If 90% of everything is crap, that rule certainly applies to television. Most of what I see of current television series leaves me woefully unsatisfied, and even a little pissed off. Then, this past weekend, my parents introduced me to In Plain Sight, a show that a friend of mine called “a mid-grade crime procedural.” Interesting take, as I had a significantly more positive reaction.

I’ve only just gotten through season 1 and into season 2 on NetFlix Watch Instantly, in addition to the few season-3 episodes I saw on Sunday. Based on what I’ve seen, this show stands out, in my view, from other crime procedurals. Because it integrates character and plot more deeply than the typical TV crime drama, for a much more powerful result. And In Plain Sight provides an opportunity to talk about Critical Fandom.

In Plain Sight tells the story of Mary Shannon, an inspector for the Federal Witness Protection Program, as she hides and protects the hunted from their criminal would-be murderers, all while dealing with the insane antics of her flaky, dependent mother and sister. To call Mary’s family “dysfunctional” is an understatement, as is to call Mary herself “codependent.”

As a writer, when I read a book or watch a film or television show, I don’t merely enjoy the experience. Don’t get me wrong: I do enjoy it. But I also think about why I’m enjoying it (or not enjoying it as much as I ought to be). Because if I can understand the why, then I can use those insights to reproduce similar qualities in my own stories. This is what I call “Critical Fandom,” not just reading or watching for the enjoyment, but also for the insight, and I believe it’s a key skill writers should develop.

Here are a few storytelling truths that In Plain Sight demonstrates:

• Character drives all story conflict. Even in television procedurals! If you’re big on books (and not on TV), a “procedural” is a plot-driven story (external conflict), like a crime mystery, as opposed to a character-driven story (internal conflict), like a romance. One of the big misunderstandings of the fiction writer is that plot drives external conflict, whereas character drives internal conflict. The truth: character drives all conflict, whether internal or external. That is, all story conflict is associated with changes in the way a character perceives his reality. The difference between these two types of conflict is that internal conflict changes how the characters think about their reality, whereas external conflict changes that reality itself.

  And as I watch In Plain Sight, I see that the writers understand that every story is a character story, even a crime procedural. It’s not enough that the heros want to figure out whodunnit and save the day; but this urge must come from their character and how they perceive their place in their world.

• Plot reveals character. This is the corollary to the above. This is “Show; don’t tell.” We don’t connect with characters through what they think or say, but what they do— and how it matches with and differs from what they think, and what they say, and what they say they think.

  Interestingly, the guest characters feel deeper than the recurring characters— at first. But after a string of episodes, you start to see subtle patterns in the recurring characters’ behaviors, because each “procedural” storyline helps to build the recurring characters. You eventually figure out that Mary protects federal witnesses so well, because she learned to be codependent by taking care of her dysfunctional family, but that she’s also learned to run from anything that smacks of genuine human relationship. You begin to sympathize with Mary’s sister and mother, at least with what they’re trying to make of their lives. And don’t even get me started on Mary’s relationships with her coworkers.

• Character is more than just a list of quirks and behaviors, and character change is more than just a random shift in direction. I object to the way some writers of TV procedurals try to inject character into their scripts. They seem to think that revealing character means boring scenes where people talk about their feelings to one another. Or even worse, magical changes in relationships or personalities. Not so! Columbo was full of character, not only in its detective but in its villains as well; and not once did he ever talk about his feelings or change his personality. Columbo was a quirky character, yes, but don’t mistake the quirks for the character itself: his quirks work because they reveal his character, not because they substitute for it.

  Similarly, the characters of In Plain Sight have deep pasts, deep needs, and deeply held psychological patterns. Sometimes their patterns help them in meeting their needs, and sometimes they hinder them. These are the qualities that make for interesting characters. Go deep with your characters, way deeper than you think you need to, in order to understand them from the inside out, to understand them even better than they understand themselves.

• Extraordinary changes require extraordinary forces. If character change is not just a random shift in direction, what is it? The answer: characters change in response to human needs. And the bigger the change, the more powerful the need has to be, and the more critical that need must seem to the character.

  Most of the stories of In Plain Sight begin with a character change. A person witnesses a murder or some other crime, and now the criminals and their friends want that person dead. Enter the Witness Protection Program, which will relocate that person and give him a new life, safe from his would-be murderers. Our heros protect that person’s life, but only if he gives up everything he was and becomes someone else. That’s character change, of the most profound.

• Extraordinary forces produce extraordinary changes. The corollary to the above: whenever a character faces a traumatic event, she’s going to be affected by it. You don’t always have to understand the psychology of that effect, although understanding helps to build a full, self-consistent character.

  When Mary was captured and almost murdered by a drug lord (the plot-based, “procedural” story thread), maybe she escaped and was rescued, but her PTSD was only beginning (the character-based story thread). Changes of this sort occur with all the characters, in a layered fashion, with plot-based story threads like building blocks filling out the character arc.

• Different people meet their needs in different ways. We tend to think of needs in a hierarchy. Our need to stay alive comes first, because if you’re dead, none of your other needs really matter. Then physical needs, like food and water. Then emotional needs, like attention and community and a sense of purpose. But reality doesn’t quite work that way. It is true that we tend to prioritize the fear of being eaten by a lion, for example, over the pleasure we would experience by sharing that lion’s kill. But that applies to any fear versus any pleasure, and if we feel one of our emotional needs slipping from our fingers, that generates fear, too, a fear that might seem even more pressing to us than the physical need to stay alive.

  In Plain Sight, because it’s about witness relocation, provides a perfect setting in which to explore these issues. Why would a hidden witness blow his anonymity? Some of the characters do. What’s more valuable than life itself? Lots of things: honor, friendship, affection, status, autonomy.

• The main characters don’t have to do everything. Most TV procedurals have the main characters doing everything, especially working miracles in fields that they’re completely incompetent at…

  … like Mary playing lawyer to her family, friends, and (especially) her witnesses. Oy vey. If she really cared, she’d realize that her duties and competencies are to secure her witnesses’ safety, not to represent them in legal proceedings. But this is what TV procedurals do, because otherwise, they’d have to introduce strong secondary characters, who actually perform an heroic act (at the hero’s behest) and save the day, and that would be wrong on so many levels. But not in my stories, thank you. I prefer tales with characters—even secondary characters—who function realistically and responsibly in their world.

