he’s the only one who can do it invisibly. How hard is that? Just fix it!

But here we run into something I call the Wikipedia problem. I’m a huge Wikipedia fan, but I’ll be the first to admit it has a big flaw. None of the writers want their stuff to be edited, and they get an instant notification every time somebody tries, so second-guessers have settled on a different method, resulting in many sentences like this one (which I made up): “In 1921 he became the first man to reach the summit except for this other man who had reached the summit the previous year except he wasn’t the first one either because someone else had done it the year before that.” Nobody tries to delete each other’s facts anymore, they just tack something on afterwards that contradicts it. That way, the original writer never gets an email notification that they’ve been edited, and they never start an edit war.

Peter Jackson’s Hobbit plays out like an extremely-contested Wikipedia page. He feels that he has no right to rewrite Tolkien’s scenes, so he just intercuts them with scenes that totally contradict them in terms of motivation, tone and theme. The result is an incoherent, unpleasant mess.

I do have some morbid interest in seeing how he handles the third movie. Will he finally switch over to the book’s point of view and portray Thorin as foolish for hording the gold and starting the war? I doubt it. After all, the orcs have now been introduced into the equation, so I suspect that the war will be seen as righteous from start to finish, which will be the ultimate slap in the face to Tolkien and his fans.

ONE YEAR LATER UPDATE: As you might have guessed from reading the above, I was pleasantly surprised by the third movie, which did mostly revert to the book’s morality, finally portraying Thorin as a greedy dick, and presenting Bilbo’s betrayal of him as totally justified. This doesn’t fix most of the problems in the previous two movies, and the third movie is still way too bloated and tonally inconsistent, but it’s definitely the best of the three and I’m glad to be proven wrong about Thorin.

What's the Matter with Hollywood in 2013, Part 4: Villains are Dehumanized and Lionized at the Same Time

Update: Upon re-reading, rewrote it a bit.

Yesterday, we were talking about modern heroes’ love of killing. I should note that Star Trek Into Darkness, unlike the first movie in that series, does pay some lip service to the idea of avoiding vengeance, but it does so in a ridiculous way: they solemnly conclude that it would be wrong to kill the villain, so instead they re-freeze him and use him as a paperweight.

Even when the heroes don’t explicitly kill the villains, there’s never any sense that society deserves to see a trial for these atrocities. After all, wouldn’t these criminal masterminds feel shame and humiliation if arrested and imprisoned? And wouldn’t justice be served by convicting them? Wouldn’t that trial tell the world what happened, and bring closure to their victims? Actually, according to these movies, the answer is just the opposite...

After the success of Dark Knight, we’ve had not one, not two, but three more movies that have slavishly copied its then-unique structure, in which the villain is imprisoned for the middle of the movie: Skyfall, The Avengers, and Star Trek Into Darkness. In each of the four, the villain strutted around the prison with a smug smirk, making it clear that this is exactly where he wanted to be, injecting his evil directly into the heart of civilization. The jailers who attempted to get them to cooperate were shown to be naïve fools.

(One thing I liked about Thor 2, by contrast, is that it dared to imply that its villain, even though he was the same one from The Avengers, might actually dislike prison the second time around.)

Of course, I realize that the idea of killing villains isn’t new –James Bond has never once brought a bad guy in for trial, and that’s fine– but what makes modern movies so unpalatable is their hypocrisy. In all four of those movies the villain was more appealing than the hero, and that that is new. These villains dominate every scene, even in prison, because the screenwriters are pretty much on their side. In fact, in each of the three copycats, the villain tipped the heroes off to the fact that their bosses were up to no good. 

In each of these movies, our side is human but naïve, and their side is inhuman but lionized. That’s a very bleak dichotomy.

Of course, this isn’t just Hollywood’s problem. Why was Seal Team Six ordered to assassinate bin Laden? Why didn’t they arrest him? Why not put him on trial, like Eichmann, and humiliate him in front of the world? Why not contrast his lawlessness with our law?

