The Importance of Knowing Your Franchise

A new 1/2 hour Canadian series, Billable Hours, premiered last night, along with the new season of Trailer Park Boys. I haven't seen them yet, but I will later and let's see if there's something to say.

The other premiere last night was What About Brian? A show that I found odd and off-putting. I have some theories as to why. There's another ep on tonight, so I'll watch that and then see if I can articulate what's so...odd...about Brian.

Last week I was in a room for a series that's plotting out its second season. What amazed me, off the top, was how clearly they knew their characters and franchise -- what stories worked, what it was about, how to complicate the plots, etc.

This show was a comedy. I flip back and forth in my career between comedy and drama. (I meant in the shows I write, but now that I think about it, that phrase could actually just as cleanly refer to the actual state of my career.)

The first lesson I took out of the room was this: how to use coincidence.

One of the notes you're going to get from execs all the time in Canada (maybe everywhere) is isn't that coincidental?

If you go through comedy, you're going to find a lot of coincidence. It's one of the shorthands you simply need to make plots work. And out of the discussions in this room came what I call the coincidence rule: In comedy, coincidence can always kick off a plot. It can sometimes complicate a plot. But it can never provide the solution to a plot.

If you employ coincidence as your solution, you're going to leave the audience unsatisfied -- and it's going to smack of deus ex machina -- which hasn't worked too well since the Greeks leaned on it so heavily back in the day.

The temptation to use coincidence to solve your problem can be strong. Because on first blush, it seems like a great, neat, all items tied in a bow thing. I give you Escape: The Pina Colada Song. Go. Google the lyrics. I'll wait. Now, that seems tied up nice and neat, doesn't it? But really, admit it, deep down in your bones, doesn't it suck? Just a bit? It's glib and trite, isn't it?

To put it another way:

Frasier and Niles can run into their fencing instructor who terrorized them as children in Cafe Nervosa. That's a coincidence, but it's doable. The Fencing instructor can be married to the woman who runs the publishing house where Frasier's trying to get a book published. That's fine. But Niles can't come in at the end of an episode where he's been challenged to a duel and say it's no problem because he just happened to run into their old fencing instructor, and he told Niles what he and Frasier have been doing wrong in their fencing technique all these years, so now Niles has the confidence to win the duel. Or...even better -- the fencing instructor will stand in for him in the duel.

That would suck. But...if the fencing instructor shows up and finds out that Niles' opponent has engaged a second, and the second is the Fencing Instructor's Fencing Instructor -- well...that's not solving the problem, it's a big coincidence -- but it still plays. See? Because the solution is what comes next, and involves Frasier and Niles getting out of the mess they've gotten into.

As I said, this is comedy. I think Drama is a lot less tolerant of coincidence. Even if you pile tons of them on top of each other and pretend like you're making it all a deep allegory. (Yes, Best Picture 2005, I'm looking at you.)

The other thing that I learned in this room is that there's two ways to come up with a plot. Because I'm a drama writer, too -- I tend to try to come up with a workable structure and story and then try to make it funny. That can sometimes work, especially in comedy/drama hybrids.

Far more effective, however, is to try to come up with plots and situations that are inherently funny in and of themselves. Story funny. That way, you're not working hard to hang jokes on a plot -- you're laughing because the situation or dilemna your characters are in is funny even before you come up with dialogue. Again, sounds simple... in practice, sometimes, not so much.

What doing it this way also gives you is it probably makes you aware of mining that which is unique about your franchise. This is a drama example, but I thought the nadir of the post-Aaron Sorkin West Wing era was the episode where "there's a bomb in the White House..." just because I'd seen that plot on E.R., or any other John Wells show. If the plot you're working could graft just as easily into any other show, you're probably going to have to work really hard to make it funny/interesting, and about your characters.

When you're trying to come up with a new show, or even a unique spec idea for an existing show, it really helps to try and come up with the thing that could only happen to your characters, or someone in their specific situation. That is your franchise.

And if you figure that out quickly, you can save a lot of heartache.

Finally, one other thing I learned, or at least heard said very well, last week. This was said at the University class I spoke to by one of my fellow panelists, a successful Canadian animation, children's, and comedy TV writer. On the subject of having your characters change and grow:

"Comedy characters can't grow the same way characters in a drama can..the kind of growth a character on a comedy will go through in five or six years is about the same as one season of Desperate Housewives or Grey's Anatomy."

Like I said, I'm aware of that sentiment, and have had painful meetings where I tried to explain it to people who were hell-bent on killing the comedy by having the character "learn something," but I just think that's a very elegant way to lay it out.