• Know more than your characters about their world. This not only applies to the characters’ situation, e.g., what’s going to happen when the hero turns that dark corner. It also applies to specialized knowledge in fields that your characters’ lives will be touching. Research, research, research. Pretend you’re writing a scholarly paper on the field, and that after you present your paper, there will be questions from the audience, and you don’t want to look like an idiot.

  For example, when Mary’s drunk-driving mother goes to an AA meeting to show the court that she’s serious about dealing with her alcoholism, you the writer have to know that AA is just one of the myriad options available, and that statistically, AA doesn’t keep alcoholics off booze any better than if they just wing it by themselves. And when the court orders her into state-run rehab, which apparently follows an AA-style process— Well, that particular cliché at least might be realistic, because courts in some parts of the country are still very stone-aged about drug and alcohol treatment options. But that presents storytelling opportunities that you shouldn’t let escape. Maybe she fails because of the ineffectiveness of the rehab methods. Maybe the local ACLU chapter takes an interest in her case, because AA advocates a regimen with decidedly religious implications. Of course, that would require a strong lawyer character in a TV crime drama—Gasp!—and we can’t have that.

I’ve been seeing much more, both that excites me and that disappoints me. The difference between character-relevant drama and melodrama. How each story is actually about something, an art I feared was lost with the decline of SF. That heroic characters, no matter how flawed, have heroic qualities, and villainous characters have villainous qualities. How morality (right and wrong) interacts with intent: “good” characters don’t do good out of a need for status or attention, but for spiritual satisfaction (e.g., charity, duty, or even a need to find meaning outside of oneself), even if to dysfunctional extents. And on and on…

Critical Fandom is not about In Plain Sight, because you may not enjoy that show as much as I do. Critical Fandom is about organizing ideas, ways of thinking about what we see that help us to understand the patterns in them. Whatever television, movies, or books you rave over, look deep for storytelling insights that you can use in your own stories.

Keep writing!
-TimK

I called it “alternative conflict” in Monday’s post, but a better monicker might be “problem-free conflict,” because it pops up over and over again in literature, TV, and film. Usually, it’s used alongside the more traditional character problems.

“But character problems cause conflict,” I hear you objecting. “How can you have conflict without character problems?”

Well, actually, this introduction itself is an example of problem-free conflict. But first, let’s look at a more obvious example.

Mischievous Miscreant

Our story begins as the rising sun beams in on sleeping Dag. He rolls over just long enough to get in one more snore, before his alarm jolts him awake.

“Time to annoy my brother,” Dag says, an evil gleam in his eye.

He reaches for his “365 Ways and Days to Completely, Totally, and Fully Annoy Your Brother” calendar and flips to January 7, today: “Bop your brother till he bleeds.”

“Kooky!” Dag says to himself. “It’s a good thing I got this ’365 Ways and Days to Completely, Totally, and Fully Annoy Your Brother’ calendar. I could never think of this many ways to completely, totally, and fully annoy my brother on my own.” And he sets off to find his brother, and a boxing glove.

You have to get the humor of the Angry Beavers in order to fully appreciate that scene from the episode “Same Time Last Week.” (Yes, Dag and his brother Norb are animated beavers.) My brother and I used to watch them all the time before stupid Spongebob pushed them off the air. But now most of those episodes are available on NetFlix Watch Instantly, and I’ve been having loads of fun getting reacquainted with them.

What struck me most about that scene was that there’s no character problem. Not-a one. This is supposedly one of the no-no’s of storytelling. But the scene works, because Dag’s mischievous plan produces conflict. At least, it does by the definition of conflict I used in Monday’s post:

Conflict is a perception by the reader that compelling change has occurred and will occur.

In this case, Dag has begun going through his “annoy your brother” calendar, something new for this episode, something beyond his normal Daggaliciousness. And we expect both fallout and humor from this mischief. Indeed, we get both. He eventually ends up with a real character problem, but only after the plot has thickened a couple of times.

What’d'ya Mean, You’re Dead?

“Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you’re dead.”

That’s the first line of Laura Whicomb’s debut novel A Certain Slant of Light. This is what we call “a hook.” But whence comes its power?

We have several things happening, all at once, in this tiny sentence:

1. Someone is staring at the main character.
2. It puts her ill at ease.
3. She’s dead.

The second of these is clearly a traditional conflict. The character has a problem: she is comfortable with the way things are (a need), and this someone is interfering with her status quo (an obstacle). That’s a problem. We expect her to address that conflict, and indeed she does. But first, we have to deal with the other two conflicts posed by this introductory sentence.

I think of them as “What the hell is happening here?!” conflicts. You get one of these for free whenever someone first begins reading your story, because he doesn’t know anything about your story or its world or characters. But this freebie only lasts for a paragraph or two. In that space, you have to give him something more. And one path is to explore related “What the hell is happening here?!” conflicts.

In A Certain Slant of Light, the story has implicitly promised us that we’ll find out who the someone is who is staring at the main character (and why he’s staring).

We also want to know how she can be aware that someone’s staring at her if she’s dead. She’s obviously a ghost. But so what? Why shouldn’t someone see her? (That is, if she’s standing right in front of him?) Don’t people see ghosts?

Note that this sort of conflict drives non-fiction essays— like this very piece you’re reading right now. We usually don’t think of non-fiction as a story, with conflict, thickening, and resolution. But that’s because we usually think in terms of character-problem conflict, and non-fiction usually doesn’t focus on character-problem conflict. Well-written non-fiction, however, does follow the general structure of a story, including using conflict to push the story along.

It Don’t Matter Much to Me

One last quick example. Remember Forrest Gump? Winner of six Academy Awards, including Best Picture— Yeah, that Forrest Gump.

(BTW, at the time of this writing, you can also stream the film via NetFlix Watch Instantly.)

A profound story, but the main character, Forrest, nothing bothers him. Well, almost nothing. He certainly doesn’t get uptight about most of the life-pressures that constantly stress us out. That was, in fact, how the film was marketed back in 1994. Yes, I saw it when it first came out— and some of you may not be old enough to remember the movie trailers: “The world will never seem the same, once you’ve seen it through the eyes of Forrest Gump.”

I don’t want to make it sound like this character doesn’t have needs, because he does, and sometimes he has to strive to meet those needs. But a great number of the problems he faces are not his own.