Perhaps it’s because we convinced ourselves he was a monster, not a human, and you can’t humiliate a monster. The way we conceive of our modern villains, both onscreen and off, they’re as incapable of shame as an AK-47 would be. You can’t humiliate an AK-47, you can only smash it ...Or perhaps the real answer is indicated by these movies: we were afraid that, if we got him in our docket, we would prefer his nihilistic vision to ours.  Neither possibility is very pretty.

What is the way out of this? Can we rediscover our humanity? If that’s possible, will Hollywood show us the way or come trailing behind?  Intentionally or not, they’ve done a pretty good job of showing us the problem, but can they now start to explore any solutions? Can they finally create new compelling heroes, now that the old franchises have soured so badly? I can only hope so.

Next time, we’ll bring a lot of these trends together for a more in depth analysis of one of the worst movies of 2013: The Hobbit 2...

What's the Matter with Hollywood in 2013, Part 3: Filmmakers Despise Their Idealistic Source Material

This was the year of movies that were made by people who viscerally despised the source material, most notably Man of Steel, The Hobbit 2 and Star Trek Into Darkness (I haven’t seen The Lone Ranger yet, but I suspect it will fall into the same category)

All of these were based on idealistic source material, and in press interviews each of the filmmakers were quite vocal about their contempt for the tone of the original. Needless to say, that contempt permeated every frame.

One of the screenwriters of Star Trek Into Darkness actually took the time to log onto a fan site after the movie came out just to tell devotees to “FUCK OFF!”, but nobody needed to wait that long to get the message--It was already loud and clear in the theater.

Let’s pick up where we left off on Monday with that movie’s plot: After getting blown up by all those bombs, our villain somehow manages to pull a 9-11 (another thing that has to happen in every recent Hollywood movie) and crash his ship into a civilian-filled city. Our heroes don’t stop him, of course, because that’s not what heroes do. Heroes don’t stop crimes anymore, they merely hunt down the people who blow up our buildings and beat the crap out of them.

And of course, it’s not Kirk that gives the beatdown, it’s Spock. That’s the whole point. The filmmakers are clearly fed up with Spock: “Gee, at what point will Spock realize that thinking is for dopes, and finally use all that alien strength to start running, jumping and punching?? Let’s finally create an atrocity big enough to break down his foolish civility and get him to man up!”

This is really easy to do. Any writer can concoct a situation in which their heroes’ morality looks foolish. But is that our job?

To a certain extent, the decline of American humanism can be dated back to that moment in 1988 when Bernard Shaw asked Michael Dukakis in a presidential debate “Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”

Given how inappropriate the question was (No man wants a national TV audience to suddenly picture his wife getting raped), it’s hard to blame Dukakis for his inarticulate answer (basically, “Um, I’m opposed to the death penalty, so I guess not”), but his failure to offer a rousing denunciation of lynch-law had disastrous consequences. Support for the death penalty soared...and stayed high even after DNA tests proved that a huge number of those awaiting execution were innocent.

The rise of American bloodthirstiness is all-too-evident in modern Hollywood filmmaking, where they’ve developed quite a hero crisis. The idea of creating new heroes is too embarrassing to modern screenwriters, so they feel that they have to keep recycling the old heroes, but those old heroes are even more embarrassing, because they date from a time when most writers were old-school liberals, and thus they seem “hokey” today.

All Hollywood screenwriters have now become Bernard Shaw, saying, “Surely there must be some situation that I can create for these sanctimonious goody-two-shoes saps that will finally force them to man up. Hey, I know, what if Zod was just about to destroy some oddly passive bystanders with his eye-lasers, and Superman had absolutely no other way to stop him? Then will he finally be allowed to kill, puh-leaze??”

