mobile screen — your own, for example — visitors tell stories about their dreams and problems, loves and rages, their thrills and their losses. You care about them, probably more than you admit, and even talk about them when they’re not around — after all, they come as often as you invite them.
Sometimes they’re broiling over issues in the news. Or sick and scared about that, or lying, or brave. At one time they were attacked and fought back and barely survived. But no matter what, they’ll be back next time, your same friends, there with you in your most vulnerable places, at home after work and on weekends, on your phone while you wait alone for a plane, on your computer when you can’t sleep at night. Intimate.
Maybe one of them is Tony Soprano, the mob boss, asking Uncle Junior, “I thought you loved me,” and watching Junior’s lip quiver, unable to answer. Or Mad Men’s Don Draper hurrying home for Thanksgiving with his family after all, imagining them happy, only to discover they’re already gone. In The Good Wife pilot, you were reeled into the fraction of a second when Alicia, standing by her philandering husband, fixes on a bit of string on his jacket, as if removing it would put her life back in order. On House, you were drawn into a doctor’s moral quandary when he must choose between allowing the tyrant in his care to perpetrate genocide or killing his patient. On Treme, just months after hurricane Katrina, amidst destroyed homes and near-empty streets, you rooted for Chief dressing in his Mardi Gras costume of immense yellow feathers, dancing and singing with enough heart to bring back the dead and New Orleans. Joy and tears, up close and personal.
Think about the impact. Once you understand the way viewers relate to their favorite shows, you’ll get a feel for the kinds of stories that work and how to wield this awesome power.
THREE QUALITIES OF EPISODIC TV SERIES
Among the traits that distinguish primetime series (both dramas and comedies) from other kinds of screenwriting, three are especially significant for writers: endless character arcs, the “long narrative” for serials, and the collaborative process.
EPISODIC CHARACTERIZATION
In feature writing you were probably told to create an arc for your protagonist that takes him from one state to its opposite; the character struggles toward a goal, and once that is attained, your story ends. Someone who is unable to love is changed when a mate/child/friend appears and, through fighting the relationship, the character is finally able to love. Or someone who has been wronged seeks revenge and either achieves it or dies for the cause. All fine for movies that end. But series don’t.
So how do you progress a narrative without an arc? Well, you create a different kind of arc. Remember what I said about series characters being more like people you know than figures in a plot. If your friend has an extreme experience, you continue knowing him after the event. You’re invested in the process, not just the outcome.
But watch out — this does not mean the characters are flat. Your continuing cast should never be mere witnesses to the challenge of the week. On the contrary, characters who are not transformed by the plot need something instead: dimension. Think of it like this: instead of developing horizontally toward a goal, the character develops vertically, exploring internal conflicts that create tension. The character may be revealed incrementally within each episode and throughout the series, but viewers need to trust that Alicia Florrick and Walter White are the same people they knew last week. Does that mean those characters are without range or variation? Of course not, and neither are your friends.
THE “LONG NARRATIVE”
Episodic drama comes in three forms: anthologies, series with “closure,” and “serials.”
Anthologies are free-standing stories, like short movies, unconnected to other installments except by a frame. The Twilight Zone had a continuing host, style, and franchise, but the casts were different each week. As the precursor of today’s episodic television, anthologies flourished in the 1950s when showcases like Playhouse 90 presented literature more like stage plays. But anthologies are rare today, and we’re not focusing on writing them.
Series with closure have continuing main casts but new situations that conclude at the end of each episode; they close. This is especially true of “procedurals” like CSI, NCIS, any version of Law & Order, and in fact the majority of fare on the traditional broadcast networks. Syndicators and cable channels that run repeats prefer this kind of show because they buy large packages (the first four seasons, or 88 episodes, is typical) and sell them to local and overseas stations who may rerun them in any order. If the episodes have no “memory,” that is, no significant development of ongoing relationships, the order of the episodes isn’t supposed to matter. Or so the thinking goes.
Most series have some closure, even if they continue other storylines. But when a series is well developed, the writers and fans follow the characters and find it hard to resist their history as it inevitably builds over time. In its early seasons, The X-Files had a new alien or paranormal event each week, and though the romantic tension between Mulder and Scully simmered, it didn’t escalate. Then interest from viewers pushed more and more of a relationship and turned the partners into lovers by the end of the series. Most X-Files episodes can still be enjoyed in any order, but serial storytelling is beguiling.
Today, the best shows that close each episode also have ongoing dramatic stories. House and The Good Wife, for example, have built followings on their continuing characters. But from a writing point of view, they are constructed as procedurals (more about that term later).
Serials: Now, there’s a dirty word in some minds because it also describes “soap operas.” Daytime serials like The Young and the Restless and General Hospital used to have loyal viewers and succeeded according to their own aims. But primetime writers and producers don’t like to be identified with them because of the heightened melodrama (which is needed to drive the story enough to run five days a week), and the speed with which episodes are produced too often results in stereotypical characters, dialogue that lacks subtlety, and unbelievable situations.
Current heirs to soapy melodrama flourish in teen relationship shows, on the CW network especially. In the future, the inheritance may well be the Internet, where inexpensive, quickly-produced fare without known stars or elaborate production values can be made by anyone with a digital camera and editing software. And those episodes can run throughout the day and night.
Meanwhile, what about primetime serials that run on premium cable, basic cable, and broadcast networks? Decades ago, shows like Dallas and Knots Landing were described as “nighttime soaps,” and did have the overblown romanticism and hyperbole typical of their daytime cousins. But most primetime series aren’t like that anymore. Recent serials include award-winning dramas on HBO, Showtime, AMC, and elsewhere: Mad Men, Dexter, Breaking Bad, True Blood, The Wire, Treme, The Sopranos, Big Love, The Tudors, Boardwalk Empire, The Walking Dead. And most of the acclaimed series on networks and other cable outlets use serialized storytelling along with closed stories.
A serial is any drama whose stories continue across many episodes in which the main cast develops over time. It’s called the “long narrative,” the epitome of what episodic television can offer: not one tale that ties up in an hour or two, but lives that play out over hundreds of hours. Think about it — as a writer you have the opportunity to tell a story that is so rich that it expands for years. At the conclusion of NYPD Blue’s twelve-year run, the series produced around 250 hours of story. That’s not 250 police cases (actually two or three times that many because each episode included several cases); the significance is 250 hours of living with these detectives and their cares, 250 hours dealing with the consequences of twelve years of experiences.
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