For example, Forrest runs into his old platoon leader, Lieutenant Dan Taylor, who had lost his legs in Vietnam. Dan immediately tears into Forrest, because stupid Forrest got a medal of honor, while Dan lost both his legs and is now poor and destitute. Forrest—much more of a man than I would be—doesn’t even seem to notice the slight. Instead, he opens up his life to his old friend, and they eventually become partners in a lucrative business.

A number of forces drive this scene. One of them is the promise that the situation will change, either for the worse (if Dan’s raging anger eventually sinks through Forrest’s skull) or for the better (if Forrest’s unconditional affection eventually sinks through Dan’s skull). Neither one of these addresses any problem, but either would have been significant.

As I recall, Forrest Gump is full of story threads like this, where a non-problem drives the story via the promise of a change-to-come.

When this movie first came out, I wanted to write a long, detailed essay exploring its many layers and the many angles from which one could interpret the story. I never did. But if you haven’t seen this classic film, it’s definitely worth renting on DVD. In the meantime…

Keep writing!
-TimK

I borrowed the Bones DVD’s from my parents, and now I’m hooked. More importantly, this show looks like it would make a good drinking game. Here are a few rules. Please add more rules in the comments!

Cheers,
-TimK

The Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan Drinking Game

• When Brennan says, “I don’t know what that means,” take a drink.
• When Bones levels a goon bigger than she is, take a drink.
• When Angie shudders at the sight of a dead body, take a drink.
• When Brennan tries unsuccessfully to explain something to a layman (except for Booth), take a drink.
• When Brennan complains about not being issued a gun, take a drink.
• When Hodgins blames it all on a government conspiracy, take a drink.
• When Zack gets confused by anything having to do with girls, take a drink.
• When Booth makes a snap judgment, take a drink.
• If Booth’s judgment turns out to be wrong, take another drink.
• When you subconsciously mistake FBI Deputy Director Sam Cullen for Walter Skinner, take a drink. (And be honest about it!)
• When Booth belittles Brennan’s boyfriend (or does anything else to make it seem like he has a thing for her), take a drink.
• When Booth says anything nasty about “squints,” take a drink.
• If Bones is within earshot, take another drink.
• When Angela calls someone “Sweetie,” take a drink.
• When you think Booth wants to drink someone’s blood, take a drink, and say, “Blah! I want to suck your blooood!”
• When any of the forensics team says something Booth doesn’t understand, take a drink.
• When Hodgins makes eyes at Angie, take a drink.
• When Brennan literally corrects a metaphor or joke, take a drink.
• When the characters switch back and forth between two conversations, confusing each other, take a drink.
• When Bones tries to use pop lingo (unsuccessfully), take a drink.
• When Brennan uses logic to cover up the true feelings everyone else says are trapped inside her, take a drink, groan, and roll your eyes.
• When Bones says the truth bluntly and dispassionately and offends someone (“just making conversation”), take a drink.
• When Bones gets offended because someone else says the truth bluntly and dispassionately (“just making conversation”), take a drink.
• When Bones in one breath shows she’s an expert on every religious belief on Earth and then in the next shows she’s ignorant when it comes to Christianity, Judaism, or some other mainstream religion, take a drink.

When she suddenly broke off their engagement, and then went and married her daughter’s father… Of course, we also understand what pushed her to this. Luke did. He was pushing her away, making her second place, being insensitive to her needs. I miss the old Luke, who was always there for Lorelai, no matter what. He’s always loved her, even before they were dating. And whatever problems they face, we know they’ll never be truly happy unless they find happiness together.

This might be the last season of Gilmore Girls. And what do fans like this do when their favorite show is about to be canceled? Answer: Everything they possibly can to keep it going. They don’t want GG to end at the current, seventh season. So there’s the “Great8Mandate” write-in campaign. And there are numerous online polls, which GG fans vote on in droves. There are petitions. And then there are blogs and forums, and almost every TV blog or forum out there has at least one comment on it begging for a Gilmore Girls season 8.

As I write this, there are only 4 episodes left for Luke and Lorelai to reconcile. And fans are getting very nervous. They want Luke and Lorelai to reunite. But how can they possibly do so in only a month? After all the bridges they’ve both burned? How do you get by all the anger and hurt, and find love and contentment, that fast? It just doesn’t happen. I tried to soothe their fears, reassuring them that Luke and Lorelai can indeed get back together, even get married, this season. I even described exactly what kind of thing would have to happen to make it work, and why. The only question is whether the writers go ahead and do it.

But fans are not writers. Our hero has gotten himself into a fix. And the fans think that he can’t get out, because they can’t see a way out. Of course, that’s what makes for great drama. Because when he does get out of the fix, free to save the world, we’re overjoyed. Fans don’t understand storytelling. And that’s why I pray the writers of Gilmore Girls ignore fans when it comes to the story. I pray they don’t let the fans tell them how to write a good story.

Because the fans keep saying we need to give Luke and Lorelai time to get back together. Amy Amatangelo, the TV Gal, reflects the opinion of many Gilmore Girls fans:

I am on “The Great8Mandate” bandwagon… We deserve a proper farewell. Or as TV Gal reader Rebecca put it an “unrushed conclusion.”

An “unrushed conclusion”? Okay, here’s the problem. An “unrushed” conclusion is a boring one. Like dialogue, pacing is not about what’s realistic. It’s about what’s plausible. And when fans say “unrushed,” they mean they don’t understand how Luke and Lorelai can possibly get by the China wall that currently separates them. In other words, if the fans can’t see how the conflict will be resolved. But if they could see how the conflict will be resolved then the suspense goes right out of the story. I can’t think of one top story that has an unrushed conclusion. They always have dramatic, mind-bending, tear-jerking conclusions that leave you saying, “Wow!” Unrushed conclusions suck.

Rushing the ending can make it all the more powerful. If it seems like Luke and Lorelai just can’t reconcile, doesn’t that make it all the more powerful when they do? And this is true no matter how unrealistic it is. It doesn’t matter whether the ending is believable, only whether it’s plausible. And whether or not it’s plausible depends more on the characters themselves than on real life. Once you have strongly sympathetic characters, as Gilmore Girls does, you can do almost anything you want in the story. And if the characters go along for the ride, the audience will, too.