The big problem, of course, is Superman actually had a million better options in that situation. He could have flown Zod up, up and away, or he could have said, “Hey, you guys, get out of there while I’m holding this guys head!” (For that matter, the fact that Zod had seen that those people were there, at a time when lasers were shooting out of his eyes, should have meant that they were dead already, right? How can you look at something while firing your eye lasers and not automatically zap that thing?)  The whole situation was inane.

But Man of Steel just blew past that problem because outsmarting your villains is for pansies. Our heroes today have ball sacks, dammit! They live in Bernard-Shaw-ville! The villains can never be thwarted, never be outsmarted, never be sent to prison…they can only be executed or let go, even if the writers have to twist the plot into conniptions in order to place the hero in that position.

The whole plot of these movies has been engineered to pin these heroes down and forcibly strip them of their heroism, leaving them degraded and humiliated. “Those old-school heroes thought they were so proud, so smug, so cool...they thought that they were better than us! Well, we’ll show them!”

Tomorrow we’ll look at the consequences of this worldview in other recent movies, then on Friday we’ll look closer at how this phenomenon plays out in The Hobbit 2...

What's the Matter with Hollywood in 2013, Part 2: The Golden Geese are Dying of Exhaustion

2001 marked a radical turning-point for Hollywood filmmaking. For years, it had been gospel that adapting fan-favorite characters wasn’t worth the effort, because those movies cost too much, didn’t make enough money, displeased existing fans (who thought they had changed too much) and baffled non-fans (who just couldn’t get it.)

When they did try it, they would always try to distance themselves from the pre-existing fans (who were, after all, smaller in number) and chase after the non-fans by fundamentally re-conceiving the project until it “felt like a movie,” instead of like the original. In fact, Hollywood preferred to adapt an unsuccessful short-lived comic book like “Men in Black” because it had no fans, leaving them free to change it as they saw fit. Tackling a higher profile comic like “Iron Man” was seen as more trouble than it was worth.

But in 2001, (okay, technically mid-2001 to mid-2002) the perfect storm arrived. Three sets of filmmakers all decided to break the rules at the same time, creating huge-budget adaptations that were made to please the fans, not the fickle. And all three hit huge: Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and Spider-Man. It would go down in history as “The Year of the Wildly-Successful Ultra-Faithful Franchise Adaptation”

Now all the rules had changed. Hollywood had discovered a secret: fans were hard to please, yes, but if you hit the bullseye they would become ecstatic. So ecstatic, in fact, that they would drag their non-fan friends to the theater and force them to like it, too. Please the fans and the rest will come.

Soon the floodgates opened, and dozens of old franchises were dusted off and given big-budget deeply-respectful adaptations. In many cases, it didn’t work, but every one that did work was instantly turned into its own factory, churning out sequel after sequel. Soon there weren’t enough weekends in the summer to host them all.

But that process has now been going on for thirteen long years, and the well is almost dry, which has sent Hollywood into crazed desperation. The first step was split up the final movie in each franchise into two parts, first Harry Potter and Twilight (which did admittedly have oversized final books) then Hunger Games (which didn’t). This culminated in the ultra-bloat of The Hobbit, parts 1, 2, and 3, which is the first of these to leave even the fans feeling exhausted and exploited. (Much more about those movies later.)

Meanwhile, Hollywood invented something new: the insta-reboot. It was once considered sketchy to reboot Batman Begins a mere eight years after Batman and Robin, but now we get a new Spider-Man just three years after the last one Peter-ed out.

But that leaves one more option: tapping the franchises that, for one reason or another, they didn’t want to touch before. That brings us to 2013, which shall always be remembered as “The Year of the Adaptation Made by Filmmakers Who Openly Despised the Source Material”. We’ll get to that tomorrow...

What's the Matter with Hollywood in 2013, Part 1: High Stakes Can Get Boring

I've already done some of these for Pacific Rim, but now let’s mop a lot more of the mess...

