The Week The CBC Went

THAT TITLE DOESN'T necessarily track for the content of this post, but the hell with it. I'm jet lagged and pun-dry.

In the battle of the CBC newbies, it's status quo.

Being Erica on Monday did 632 000 viewers, down a little from the week before but still up from the premiere. What's more promising is that just under half of those viewers are in the magic 18-49 demo. Sophie had a better-than-season average night at 385 000 just before it, which means that Erica builds substantially on its lead in. Sophie also lost a big chunk of viewers from its lead in, Little Mosque. The aging sitcom posted 717 000 viewers Monday -- and 18-49's were less than 30% of that audience.

It will be interesting to see what happens when Mosque returns in the fall. For the third straight year, they've chucked their creative team and will be returning with all new writers -- and if the rumors hold true -- shy a couple of cast members. Hope they don't lose the few who can sell a joke. Although selling the joke doesn't seem to be Mosque's focus anymore.

Moving to Tuesday, Wild Roses is mired in the mud at 467 000 viewers. But the really dismal thing is that fewer than 75 000 of those viewers were 18-49. Maybe grey hairs are the only one who get all the "Shakesperean themes." Mercer posted 877 000, and 22 Minutes did 580 000 just before Roses.

But let's keep this in perspective. The Week The Women Went grabbed 819 000 (a little over 25% 18-49) and Fifth Estate drew 699 000. (less than 15% were 18-49; Michel Arpin is 102.)

Razzie!

I CAN'T EVEN imagine what to say about Benjamin Button's 13 Oscar nominations. My friend Jordan Kawchuk is doing the Lord's work.

More importantly, several weeks ago, just before Christmas -- I had the good fortune to spend an evening conversing and tippling with the delightful Doug Taylor, Montreal based screenwriter of some renown. Doug told stories of his time working on a picture with Uwe Boll, the infamous Uwe Boll, Director and Critical Pugilist.

Doug's very smart and self-effacing, and of course to a bunch of writers, sitting around talking about the hash made of a script with low ambition to begin with is great sport. Nobody understands why things go bad, but they know there are words, and they love to blame the writer -- even when it's not the writer's fault. The only thing to do is belly up and drink deep from the cup of the suck, when it comes. You learn way more from the suck, anyway. God knows you end up with better stories.

At the time, Doug mused about the upcoming Razzie nominations, and speculated about what they might contain. See, apparently Mr. Boll's other movies have all received "worst screenplay" nominations. And Doug couldn't figure out whether it would be better or worse not to get one. To be passed over -- would that be the greater pain? And if you do get nominated, do you show up to collect the Razzie?

I'm delighted to report that Doug gets to work through those issues for real. Yesterday, he got the nod!

The nominees for Worst Screenplay 2008 are:

Disaster Movie

and

Meet The Spartans

Both Written By Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer

---

The Happening

Written By M. Night Shyamalan

---

The Hottie And The Nottie

Written By Heidi Ferrer

---

In The Name Of The King:
A Dungeon Siege Tale

Screenplay By Doug Taylor

---

The Love Guru

Written By Mike Myers & Graham Gordy

Wow. That is some esteeemed competition. And come on, Canada! TWO of the FIVE "worst" screenplays are Canadian! Yeah! YEAH! Let's celebrate! No sense handwringing and gnashing teeth about the nation's Oscar shutout! Get behind Doug! I think he can go all the way!

Good luck, Doug. Hold that head high and watch out for Uwe's stray right. A nation turns its lonely eyes to Uwe.

More details on the Razzies here.

My Online Ubiquity is Infamous

AND MAYBE IF I read books instead of wrote and watched TV alla time, I'd know what half those words mean.

(That's the corollary dodge of the TV writer; intellectual snobs in Canada pretend not to like TV, and writers pretend not to be smartypants.)

La Doyle picks up the Michel Arpin baton today in the Globe. And he manages to work in another dig at my ex-show, which I'm gonna be giggling about all the way onto the plane from Vancouver.

To track how this all started, click here.

To the battlements, citoyens.

Now, to be charitable, it's possible to speculate that Arpin was, ah, pulling the reporter's leg. Being a wag. Just goofing around. That's implausible, I think. Me, I've see Arpin in action at CRTC hearings. All pursed lips and bristling skepticism, I saw him treat what he calls "the unions" with the air of an impatient parent hearing out the teenagers on the some newfangled trend in music or technology.

Besides, a lack of interest in television, specifically what Arpin calls "televised fiction" is the proudest boast of the Canadian intellectual snob.