When Steven Spielberg directed Jaws, the story goes, when he got to the end of the movie, where the shark dies– Peter Benchley had written the original novel and the screenplay. And Spielberg’s ending was different than the original ending. Benchley disagreed with Spielberg’s ending, because he said it was unbelievable. He said no one would believe that an air tank would explode like that or that it would explode a shark like that. Because none of that could possibly happen in real life. And as the Mythbusters proved, Benchley was right. The ending to Jaws could never happen in real life.

But Steven Spielberg said, he’s had the audience on the edge of their seats for 2 hours, and he’s going to give them a satisfying ending. He said the story was going to go out with a bang. And you know what? Spielberg was right. In theaters, when the ending came, audiences cheered. They not only believed the impossible; they exulted in it!

It has nothing to do with what would happen in real life. It has to do with the drama. It has to do with identifying with a hero who, being in an impossible situation, somehow overcomes, triumphant. It’s the plausible impossible. And that’s what I want to see of Luke and Lorelai.

What do you think? Is it better for a story to have a rushed ending? Are there case in which a story should have an unrushed ending?

-TimK

If Grey’s Anatomy is known for one thing, it’s the sex. You’d think that would make it an extremely boring show. Because sex is boring. Despite all the sex, Grey’s Anatomy is actually worth watching.

This is not about pop-culture morals (although it could be). This is about the nature of relationships. Love is not about sex. Love is about companionship, caring, and commitment. But here’s the clincher: What kind of a person would go to bed with someone she didn’t love? And I mean love in the “commitment” sense of the word. I don’t mean just the feelings and the passion. (Although they’re really cool, too.) I mean, what kind of a person would bring sex into a relationship that could end with a simple morning-after spat? That’s unhealthy.

Yet which of our favorite characters has not had an unhealthy relationship with sex? This is the irony. As human beings, what motivates us is love, not sex. Sex is boring. But what keeps us spellbound are the character’s problems. Healthy characters are boring. Disturbed characters are interesting. So when a character has an unhealthy relationship with sex, it’s the relationship part that motivates us, and the unhealthy part that keeps us glued to the TV set.

How can Grey’s Anatomy be such a good show even with all the sex?

• It’s not just about the sex. It’s about the characters’ relationships and reactions. For example, in the first episode we meet the main characters’ resident surgeon, Miranda Bailey, nicknamed “The Nazi.” Their relationship with her is a key part of the show. But their relationships include their feelings about and reactions to sex with each other. So while it’s not just about the sex, sex is an element that in the lives of these characters makes the story happen.

• Even the sexy characters are sympathetic. Izzy Stevens is played by the supremely sexy Katherine Heigl. In one episode, she says of Denny Duquette that he treats her as more than a supermodel. He treats her as he would an intelligent person. That was the one quality this man, 15 years her senior, whose condition had confined him to a hospital bed— That was the one quality he had that made her fall in love with him. They never had sex. Yet it has been one of the most meaningful relationships in the series, and certainly one of the most significant. All because sex goddess Izzy Stevens is a sympathetic character.

• Even the average characters are multifaceted. One of the least melodramatic characters in the show has got to be George O’Malley. What can we say about George, besides that he’s a wimp? He had a fixation on Meredith. But for a guy with no sisters, sharing a house with two women hasn’t destabilized him too much. Despite his wimpy demeanor, he has a clear sense of professional ethics. He can’t give a straight answer to an uncomfortable question, but he’s willing to break the rules and even risk his job to do the right thing as a doctor. Remember when he questioned whether the anesthesiologist was drunk and got expelled from the OR? He was right, and he was heroic. Multifaceted.

• The conflicts are complex. Once you’re embroiled in a complex story, it’s almost impossible to get untangled from it. Meredith, an intern, fell in love with Derek, an attending and her boss, until his wife showed up. He had left her, because she had had an affair with his best friend. And when this ex-friend showed up and started talking to Meredith, Derek hauled off and decked him in the face. Anyhow, this whole relationship between Derek and Meredith got them into trouble, because they were keeping it secret, because it’s improper. Except that intern Christina has an even more involved relationship with attending Preston Burke (her boss). And that’s apparently okay, because no one found out about it until Burke intentionally told the Chief of Surgery, who incidentally when he was a resident had had an affair with Meredith’s mother. But Meredith just recently figured out that her father had left because of this. Her father reminds us a lot of George, whose heart Meredith broke because of her feelings for Derek. Like mother, like daughter. And speaking of Meredith’s mother…

It’s the same reason everyone slows down to rubberneck at an accident on the road (thus risking another accident). It’s why no news is good news. All the most horrible stuff that happens to a person, that’s what makes for a great story. And Grey’s Anatomy has represented in its heroes every last dysfunctional corner of the human psyche.

“Either your signature or your brains are going to be on the contract.”

Which Gilmore Girls character said that? In what episode? And what was he^* talking about?

^* I use the pronoun “he,” because it’s convenient. But this doesn’t mean the character is a man.

Where does that line come from, anyway? Here’s a hint: It’s a movie, the first of a trilogy. And there are references to that trilogy in at least 5 other episodes of Gilmore Girls. Do you know what they are?

I’m always becoming obsessed with Gilmore-isms, those witty Gilmore Girls allusions to pop culture. I end up spending hours digging up answers, and I still feel like I’ve missed a lot.

So, I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to have a website that had all the Gilmore-isms? And the more I thought about the idea, the more excited I grew. And the bigger the concept grew. And before I knew it, I was facing a grand vision of the Gilmore-ism Database Project, the comprehensive Gilmore witticism site. The theme has powder-blue menus and dark borders. Each quote has its own page, which includes the quote, which episode it’s from, maybe a screen snapshot, what the quote refers to, and an explanation of what it means in the context of the episode. Similarly, each episode, character, and pop reference has its own page, with links to all the Gilmore-isms associated with it. You can search or browse by quote, season, episode, reference, character, or whatever.

And from there, you can do almost anything you want. The site would probably have a blog and could have its own forums. It could have a feature to display a random Gilmore-ism. The site could have a “trivia game” mode, in which the computer asks you about a random Gilmore-ism. Or it could have a trivia area, with Gilmore-ism trivia quizzes that you can compete to win. And there’s no technological reason the site must be limited to Gilmore-isms. Any memorable Gilmore Girls quote could be included. Do you remember Squeegy Beckenheim and Tookey Clothespin?