In any story about a heroic struggle, you need to establish early on whether you’re asking, “Will the hero succeed?” or “How will the hero succeed?” If you’re writing one story that’s part of an ongoing comic book or TV show, you need to make sure that most of the time you’re asking the latter, not the former. The nature of the format dictates that heroes will (and should) almost always succeed, so if you keep asking “Will they?”, then the audience will get fed up.

That said, if your comic book or TV show is producing at least twelve stories per year, you can do one or two per year that imply that your heroes really are in mortal danger this time, because you’ve earned the right to do those stories.

Of course, you can go to that well more often if you genuinely kill off a character every now and then, but this is ultimately a trap: you’ll will have to keep escalating and escalating. In the end, if you can’t get your audience to get just as excited by a “How will they?” story as they are by a “Will they?” story, then you have no business writing about an ongoing hero.

One problem is that “Will they succeed?” only has two possible answers: yes or no. “How will they succeed?” has lots of possible answers, so it’s an inherently more interesting question. Unfortunately, we now we have this idea, especially when continuing stories are adapted into movies, that every story needs ultra-high stakes, so they have to be about the momentous but unimaginative question of “Will they?”, rather than the quotidian but far more interesting question of “How will they?”

Recent spectacle movies like Thor, Captain America, The Avengers, Green Lantern, The Dark Knight Rises, Oblivion, Man of Steel, and Pacific Rim are all about “Will they?”, rather than “How will they?”. In each case, the hero just defeats the villain with brute force, and maybe a nuclear bomb or two. These are “lone superpower” movies. The heroes have the power, but the final question is “Will they be willing to do what needs to be done?” (We’ll explore this disturbing “man up” trend throughout this week)

And even in those few movies where the hero used some “cleverness” to defeat the villains, the “clever” thing they do actually requires no brain cells whatsoever. In Star Trek Into Darkness, the bad guy, who has been genetically engineered to be the greatest military genius of all time, says to the heroes, “My friends are sleeping inside your super-powerful bombs! I am firing on your weak little ship with my big evil ship, and I demand that you teleport those bombs onto my ship, knowing full well that I will keep firing on your ship and killing you after you do so!” So the heroes dutifully beam the bombs onto his ship, but they’ve done something very clever: they have set those bombs to go off! What a mind-blowing idea! Who could ever have guessed that they might do that??

Of course, after that scene, the movie has another forty minutes left (This has become another hard-and-fast Hollywood rule: whenever the movie feels like it’s over, there’s always another forty minutes left) and suffice it to say nothing “clever” is going to happen after that. We’ll talk about that on Tuesday, but first...

Rulebook Casefile: How “Mad Men” Creates Its Own Sense of Right and Wrong

As much as I love the 1960s, I’m an even bigger aficionado of the 1860s, so I had high hopes that I might enjoy “Copper” and “Hell on Wheels” even more than “Mad Men”. Unfortunately, like most critics, I found both shows to be uninspiring. Both commit the cardinal sin of period pieces: they assume that we’ll only identify with heroes who are just like us.

As with most post-Civil-War stories, the hero of “Hell on Wheels” is a confederate veteran (because that’s “romantic”), and yet he quickly gets a co-equal black sidekick to prove that he’s not one of those confederates. At least on “Copper”, they give us a Union-vet hero for once, but otherwise it’s typical. Once again, he constantly defers to his black best friend, a scientific genius who has single-handedly invented all of the forensic advances that will appear in the next fifty years.

Basically, the heroes of both of those shows say to their fellow white men, week after week, “Hi, I’m from 2013, and I’ve come back to set you people straight.” That’s what makes them the heroes.

Historian professors like to warn their students against “the myth of progress”: This refers to the belief that everybody in the past was trying to reach the pinnacle that is us, so every time they became more like us they were moving “forward”, and every time they became less like us they were going “backwards”.

On “Copper” and “Hell on Wheels”, bad is defined as “how they did things then” and good as “how we do things now.” Both shows shy away from the possibility that the past might have an ironic relationship to the present.