And it's a curiously Canadian boast. In Canada, declaring ignorance of television, and, in some cases, pointedly declining even to own a TV set, marks the speaker as a serious person. It is also bizarrely old-fashioned, in a crackpot kind of way. A considerable number of people who consider themselves thoughtful and no-nonsense will declare that they watch only the news on TV or, perhaps, the occasional documentary. As if, you know, to be cultured is to be certain that most television shows rot the brain and are best ignored.

It's the way it is with culture snobs. But for a vice-chairman of the CRTC to take this position is outlandish.

Call Girls, Head Cases, and Liars

MY DELIGHTFULLY MOROSE compatriot Rob Sheridan has pronounced United States of Tara (TMN/Movie Central, Monday nights, Showtime in the USA) "excruciating." He's called me long distance in Vancouver, and even changed his Facebook status message to taunt my lack of taste. Which only goes to prove, of course, that taste is subjective, and that someone else should please, please, please hire Rob to write some more comedy. Apparently, this is how it gets if people like us aren't working at least 80 hours a week.

Really, the next step is cutting, people.

Anyway, today I want to talk about three shows, one returning, and two new. Each, I think, offers some interesting writing and story lessons for the television form. Besides Tara, I'd like to talk Secret Diary of a Call Girl and the pilot to FOX's Lie To Me -- which has the unenviable task of premiering against the return of LOST. (Set those PVR's, people -- Lie To Me is worth a look.)

Let's start with Tara. Okay, yes, if you hate Diablo Cody, you might have a problem here. The dialogue's not as stylized as that movie, but if you hated Juno, I don't see this series turning you around. The other thing that's difficult about the premiere is that they establish that Tara has three 'alters' but you don't meet the third, and arguably the most entertaining one -- until the second episode.

The pitch and press materials for this show were just so weird that I decided before I ever wrote about it, I was going to break out the only focus group I have personal access to. So it was that I slipped the preview disc into the DVD on Christmas night and watched it with my family. The group includes: Mother figure, late sixties. Likes The Closer and The Sopranos, also Brothers & Sisters. Father Figure, 70. Likes 24, Sopranos, and Brothers & Sisters. Hates Bad language. Sister Figure, 30's -- eclectic taste, urban thirtysomething demo, likes probably what you'd expect from that demo, only minus most reality, and probably a little hipper than the norm.

Father figure shifted uncomfortably through the first ep. But he did not fall asleep, which is a good sign. So far so good. At the end of episode one, everyone wanted to keep going through episode two.

In the pilot of Tara, we meet two of Tara's "alters." T is sexually aggressive and 16, and Buck is a beer swilling, male Vietnam vet. We get a sense of the rules of the world -- the emergence of the 'alters' is triggered by some stress that Tara can't handle on her own. In the Pilot, this turns out to be the discovery that her daughter is sexually active, and later, seeing her daughter slightly manhandled and roughed up by her dickhead boyfriend.

What I liked about this pilot was the sense of joining a family treating something that's clearly outrageous as normal. They teach you in comedy that there are two ways to make a comedy -- make a big deal out of a little thing, or treat something completely crazy as utterly normal. Tara definitely takes from the latter stream.

And because there's this thing at the centre of the drama that's so out there and crazy (Mom has multiple personalties!) and no one in the drama treats it as surprising, it immediately establishes a world whose contours and history hint at a much longer continuity. You're playing catchup in the pilot for Tara for the entire episode. From John Corbett's world-weary husband to the understated performances of the two kids, the utter lack of surprise everyone has with the emergence of the personalities completely rejigs your sense of 'normal.'

In my case, what that meant is that rather than focusing on the freakshow, I paid way more attention to the family supporting characters. The teenage daughter gets some scabrous, Juno-like lines, and they're not afraid to flirt with making her unlikable. And the son is quirky, and clearly smart, and clearly gay. And the world weary Corbett, and his elucidation of the rules, gives you the essential info early: they've been dealing with this for a long, long time. This is 'normal' for them.

I found that compelling, and it drew me in because it was surprising. A show where the mom had multiple personalities and it was an utter clusterfuck all the time would actually have been a lot less interesting.

The plot mechanics, because of the personality stuff, is by necessity, thin. Basically Tara discovers that her daughter got a morning after pill, that triggers the emergence of the teenage personality, that runs its course. Next day, Mom drives something to school for daughter and sees her roughed up by same BF, which triggers 2nd personality, Buck. There's a bit of drama around will Buck go to the recital. Eventually he does, and daughter is a little mortified, but moreso when Buck kicks boyfriend's ass in the parking lot.