The thing is, I can’t do this by myself. The actual website development is pretty straightforward. I’m a software developer, and I’ve done websites, and I (or any competent web developer) could throw together the basic structure of the site in a week or two. The real work comes in researching and writing up all those witty quotes. There are 6 full seasons of Gilmore Girls already on DVD and more episodes coming out all the time. And each episode is packed with Gilmore-isms. And I mean packed. I estimated, on average, one Gilmore-ism for every couple of minutes of program time. So it’s a mammoth task for one person. But there is a way out.

With enough eyeballs, all problems are shallow. In other words, if enough of you are willing to support this project, it is possible to actually do it. If enough of you are interested, I will pay for the web hosting,^† make sure the web design gets done, and so forth. If enough of you are interested, I will put my other projects on hold for this.

^† More accurately, I’m willing to put up the investment capital, as I intend to make the site self-supporting.

Contributors, Sign Up Here

EDIT: See Gilmore-ism.com for information about how to keep up to date on Gilmore-isms and how to participate.

Take care,

-TimK

P.S. “Either your signature or your brains are going to be on the contract” is an allusion to the movie The Godfather. In the first scene, Michael Corleone explains how his father got Johnny his first big singing gig:

My father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse… Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured the bandleader, that either his signature or his brains would be on the contract… That’s a true story.

The character who said this in Gilmore Girls was Jackson, in the episode “Emily Says Hello.” Having been elected town selectman, and having been bombarded for several weeks with town business, and handling it pretty poorly, at the end of his rope, Jackson discovers a pair of giant scissors on his doorstep. They clearly want him to preside at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. But Jackson, too overloaded, takes it as a threat. “This is the fish on the doorstep. It’s the horse head in the bed. It’s the ‘Either your signature or your brains are going to be on the contract.’”

The Godfather trilogy is clearly one of Lorelai and Rory’s all-time favorites. At least 6 different episodes reference these movies. There may be more, but the ones I know of are:

• “The Bracebridge Dinner” (2×10) (“We have to rent Godfather 3 on DVD… In the audio commentary, Coppola actually defends casting Sofia.”)
• “Ballrooms and Biscotti” (4×01) (“… the day of all days – Godfather I, II, and III, with extra showings of the Sofia death scene over and over as long as the Mallomars hold out.” Then, “and we’ll do Godfather I through ‘Monday, Tuesday, Thursday,’ and a quick Sofia dying.”)
• “Chicken or Beef” (4×04) (“Remember in The Godfather, Michael telling Sonny how he was gonna kill Tattaglia and Captain McCluskey in that Italian restaurant?”)
• “An Affair to Remember” (4×06) (“Every family needs its Fredo.”)
• “The Festival of Living Art” (4×07) (“Bada-bing all over his nice ivy-league suit.”)
• “Emily Says Hello” (5×09) (“Either your signature or your brains are going to be on the contract.”)

The Dr. House Drinking Game

• When Gregory House pops a Vicodin, take a drink.
• If he goes the entire episode without popping a Vicodin, take three .
• When someone has a seizure, take a drink.
• When someone goes into cardiac arrest, take a drink.
• When a patient bleeds profusely, take a drink.
• When a patient spews fluid from a body orifice, take a drink.
• When a patient spews blood from a body orifice, take two drinks.
• When a patient doubts House’s diagnosis, take a drink.
• When House’s team disagrees with his diagnosis, take a drink for each member of the team.
• When Cuddy countermands House’s orders, take a drink.
• When House acts against Cuddy or hospital rules, take a drink.
• When House insults one of his clinic patients, take a drink.
• When House talks down to one of the hospital staff, take a drink.
• When House or his team illegally searches someone’s home, take a drink.
• When House and his team performs any medical procedure against the patient’s wishes, take a drink.
• Whenever you find out a patient is fibbing on his medical history, take a drink.
• Whenever House lies in a patient report, take a drink.
• Then, when House tells a patient he’ll die unless he cooperates, take a drink.
• Every time there is sexual tension between two characters, take a drink for every doctor involved. (Borrowed from the Grey’s Anatomy drinking game.)
• Every time House makes an inappropriate sexual comment to Cuddy or Cameron, take a drink.
• Every time House makes an insensitive racial remark to Foreman, take a drink.
• Every time House makes fun of Aussies to Chase, take a drink. (Hey, we can’t leave him out!)
• Whenever someone makes a current-event or pop-culture reference, take a drink. (Borrowed from the Gilmore Girls drinking game.)
• Every time someone has mommy or daddy issues, take a drink.
• Every time it’s not lupus, take a drink.
• If they think it might be cancer, take a drink.
• If they have to choose which tests to do, because they’re out of time or there’s some other restraint, take a drink.
• If they perform every test they can think of on a diagnostic fishing expedition, no matter the cost, take a drink.

I’ve actually tried this game, and it is enough to get you a good buzz watching an average episode of House. In fact, it may be a bit too much.

-TimK

What I noticed was about Dan and Amy:

1. They’re passionate.
2. They’re story geeks!

Of course, we could always tell they were story geeks, from the early seasons of the series. We could tell they were weaving a deep, intricate, character-based story. Still, we need look no further back than the latest episode, “Super Cool Party People” to see how deep, how intricate.

Lorelai and Luke

Lorelai and Luke don’t trust each other to stay even when the going gets tough. Whether their doubts are founded, two people need this trust in order to make a marriage work. Lorelai loves Luke, as Luke loves Lorelai. Just from this episode, Luke goes shopping for Lorelai, something he usually hates, but he does it and enjoys it, just because she’s there. Lorelai buys and wears clothes that Luke likes, just because it pleases him. This is after almost two years of dating. They are so into each other. They are even ready to commit. But the other side of commitment is trust, and we can see so clearly that they do not trust each other.

Lorelai doesn’t tell Luke about her drunken toast at Lane and Zach’s wedding. Even though Miss Patty covered up for Lorelai, Lorelai should have come clean. She should have told Luke the truth and used it as a way to tell him how she felt. She should have told him she wanted to meet his daughter April. She should have told him she felt excluded from his life. She should have told him she was afraid they would never make it to the altar.

It took Luke months to tell Lorelai after he found out he even had a daughter. Then he doesn’t want April to meet Lorelai, because he fears Lorelai will take April away from him— just as her mother Anna fears, but we’ll get to that in a moment. It takes April’s birthday party, which Luke tries to throw without Lorelai’s help. It takes this birthday-party disaster to push him to letting Lorelai in, despite his fears.