The “Mad Men” pilot slyly dangles this possibility in its opening scene. In the first scene, our hero initiates a friendly chat with a black busboy, only to have the busboy’s white boss come up and grumble, “Is he bothering you? He can be a little chatty!” Sure enough, Don gets his back up and barks, “No, we’re actually just having a conversation, is that okay?”, and when the boss slinks away, Don says to the busboy, “Well you obviously need to relax after working here all night.”

“Okay, great,” the audience thinks, “this guy is going to be just like us!” But before the scene is over, we realize that this isn’t the case. Don quizzes the man about what might get him to change cigarette brands, then, at the end of the conversation, the busboy says, “Reader’s Digest says it’ll kill you.” Don ruefully chuckles, “Yeah, I heard about that.” But then the busboy gives a tiny eye roll and says something that’s music to Don’s ears: “Ladies love their magazines.” Don may have ten times more power than the black man, but at least they share a chuckle about how unimportant the views of women are.

We quickly realize that Don is nothing like we want him to be. Yes, because of his dirt-poor background, he has some respect for black suffering, but he couldn’t imagine himself having any black friends. Don’s an upper-middle-class white man in 1960, with all (or at least most) of the reflexive bigotries that that entails.

The tease of the show is that we keep rooting for Don to finally wise up to the flaws of his era and just start thinking like us already, but creator Matthew Weiner is always happy to yank that football away.

This led up to a delightfully ironic moment at the end of the first season, when Don, after taking no offense at several horrific things, finally arrives at the one injustice he can’t accept…when Joe Kennedy steals the 1960 election from Richard Nixon. Only now does Don get fed up with the fact that the system is unfairly rigged against the little guy!

“But… but…”, the audience sputters, “That’s one historical injustice that we’re totally okay with! That one was for the best! That’s one little guy who deserved to have his rights taken away!”

“Mad Men” actively strips us of our modern morality and sends us spinning head-over-heels into the past, unable to find secure footing. We’re in Don’s world now, and we’re never sure where we stand in relation to him. The better we come to understand his skewed morality, the more we come to doubt our own certainties. The show is steeped in irony, which is why it’s so meaningful.

Rulebook Casefile: The Importance of Being Good at Your Job in “Mad Men”

One thing that “Mad Men” has always been great at is the subtle build to an upheaval, where a momentous thing seems to happen with no warning, until we realize that we’ve seen signs slowly piling up all season long. They pulled this off with Peggy’s in-denial pregnancy in season one, Don’s impetuous marriage at the end of season four, and Don’s firing at the end of season six.

Throughout season six, a funny thing happened in the print and online commentary about the series: there were several articles along the lines of, “Gee, Don’s misbehavior is no longer charming, and I don’t know why.” As it turned out, they were having exactly the reaction they were supposed to have: Weiner wanted to show what happened when Don’s charm finally soured on his perpetual victims, but a side effect of Don’s failing magic touch probably did the most to sour the audience’s reaction: they were subconsciously reacting to the fact that Don was no longer good at his job.

These baffled critics had failed to notice something that’s gospel for every network exec (and something that Weiner knew full well): It’s very hard to care about a TV character who isn’t good at his or her job, even if --especially if-- you disapprove of that job.

This was true of all of the antihero shows that arose in that period: “The Sopranos”, “The Shield”, “The Wire”, “House”, “Breaking Bad”, etc. The more ambiguous the morality of the show, the more unambiguously talented the hero had to be. They were breaking all the rules of TV...except the big one.

We watch “Mad Men” on several levels: on one level, we contrast our current “enlightened” era to the bad-old-days of good-old-boys, and we archly disapprove of Don’s terribleness, but while we do that, we’re also inside of the world of the show with him, and we’re rooting for him to run circles around his fellow creeps.

One of Don’s many ironies is that he’s not able to see the larger futility of his lifestyle, but he is able to see the faults and hypocrisies of his contemporaries much better than they do, and sometimes even better than we do, even with our greater perspective. And we love that.

