What The OC Taught Me About Pilots

I've been an avid fan of The OC for a while now, and have probably seen the series in its whole 4 or so times (thanks, Soapnet). And in my developing my own pilot for a young-people serial drama, I've read the pilot script and have been catching up on old episodes. And in rewatching the first three, I discovered something extremely important about pilot writing and establishing a series.

For those who didn't watch the show, rent the DVDs or catch up online or on Soapnet. Okay, that wasn't my point. If you didn't watch the show, the first three episodes take place when Ryan, a smart 16 year old from bad neighborhood Chino is kicked out of his house after he and his brother steal a car. His public defender, Sandy Cohen, takes him in for a few days to his amazing mansion in the ritzy Newport Beach. Sandy's wife Kirsten isn't so approving of this plan, she wants Ryan gone, so Ryan goes back home to find that his mother walked out on him. Seth, the Cohen's lovable misfit son, stashes Ryan in one of Kirsten's development homes, it burns down, Ryan's back in Juvi, Seth convinces Kirsten to accompany him to visit Ryan in Juvi, and she bails him out when she sees how awful it is. She's determined to find his mother so she can release him into her care. Sandy finds the mother, who seems at first to have pieced her life together, but winds up reverting to her alcoholic self and leaving Ryan with the Cohens.

When I remember watching the show for the first time, it seemed like ages before Ryan and his mother were reunited. I remember Ryan as already living with the Cohens, as already establishing himself in Newport. I remember Ryan's mother coming being a huge deal, that they were finally going to deal with everything that had happened. Except, in reality, it was only three episodes. And I watched them for the first time on DVD, so it's not even like three weeks went by.

Rewatching these episodes again, I realized something. The pilot did such a good job of hooking the audience to the characters, of introducing them and making them come alive. The world seemed so real and the characters so natural in it, that even in the first three episodes The OC felt familiar and like home.

A good pilot should do that. It should make the audience wonder how they ever lived without these characters before. It should make the audience feel like they've known the characters forever, that they've been anticipating the drama for a long time. That allows them to just soak it all in, tune in week after week after week -- and if you're lucky, keep watching even after your series ended just because they couldn't get enough of the show.

I highly reccomend reading the pilot script. It's available here, along with many other pilot and other TV scripts. Even having seen the episode multiple times, I couldn't put it down. Notice how even though it's still a somewhat early draft, the characters are all compelling, the setting is vivid, and the drama is engaging. There's no hesitation, and even the set-up is intensely dramatic. It's all aboiut subtely introducing your characters so that the audience gets to know them but feels like they already do.

If anyone has another "favorite pilot," please share. Pilots are one of the, if not the hardest scripts to write, and when they're done well, it's not only exhilirating to read/watch, but so useful in learning how to craft your own.

Glee Part 1

It's the talk of the town, right? Everyone, even non-TV watchers are buzzing about the show...but I'll get to that in the next post.

I'd like to use this one to talk about finding your place as a writer. And no, it's not tied in to "Don't Stop Believing" -- though that's a valuable mantra in this business.

Ryan Murphy, the creator of Glee, is also the creator of Nip/Tuck and Popular. I've never actually seen more than five minutes of Nip/Tuck (I have a thing about doctors, which somehow only disappears for Grey's), but I was a huge fan of Popular.

Just to refresh your memory, Popular was a show about cliques in high school, centered around two seemingly opposite girls -- Queen Bee Brooke and anti-conformist anti-popular Sam. At the end of the pilot Sam and Brooke discover that their parents are engaged, and the once mortal enemies are now on their way to becoming step sisters. The show explored the social scene in high school, basically focusing on how every teenager is insecure, even the most popular people have issues with which they struggle, and as much as people would like to crossover between groups, as much as people would like to live outside the labels high school slaps on them, it's hard.

Then, take Glee. So far it's about a high school teacher, former Glee Club star (back when the club was the coolest thing) who takes over the Glee Club in the hopes of returning it to its former glory. Except at the school now, Glee is the rung below the bottom rung on the ladder. Cheerleaders and jocks rule the school. Luckily, the teacher persuades a jock to join the club, hopefully giving it credibility among the popular kids -- but it seems from the preview that it may just stir up trouble. To top it off, the teacher struggles with his wife who's pregnant and wants him to get a better paying job to support the family. In his own way, he's doing the uncool thing by sticking with Glee, when he can have a high-powered more respectable job. Hooray for plot mirrors!

Popular and Glee are two different shows -- one is musical, one wasn't. One is a little more adult, one was clearly for middle school and high school kids. But the themes of the shows are similar. They both deal with social hierarchy in high school. Just in totally different ways.

Ryan Murphy clearly has a story he wants to tell about high school. The subject matter moves him in some way, and so he continues to reinterpret the basic core theme that is attractive to him. He's establishing himself as a writer with a certain tone (from what I understand, Nip/Tuck is pretty snarky, Popular was as well, and Glee seems to be that way too), and a certain genre. It's fairly obvious what his voice his, what his stories are, and most importantly...WHO HE IS AS A WRITER.

There are many more examples of writers who have successfully established themselves in a certain genres...Josh Schwartz. The OC, Gossip Girl, even the sadly not-picked up Lily spin-off. Shows about rich kids growing up, impacted by their setting, but at the end of the day still kids. With a little bit of soaptastic drama thrown in. Alan Ball is the master of sexed-up, sort of creepy but so good you have to keep watching, death hanging over the story stories. Joss Whedon -- sci-fi, funny, quirky, layered, suspenseful dramas that create an entirely new world that feels more real that ours. They all know who they are as writers, what they want to write about, and how they want to write it. And more importantly, Hollywood and their fanbase know it too. See, you can't quite have a fanbase without having a clear persona.

So my question to you is, who are you as a writer? If a bigshot producer stopped you on the street tomorrow and said, "Hey, aspiring screenwriter, what sort of stuff can I expect from you?" how would you answer? It's important to know who you are, what stories you are compelled to tell, and how you will tell them.