Lorelai and Rory

These fears are strangely reasonable. That is, Lorelai misses the relationship she had with Rory. Their relationship has changed, has been ever since Rory went off to college. Rory’s been making her own decisions. She’s no longer Lorelai’s little girl, no longer Lorelai’s best friend. April’s birthday party, for Lorelai, was a throwback to this relationship she had with her own daughter. I wonder how Lorelai felt when April told her, “You remind me of my Mom. I think you’d like her.”

And I wonder how she felt when Luke told her that Anna was mad about her being at the party. She looked like she was about to cry. Lauren Graham is so cool.

Of course, Anna is with April just like Lorelai was with Rory, trying to protect her daughter from turmoil, from disappointment, from getting too attached to the guys dating her, trying to provide stability in an unstable existence, afraid to get attached herself. And like Lorelai, Anna also doesn’t trust Luke:

“He’s not a kid guy, never has been. And [April] she’s getting very attached. I need to know he’s sticking around first.”

No, that’s not Lorelai talking about Christopher, but it could have been.

Rory and Logan

Now Rory is her own woman. Remember when she moved in with Logan without even telling her mother?

Rory loves Logan. Yes, we hate him. But she really is in love with him. We know because she races to the hospital to see him, even though she hates hospitals. Then this usually timid, waifish girl proceeds to chew out Colin and Fin for acting insensitive. And what she said to Mitchem! I wonder what he thought. She must have broken all his conceptions about her.

But Logan is still a little boy. He has not undergone the right of manhood. He hasn’t taken responsibility for his choices. He has two alternatives. He can take on the family business as his father Mitchem wants him to. Or he can forgo his family’s wealth, blaze his own path. Either alternative would make him a man. Instead, he avoids choices, because he doesn’t want to think about the consequences. He needs to grow up, stop trying to weasel his way out of his choices and their consequences.

But now, in a hospital bed after parachuting drunk off a cliff, in “serious but stable condition,” his choices are staring him in the face. Maybe he’s growing up after all. He tells Rory, “No, it is not okay” that he almost got himself killed. And he tells her there was nothing she could have done to stop him. “I was goin’ no matter what. It’s my fault… I’m the one screwing things up with us here, not you! I’m sorry you’re in the hospital right now. I’m sorry about all of this. I don’t know what’s going on with me…”

What did Mitchem say to Logan? Or was it just staring death in the face?

Passionate about stories

This only touches upon the complexity in the epic tale that is Gilmore Girls. What motivated this story? In Michael Ausiello’s interview, Amy Sherman-Palladino tells us:

… when you see stuff happening, and when scenes and moments happen that you didn’t think could happen before, and when you add a kid like Matt Czuchry to the show and all of a sudden it brings in different layers and different stories and different textures, it’s like, it doesn’t have to end…

It’s horrifying… if we can’t ensure the quality… every year we’ve tried to push the bar higher. For better or worse, whether people like it or don’t like it, we tried to make our stories more complex. We try and push the quality higher…

They’re passionate about stories and passionate about Gilmore Girls. Everytime they saw an opportunity to make the story better, it energized them. It energized them until it burned them out.

Well, Dan and Amy, we’re sorry to see you go. I pray that your successors will at least be able to finish off the current storyline with the same passion you’ve shown. And wherever you go, whatever you end up doing, I’ll be looking forward to your next project.

-TimK

It looks like following episodes air, one per week, each successive Friday at 9PM.

Here’s the SciFi.com page: http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/.

-TimK

If you remember Frasier, in one episode, Frasier loses a tape of one of the back-episodes of his radio show. He puts out a call to listeners for a replacement copy, if anyone happens to have one. A listener does have a copy, and Frasier and Niles visit the man’s apartment to pick up the tape. They pull back a curtain, which they think is covering a picture window, and they uncover instead a shrine to the star radio shrink. This guy not only has all of Frasier’s shows on tape, he collects every piece of memorabilia he can get, transcribes all the shows, and even quit his job in order to spend more time with his obsession.

I haven’t quit my job and don’t have much memorabilia. But sometimes I feel like everything valuable I’ve learned about storytelling I’ve learned from Gilmore Girls. I can’t stop watching back-episodes. I could go on for hours talking about the show. I literally feel a tense excitement in my gut just thinking about the sixth season being released on DVD. I once dreamed I was on a date with Lorelai Gilmore. She said something demeaning about her mother Emily, and I pointed out that she inherited the same counter-productive behaviors, after which our date was over. Oh well.

So in honor of Gilmore Girls, here’s how I’d love the current conflict involving Lorelai and April to escalate. I haven’t been talking with Amy Sherman-Palladino. And I doubt that this is how things actually will happen. And if they do, Amy Sherman-Palladino did not rip me off, nor do I care. I can think of several good ways for the story to proceed, but this is one of my favorites.

First, the back-story: Lorelai and Luke are engaged to be married. April is Luke’s daughter by an old girlfriend, which he just found out about recently. Luke has been spending time with April, but wants to do so without Lorelai. Lorelai tells him she understands, but we can all tell it really bugs her. So, what might happen next?

Something happens in Lorelai’s life which pushes her to the limit. Maybe Rory gets back together with Logan. Rory didn’t bother to tell her mother any of what was happening in this relationship. Then Lorelai finds out from Paris that Rory broke up with Logan, moved back in with Paris, got back together with Logan, and now is moving back in with him.

Later, Babette tells Lorelai about something April said to her, and that the girl is “one sharp little tack.”

And so forth…

-TimK

The girls were actually very nice to me when I said to them, “Daddy’s sick today, so can you quietly do your homework and let me just sit and watch TV?” They were quiet, but they did not do their homework. Parents understand the problems in that, but I only cared about laying down and maybe closing my eyes. They burned when I blinked.

I set up the vaporizer and started on a Gilmore Girls marathon that lasted until 11 at night. By that time, M. and I were finishing up disc 5 together, with episode 20, “How Many Kropogs to Cape Cod?” in which Rory starts her internship. Actually, I fell asleep during that episode. I love season 5.