Just look at the pilot: Only Don can solve the cigarette problem, because only he has accepted the meaninglessness of the emotions they’re selling. It’s dazzling to watch him explain the hidden nature of advertising to his co-workers and his clients, because this is our favorite type of tradecraft: news we can use. Even though we see his world so much more clearly than he does, and judge him harshly for his blind spots, he’s also explaining our world to us in a way that we’ve never understood it before.

As the show progressed, we sometimes unambiguously wanted Don to succeed, as with his inspiring pitch for slide-carousels, and other times we were disgusted by his success, as with Lucky Strike, but either way, we were glad that we were on the winning side. Whether he used his power for good or ill, that power made him our beacon. We followed him down a dark path, but he was the brightest light on that path, so naturally we clung to him for illumination.

Don began season six by reading “Dante’s Inferno” while attempting to relax in paradise. For six seasons, he has been our Virgil, the most enlightened ghost from a pre-enlightened era, and therefore our ideal guide to this hellish world. But now he’s grown both weary and wary of that role.  Even the smartest guy in hell is still in hell. 

Like all great characters, Don’s greatest strength is the flip-side of his greatest flaw. And like all great TV characters, he has always felt that he’s stuck in a place where he cannot shed one without shedding the other, that he can’t stop his pathological lying without giving up his professional dominance. In the sixth season, his worst fears came true. As soon as he got tired of lying, everyone in his life got tired of him.

Going into the final season, the question is whether or not Don can once again rebuild a better life from scratch. He’s sick of being that lone torchbearer heading down that dark path (even if he wanted to continue, he can’t, because his flame has now been snuffed out) so he’s decided to crawl out towards daylight instead. Some casual viewers see this and roll their eyes: “Hey, that’s no fun!” But for fans of truly great TV, the show has never been more powerful and electric with possibility.

Happy New Year!

Why not celebrate by inadvertently creating your own baby New Year with your rival’s secretary?

More “Mad Men” content tomorrow...

Straying from the Party Line: “Mad Men” (Ensemble and POV)

“Mad Men” broke the rules in any number of ways, but let’s look at two of the less-remarked-upon risks the pilot took:

It doesn’t establish a fixed way to enter the show every week:

It’s very common to begin a show with a fixed point of entry: the roll call on “Hill Street Blues”, the listening kids on “How I Met Your Mother”, even the recurring image of the opening eye on “Lost”. I’ve only managed to come up with two exceptions, albeit major ones: this and “The Simpsons”.

In this case, it speaks to the show’s malleability: episodes can cover one night or several months, have different lead characters, totally ignore other characters, occur entirely inside or outside the office, etc. This is all very risky. Almost every episode of “Hill Street Blues” took place within one day, so the writers could get into the habit of creating stories of that length, and always be sure that each subplot would line up to all the others. On “Mad Men”, with everything shifting, only certain subplots will fit together, which makes beautifully interwoven episodes like the one mentioned here all the more remarkable.

The pilot short-shrifts several members of the ensemble:

This is most obvious with Betty, who is only introduced in the final moments of the show as a shock reveal, but Harry, Paul, and Ken also get little chance to differentiate themselves despite getting a fair amount of screentime in the pilot. This is indicative of another big risk: the secondary characters can remain undefined for now because the primary drama on this show will be created by the hero’s internal conflicts, rather than by his interactions with others. (This was also true of “The Sopranos”, whose pilot also short-shrifted many characters.)

This is inherently an anti-dramatic choice (ever moreso here than in “The Sopranos”, where Tony at least had a psychologist to discuss his inner conflict with). Simply put, it requires a genius level of writing to pull off: there is not one easy way to dramatize internal struggles, so the show deftly uses every trick in the book at different times. It’s a tightrope walk, and it has been for all six seasons, but so far it’s pulled it off beautifully.

Next we’ll look at some rules this pilot exemplified...