Basically that's it.

Along the way there's a couple of other devices that are employed that I found interesting. First, just in case you are freaked out and skeptical and thinking this is too crazy -- Rosemarie DeWitt shows up as Tara's sister -- who proceeds to voice all your doubts about the condition, and the life as Tara's family lives it. It's kind of like a valve.

The second thing is a built in little joke...the "Muffins of Triumph" that the son bakes for his sister before her dance recital. Multiple references to this by all the characters involved -- a little family tradition and in joke that's never explained -- gives the family a sort of 'lived in' feel. They have traditions that go beyond managing their crazy mother. Nice touch.

Having worked hard to tell you that the family of the Mom with Dissociative Personality Disorder is fine with it, they pull the rug out from under that for Ep.2. The son doesn't want Mom to deal with the teacher that's tormenting him. The Daughter is mortified in the aftermath of her mom beating up her boyfriend. It all comes to a head when the heretofore unseen third personality emerges -- Alice, who is the 50's housewife from hell. She has a parent-teacher interview scene that's electric. And at a family dinner out that goes horribly wrong, the daughter winds up getting a job at an Applebee's like place, with manager Nate Corddry, whose creepy sad manager is one of the best things in Ep. 2, 3, and 4 of the show.

I've met and interacted with a lot of weird families in my time. Families with kids with special needs. Families where a sibling died, or is in jail. Blended families, families with gay offspring who are accepted, and who aren't. After a while you realize that, as the book goes, All Families are Psychotic. The neat trick that United States of Tara does is show you the accepting and loving part of the family -- the accomodations made and acceptance offered, before it starts to ladle out the dysfunction.

Secret Diary of a Call Girl is based on the diaries of Belle Du Jour, a former London Call Girl. The first season of the show followed Billie Piper's Belle through the predictable series of problems a call girl might face: how do you keep your private life private? What does it do to your friends? What happens when a friend finds out? And also, the predictable parade of titillation -- threesomes, BDSM, the overnight client, etc, etc.

It was diverting watching, and well made, and Billie Piper's peformance was grand, but somehow the whole thing seemed...less...than it should be.

The 2nd season is much, much stronger for amping up the personal, serialized stake: Belle meets a guy and starts to date him and like him. Immediately, all the questions are messier. And the titillating reason you may have started watching the show is supplanted by a character in an impossible situation. They sucked you in on the sex, but they keep you with the drama. I'm not even sure I saw all of Season One's ep. But I can't wait to see more of season 2.


Finally, there's Lie To Me. This is a very, very slick pilot. It explains and sets the rules of the world really well, and teases you about Tim Roth's character. The man seems to have some sort of code about when and how he'll intervene and tell people when the people are lying.

How did that code develop? Why? All that's left for later eps. It's probably the most effective character intro since Dr. House.

Take note of the secondary characters, too: the perky and delightful second banana who's like Cuddy and Wilson and Cameron all in one... the 'new girl' who lets you get out most of the premise exposition, and the 1234th execution of the lovable nerd.

None of these characters, or the structure of the show is really groundbreaking. It's hipper than your average CBS drama, but it's definitely mainstream, and network-y in its outlook. The flash, such as it is, comes from taking a new wine in old bottles premise and taking the variation and executing it with such absolute brio that you have to like it. With this show, if it catches on, you could argue that the FOX drama is as identifiable as the CBS brand, or indeed, any of the cable networks -- who took the branding of their drama franchises to a new high over the last few years.

I can't really talk more about what else I liked about the show without revealing some packaging elements that you really need to see cold. But trust me when I say that this show makes its argument forcefully. The only question I have is what the legs might be. But then again, smart writers in a room -- I'm sure I just don't see it yet because I don't see it. Everything else about this show has winner written all over it. Please watch. Please. I could use another good network drama to watch.

Now...back to writing out beats. And later, a gathering of Vancouver's most dangerous screenwriters. Mmmm.

Tasty.

Dix on LOST and the Game Changer

WELL WHERE WERE WE?

I'm still in Vancouver, still in a hotel room, still socked in by fog. Might go for a walk this afternoon, but so far I've been taking advantage of my east-coast time orientation to beetle away at new work. New script, new show, new challenge as a freelancer -- it's these kinds of developments that fire up the imagination and make this job worth doing.

Dix has got another one at his digs today... he's late to the party on LOST, but nicely encapsulates why this show -- which returns tonight -- is one that I just can't seem to quit, though I've come close.

The show has balls. And they proved it at the end of Season 3 by messing with their tried and true formula...that is, taking their episode story model of intercutting the adventures of the survivors on the island with a 'flashback' story (usually focusing on one of the primary island survivors), and bringing a game changer to the table by introducing 'flash forwards' to a time of life after the island for six of the survivors.

I would've loved to have been in the writers room when the story department came up with that one.


Now anyone who follows the show more closely than I might inform me that this was always part of the series gameplan...but I'd call bullshit. If that had been on all the writers minds right off the top, there's no no NO way they would've held off using flash forwards for nearly three entire seasons...66 episodes....no friggin' way.

Because its too cool a move. It'd take just way much discipline and dedication not to play that card whenever you felt the show might be growing a little repetitive or stale or what have you...(like middle of Season 2 or beginning of Season 3).

No I say they were well into it all, probably end of Season 2, and spinning and riffing and bickering and bantering and perhaps someone in the room said: "So, does anyone get off the island or not?"...and someone else said, "Of course some of them do." And someone else said, "Well who? And what would that be like for them?" And then someone else jumped up and exclaimed, "What if we showed life after the island for some of our characters, but treated as if it was a flashback, until we revealed it was actually the future...and...and...

Whoa.

It's a thrilling thing when a show hits some shoals and then manages to roar back. And based on most of Season 4, and the fact that their endgame is now in sight, has got to revitalize that team.

Yet another thing the small-minded of the internet brigade will never understand -- a top story room plus the occasional curve ball (helloooo, drunk driving cast!) makes writing a series like this a high wire act that's as addictive as...well, whatever your personal poison might be.

I have too long a list to mention here.

Welcome back, LOST. Ben, you're my bestest creepiest friend ever.

Now, what's next?

WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV

Something's Happening Here

FREEZING FOG. That's the weather report for Vancouver today. I've never seen that forecast before.

My hotel room is socked in. Looking down Burrard or Robson I can barely see fifty feet. Yet I'm guessing that the Hope burning off the TV in my hotel room can burn it off.

Two million on the Mall, millions more watching elsewhere. E Pluribus Unum. Finally. Finally. Finally.

May he bind up our wounds.

NO More Days

DON'T LET THE White House door hit your ass on the way out, Georgie.

I think I'm gonna watch W. in my hotel room before I go to bed. What the hell.

One More Thing

BE SURE IF you can to catch the season premiere of Secret Diary of a Call Girl and especially the premiere of Diablo Cody's United States of Tara -- which really is as good as everyone is saying it is. (I've seen the first four eps.)

I think both have built in valuable lessons about story and character that I'll be writing about later.

Both shows premiere in Canada tonight on TMN/Movie Central. (Showtime in the USA)




oh my GOD it's early.

ZOS: The One to Beat in '09

THE INTERVIEW SITS partially transcribed. But sadly it seems that my paid job as a writer has overwhelmed and subsumed my unpaid job as a Blogger.

But I'd be remiss if I let tonight go by without pointing you to ZOS, (Zone of Separation,) the Canadian-made limited series about a group of UN Peacekeepers trying to keep the two sides apart in a fictional town in the Balkans.

ZOS is surprising in so many ways. It goes for the tough scenes, with unbearable tension...tension that some people find difficult to watch. Yet it's also cut through with sophisticated, gallows humor. For anyone looking for an English Canadian window on the world, and an answer to the question, "what exactly is that Canadian perspective?" This is it. You want to contrast that with the American view? Well somewhere, there's a truly excellent thesis waiting to be written comparing ZOS to Generation Kill.

American troops do not serve in UN peacekeeping roles, for the most part. Canada, for the small size of its military, rotates between peacekeeping roles like in Bosnia and Cyprus, and the war footing in Afghanistan. ZOS is also about the futility of military power, and the no-win of trying to keep the peace in a place where nobody particularly wants peace. But it's also a sophisticated character study of the different players in the town, and in the Forces thrown in with them. Characters who start out hated, become sympathetic. Characters who are thuggish have remarkable conversions. Surprise and shock lurk around each juncture. And then there's Speedo Boy.

By the third episode of ZOS, as a viewer you are juggling about eight or nine storylines -- but with ease. It's involving and absorbing and funny and terrible and profound and wonderful. And very human.

During the interview last week, I joked that ZOS was the best Canadian series of the year, and Malcom MacCrury and Enrico Colatoni took a decent, Canadian beat before reminding me that it was, in fact, only January. No matter. Come time for Geminis and other Kudos, I'm pretty sure ZOS will stand above them all.

Hopefully I'll get that feature and focus piece done for next week. For now, you can sup on the truly excellent multi-part interview that Alex Epstein did with Co-creator and showrunner Malcolm MacCrury. And I'd also encourage you to check out Diane's article on the same show.

And if you're plum tired of reading, the delightful Judith Klassen has her Judecast of the entire fandango available to you, you lucky so and so. (What's interesting about Jude's podcast is that it's on-set, which means it's of a 2007 vintage, as opposed to most of the press interviews which were done in January 2009.)

Oh...and if you watch, check out my man Jim Codrington, who turns in a performance that's winning, and light years away from his work on THE BORDER!

As for me, I'll let you know how many people on Air Canada are taking advantage of the free preview. I'm off to Vancouver for a few days, so blogging might be erratic. Between work and the Tuesday night Inaugural euphoria, I imagine I'm going to be rather occupado.

Be well. Oh, and if you do watch ZOS and can't resist the nifty STARS song that serves as the show's theme -- the version of "Celebration Guns" they use is the remix from Do You Trust Your Friends? NOT the album version from Set Yourself on Fire.

Now you know.

ZoS premieres Monday Jan 19 @ 9pm PT on Movie Central - 10pm ET on TMN

The Keeper

AN INTERESTING article by Edward Wyatt in the NY Times Arts & Leisure section profiles a guy who -- depending on your perspective -- has one of the coolest jobs in TV, or one with the most potential for wackness.

Meet the guy who keeps everything straight on LOST, Gregg Nations:

A co-producer and the show’s longtime script coordinator, Mr. Nations has become the keeper of what has been found on “Lost,” charged with tracking everything that has happened and will happen to the characters on and off the island, in addition to charting the many mysterious characteristics of the island itself.

While most television series maintain a so-called bible — a guide to characters and plotlines that are developed by the creators but revealed over multiple seasons — few if any shows have twists and turns as byzantine as those on “Lost.”

And unlike many jobs, which get easier as the material becomes more familiar, this one has become exponentially more complicated and challenging with each new episode. That will be particularly true this season, when the island itself starts moving through time as the people who seem to be the guardians of its secrets try to protect it from a shadowy conspirator who could have darker uses for its powers.

Enter Mr. Nations, who has now compiled an archive that, were he ever to print it out, might — as he put it in an interview at the “Lost” production offices on Disney’s Burbank studio lot — give “War and Peace” a run for its money.

Just how long the entire document is he does not know; he has never printed it out in full, in part because he and his secretive bosses do not want copies falling into the wrong hands. But he has multiple electronic copies, which he keeps in undisclosed locations.

Gimme a 'C!' Gimme an 'R!' Gimme a 'T!' Gimme a...aw forget it.

FURTHER TO THE last week or so of Arpin posts... I was prodded this weekend by a former colleague at 299 Queen Street West that we've seen this sort of thing before.

Time was, when you'd walk into the CHUM building (as it then was,) you'd make your way up to the second floor, past the smoking patio and the edit bays, and you'd come to a junction. Straight ahead you'd go toward a boardroom and Moses' office, or take a stairway up to the third floor publicity area. And if you'd hang a left you'd hit the bathrooms.

Opposite those bathrooms was a very Moses touch: a wall with a bunch of stark quotes about the medium of television. Some writ large, some small, a cacophony of typography and thought about the medium we toil in.

It was a fitting monument to ponder as you made your way to...read a magazine, say.

Well, Moses' office is now the open area for Etalk, and there's barely an inch of the building and the vibe at 299 Queen Street that CTV hasn't changed. But one of the things that always puzzled me, and one of the things that I think is most emblematic of the takeover of those properties by CTV, is what happened to the wall.

Did they tear it down?

Nope.

They just painted over it. It's now...white. Totally white. Where once there was thought and an ongoing argument about the merits of the medium, there's now...a big white wall. I fear the quotes could have stimulated an idea of how to get broadcasting out of its doldrum state long before the white wall could. But maybe that's just me.

Anyway -- amidst the many quotes, here's the relevant one for the last week. You'll like this:

"I don't own a television"
- John Meisel, CRTC Chairman, 1979-1983.

Enjoy your Sunday.