Actually I love all the seasons, even season 4. While watching season 4, I find myself frequently saying, “Ooh! This is a classic episode!” where classic here means “a memorable episode I find myself thinking about and wanting to watch.” Season 5 has fewer of these episodes but more “classic” storylines, like the romance between Luke and Lorelai, the breakup, and then the reunion. Sigh. Of course, I always knew they’d get back together, or else they’d die apart.

I knew this because each one acts toward the other differently than they act toward anyone else, especially in a crisis. I love Lorelai’s “Please, stay and yell at me” line in episode 10, “But Not As Cute As Pushkin.” That’s completely out of character for her, except toward Luke. And the way Luke acts out in episode 15, “Jews and Chinese Food”— It’s obvious even if you haven’t been paying attention that he storms into Lorelai’s garage to yell at her, not because anyone tripped, but because he misses the woman he loves.

Beginning writers sometimes think that you have to write in first-person or omniscient viewpoint to know what a character’s thinking. That you have to get inside his head. Not so! Characters reveal what they’re thinking by how they behave. In fact, if they have to tell you what they’re thinking, they’re not very good characters.

Of course, I wish Luke and Lorelai would just say it, “I love you. More than anything else in the world, I love you.” And I wish they would just trust each other already, conclusively and unconditionally trust that the other person is not going to leave. But the very fact that they can’t keeps the story going.

If you want to tell a good story, instill a wish in your audience, then make sure it can’t be fulfilled. Have the characters fall in love but be unable to express this love except through outbursts of pent-up emotion. Create a villian so evil that the audience calls for blood, and then make it impossible for him to die. Think of the thing you would most want your character to do, something that would solve his problems and make his life perfect, and then make it impossible for him to do anything but the exact opposite.

Before I fell asleep, I happened to go downstairs to my office-slash-den-slash-laundry-room. This is where the girls had been occupying themselves while I vegged in the livingroom. The room smelled of perfume— No, it smelled like baby. Actually, it was a little of each. They had clearly been using a bottle of skin lotion. But more of note, there was a thin film of white powder everywhere, talc, baby powder. I saw the bottle on the washing machine. I turned on the air filter and walked back upstairs. I didn’t clean up. I didn’t get upset. I barely acknowledged that anything had happened. I’m good at ignoring problems when I have no energy for them. M. later found a quarter-inch thick pile of the substance all over the dryer, too. It’s times like this that I know I love my kids, ’cause if I didn’t…

Well, I have to get going now. I need to watch this week’s episode of Gilmore Girls, which was on this evening (Tuesday). I fully expect things are not actually resolved between Rory and Lorelai, or Luke and Lorelai, and that Logan will eventually get Rory or die in his loneliness. He’s clearly crazy about her, hopelessly in love, because if he weren’t he’d have already gone back to the long line of girls ready to sleep with him.

First thing, though, I had to stop by the Registry of Motor Vehicles to renew my automobile registration. My pastor Saturday night at music practice dropped off his son, our drummer, and happened to notice the out-of-date sticker on the car. It was five months overdue, in fact. Don’t ask me to explain how I forgot. All I know is that this is a very serious offense in Massachusetts, and I was lucky I was not caught, what with driving around an unregistered car and endangering all the other drivers with my recklessness like that.

So first thing, my plan was, M. would drive me to the registry, and then as soon as it opened at 8:30, I’d be there to get in and out as fast as possible. Then I overslept, and the girls missed the bus for school, so M. had to drive them in, which set us back, not that it mattered much because I was still getting dressed. And I had a headache. I felt like my head was going to explode. So I popped a few dozen Ibuprofen, and went downstairs to the office to check the waiting times at the RMV.

At 8:30, there was a 5-minute wait. By 9:00, it was a half-hour. And I was not getting to work on time. So M. drove me to the registry. I walked ahead of M., who was in the middle of a phone call on her cell, and went up to the woman at the information desk, who was scowling at me—I just knew it—behind her blank stare.

Despite the painful throbbing in my head, I smiled and said, “Hi! I need to renew my registration.”

Silently, she pushed a button, and a slip of paper came sliding out of a mini-printer on the desk. She ripped it off and set it on the desk for me to take.

“Thank you.” I smiled, took the slip and walked to the waiting area. I noticed that the “estimated wait” printed on the slip was only 5 minutes. Cool. I guessed the day was not going to be so bad after all.

M. caught up to me and said, “I think you have to go over there first,” and pointed at the information desk.

“Already taken care of.”

“Oh! That was fast.”

I lowered my voice. “Well, it saves a lot of time when you don’t stop even long enough to say hello.” I don’t know why I lowered my voice. The woman behind the desk certainly didn’t need me to lower my voice or deserve it.

M. went to Dunkies to get us coffee, and I took care of the registration. And I went home, tried to stick the sticker on in the rain, and after much trouble finally succeeded. I made it to work but whenever I concentrated on the document I was writing, my eyes felt like they were going to pop out. The only way I could get rid of my headache was to hold my head a certain way, and then I just wanted to sleep.

I took a long lunch, went home, and plopped myself in front of the TV. I put in Gilmore Girls season 5, disc 4. The next episode for me to watch was episode 14, “Say Something,” the one right after Emily and Richard’s wedding, the one with the breakup, the one where she cries. That episode always makes me cry, too, and I feel like a teenager again. You know that feeling when you have a crush on someone, and you just ache for them, and there’s no good reason for it. We say it’s hormones, but that doesn’t make the feeling any less real.

I didn’t want to go back to work, but I knew I had to. And actually, I felt a little better. Maybe a few tears loosened up my sinuses or something. Unfortunately, feeling better didn’t last too long. I did finish up the document I was working on. But I almost begged M. to make me pick up the girls after school. Having to pick up the girls is a great excuse for leaving work early and making up the time the next day.

To be continued, with part 2.

When a friend of mine found out I liked Gilmore Girls, he said, “Really? What’s it about? It’s just a mother and daughter, right?” How does that represent what’s probably the best dramatic series on TV right now? Isn’t that like saying, “The Godfather is just another movie about organized crime”?

Gilmore Girls is indeed about a thirty-something mother, Lorelai, and her 21-year-old daughter, also Lorelai (but everyone calls her Rory). Men name their sons after themselves all the time. So when Lorelai, the mother, when she was only 16, gave birth to a little girl, she decided to name her after herself. A sizeable quantity of Demerol also bore upon that decision.

Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory (Alexis Bledel) live in the tiny Connecticut town of Stars Hollow, along with a cast of characters just wacky enough to fall in love with. Sookie (Melissa McCarthy), Lorelai’s business partner and closest friend, is a master chef who as much a danger in the kitchen as a maestro. Luke (Scott Patterson), is Lorelai’s other best friend, and is also the sexy and grouchy proprietor of the town diner, which keeps Lorelai in coffee and food, but mostly coffee. Of course, now that they’re engaged—long story, over 5 years worth—the coffee is a lot closer. Lane (Keiko Agena) is Rory’s childhood best-friend, who has her own stories told throughout these episodes. That’s not even half the cast, and I’m running out of time.

Creator-producer Amy Sherman-Palladino has woven in Gilmore Girls a deeply complex, character-driven story, full of charm and abundant doses of humour. The show is also known for its numerous Gilmorisms, cultural allusions sprinkled throughout. It’s popular among young adults and teens, but does not talk down to the audience. (Actually, I think kids these days are smarter than they frequently are given credit for.)

Each episode can be appreciated on its own, but you’ll appreciate it a whole lot more after you’ve seen it in context with the other episodes. I actually started watching the show, during its third year, because I saw that Edward Hermann stars in it, as Lorelai’s father, a rich and proper gentleman named Richard Gilmore. I don’t know how it happened. Before I even knew it, I was hooked. Back then, Rory was in her last year at the Chilton School, in the middle of a number of conflicts, about to graduate and close the first book of the story. WB was also rerunning episodes under the title Gilmore Girls: Beginnings, and I was starving for back-episodes. But the earliest episodes I missed, as I did a certain pivotal episode—the dance marathon ep—which contains a major plot point. And when the first DVD’s were released, I was too poor to afford them. Finally, ABC Family began rerunning all the episodes, in order, from the first, and I watched every single night. I have since remedied the situation with the DVD’s, which I have watched over and over again.

The first three seasons of Gilmore Girls represent a unified story arc, as do the episodes starting with season 4. When Amy Sherman-Palladino started a new story in season 4, it was a bold, brave move, or at least it turned out to be. At the time, I too thought season 4 was lackluster. Ratings for the show dropped in that season, and things could’ve turned out like Firefly. But someone at WB was enlightened, and the show is now in its sixth season.

The reason the fourth season seemed lackluster was because the focus had shifted. The story was no longer about Rory getting through Chilton and Lorelai becoming an entrepreneur. Both of these storylines started in the pilot and wrapped up in the final episode of the third season. That last episode has a sense of finality to it. We came back in the fourth season to a brand new story, one about the changing relationship between mother and daughter, a relationship that’s changing because both mother and daughter are themselves changing. In retrospect, for a lackluster season, the fourth has an awful lot of classic episodes.

But what is “classic” in a show like Gilmore Girls? It’s easier to count the episodes that are just so-so, which I can do on my fingers. Out of over 120 episodes, that’s a pretty good record. Much more difficult is it to avoid watching any episodes, even the so-so ones, since the storyline pulls you along from one episode to the next. Gilmore Girls is truly a classic series.

New sixth-season episodes of Gilmore Girls can be seen on the WB network. Reruns of earlier episodes are airing on ABC-Family. Seasons 1-5 are currently available on DVD.

Now, what I’ve really wanted to say since the beginning of this review, I haven’t been able to say. I couldn’t say it because it would have sounded insincere, or gushy, or just plain creepy. But now that I’ve laid the groundwork, hopefully, it won’t seem too extreme: Amy Sherman-Palladino is a storytelling genius.

Whatever happened to Zorro? I think I may have seen him on a spaceship, a Firefly-class cargo vessel called Serenity. And there was even an episode with a swordfight!

Zorro was not just a guy with a cape and a mask. Zorro was the great righter of wrongs, the prototypical American hero, he who fights for the poor and downtrodden, those too weak to fight for themselves, against those who have power and aren’t afraid to abuse it.

Firefly is both a space opera and a western, and it has a spiritual side, too. And it includes the essences of our favorite heroes, from the A-Team to Zorro and everyone inbetween. Originally marketed as a sci-fi comedy, Firefly does have some funny moments, but really it is a serial drama in the spirit of Babylon 5, with a deep, engaging, complex storyline and a whole heck of a lot of character.

It tells the story of nine people trying to live their lives, just trying to make ends meet, trying to do the right thing and stay out of trouble in the process. This is one of those few series in which it is difficult to pick the best episodes, because every one is a classic.

To get the most from the story, watch the episodes in the correct story order, which unfortunately was not the order in which the episodes were originally aired. (Also note that the Firefly DVD set includes all 14 episodes, not just the 12 that made it to TV.)

Despite its short run and premature cancellation, Joss Whedon created in Firefly the very definition of enthralling and engrossing. Firefly was one of the most innovative series of 2002, for its writing, its cinematography, its soundtrack, even its vibrant and diverse setting that crosses cultural boundaries.

A major story throughout Firefly is that of River, a 17-year-old girl involunarily subjected to invasive brain surgery by an autocratic government, leaving her emotionally disturbed yet with mental powers unknown to Serenity’s crew. The 2005 movie Serenity, recently released on DVD, continues her story.

In Serenity, River faces her new powers and seeks the cause of her dimentia. In the process, the Serenity crew must face the most horrifying supervillian yet.

Serenity does not capture all the charm of the original series. It’s primarily a scifi-action thriller, with so much ongoing intensity, there’s not enough time to take a breath and appreciate the character interactions. But there is enough depth there to make rewatching Serenity worthwhile, especially in the light of the Firefly episodes.

At a few points, the plot did become a wee bit James Bond. I mean if you actually intended to kill the villian, you should’ve blown his head off. If you didn’t blow his head off, you should not be surprised that as soon as you turn your back, he’s on you like a reaver.

It’s also a little unclear who the real hero of Serenity is, but I guess the story is strong enough to support two heroes.

Already cult classics, Firefly and Serenity have enough in them to appeal to a diverse audience.

A comic book called Serenity, currently in print, bridges the gap in story from Firefly (the series) to Serenity (the movie).

The Sci-Fi Channel will be running an all-day marathon of the first 12 Firefly episodes in the correct story order. It’s on Friday, January 6, 2006, at 8 A.M. See http://www.scifi.com/firefly/ for more information.

BTW, Here’s the Serenity trailer: