Specing Serially: The Easy Way

BECAUSE I'M SO very fancy, TMN, the pay broadcaster that runs most of the Showtime and HBO product up in my neck of the woods, sometimes sends me screeners of upcoming shows.

So it was this weekend that I screened the first episode of Season 3 of Dexter. I'll write more about the specifics of the show closer to the September 28 premiere date. (The short version is that I liked it a lot and think it really sets an interesting tone for the season.)

But that also lines up nicely for a persistent question that you always get about specs: specifically, in a show like a Dexter or Weeds or The Shield that's serialized quite heavily, how do you do a spec?

It's true that especially among cable shows, there's a great cohesion to individual seasons. Dexter Season 3 is going in a different direction than the two seasons before it, (and not just cause it has Jimmy Smits in it.)

The 13-a year order is a way that you can make this more doable -- it's hard to have a unifying theme over 22 without it being gimmicky (HOUSE got away with it last year with the "Survivor storyline" -- but even now the hints are being dropped that the big estrangement of Wilson and House isn't going to be something that runs a whole season. And it shouldn't. Where's the fun in that?)

But with Dexter, Sopranos, Six Feet Under, the nice thing about returning season after season was that it wasn' t the same old thing. Each season kind of had its own theme to it, separate and apart from the overall thematic area of the entire series.

(I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that the theme running through Dexter is "change." Dexter has always been a fascinating coming-of-age story, and I have great hope for this season precisely because the slam-bang of the last two seasons is now all dealt with, and you're left with what is really juicy: a great character.)

So if you're looking to spec one of these shows, the answer's simple:

Write the first episode of a new season.

That way you can lay out themes that are true to the show, tell cohesive story that satisfies, maybe set up an intriguing cliffhanger at the end of the ep. You can show your mastery of the characters, but pick them up at a fresh point where you're not suffering under the burden of previous storylines.

It allows you to simply kick back and show how well you know the world.

Then all you have to do is be brilliant.

Ay, there's the rub.