by Nell Scovell
The audience went nuts at the meta version of “and then I woke up.” It’s not often that you have eight seasons to set up a punchline.
Mark and Mark and Bob B. cowrote the finale, which was nominated for an Emmy. I had one joke in that episode. During the opening scene at a town meeting, a local proudly states: “We made the flying squirrel the town bird.”
Scott Buck, me, Bob Bendetson, in the Newhart offices.
Courtesy of the author. Newhart © 1989 Twentieth Century Fox Television. All rights reserved
On the evening of the finale, about an hour before the audience arrived, I slipped onto our soundstage. The crew was at dinner so I had the set to myself. I wanted to stand in the old Bob Newhart Show bedroom set that had been taken out of storage and reconstructed. It was the strangest feeling to be inside a room that I’d watched on TV as a kid. I ran a finger over the sophisticated bookshelf behind the headboard. I felt like Alice through the Looking Glass.
For all the ups and downs, I had survived the season and now had a “Written by” credit on five TV episodes. I was part of Newhart history—although I still hadn’t formally met the star. Countless times, I’d stood on set watching the legend rehearse and if he happened to look in my direction, I’d avert my eyes. If I was at the craft services table and he approached to grab a handful of popcorn, I’d scoot away. He played the most mild-mannered characters on TV and yet, for some reason, I was terrified of him.
After a few minutes in the bedroom set, I decided to head to dinner. I walked across the stage, opened the door and was startled to find myself face-to-face with the show’s star. There was no avoiding him, nowhere to scoot. There was only one thing for me to say.
“Hi, Bob.”
Amazingly, he responded, “Hi, Nell.”
He stepped inside and the heavy stage door shut behind him. I paused outside, blinking my eyes to adjust to the light. Our entire exchange had consisted of four words, but it felt deeply meaningful. In the joke about the four stages of a career, the first stage asks the question: Who is Nell Scovell?
Now I had an answer: Nell Scovell was a TV writer who just played the “Hi Bob” game—pro version.
Stage Two
Get Me Nell Scovell!
Chapter 6
The Simpsons: Fugu Me!
INT. DOCTOR’S OFFICE
THE DOCTOR ADDRESSES HOMER SIMPSON, WHO HAS JUST LEARNED THAT HE ATE POISONED BLOWFISH.
DOCTOR
You have twenty-four hours to live Mr. Simpson.
HOMER
(UPSET) Twenty-four hours?!
DOCTOR
Well, twenty-two. I’m sorry I kept you waiting so long.
“One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish,
Blue Fish” First Draft
WHERE WERE YOU ON THE NIGHT OF SUNDAY, January 14, 1990? I was alone in my West Hollywood apartment watching a cartoon on TV. Normally this would not be memorable, but as the credits began to roll, I did something I’d never done before and have never done again: I called my agent at home.
“Gavin, it’s Nell. (pause) Your client. I want to write for The Simpsons.”
Now a cultural institution, The Simpsons was not universally embraced when it debuted. Many dismissed the yellow family as garish and too mean, which was exactly why I liked them. In an early episode, “There’s No Disgrace Like Home,” the Simpsons try family counseling and are handed foam bats to hit each other with and work out anger issues. After a few swings, Homer asks, “Wouldn’t these bats work better if we took the foam off?” The counseling session ends with all five members of the family sitting in chairs that allow them to give each other electric shocks. The shocks go on and on until in the background, the city lights dim.
The characters, drawn by cartoonist Matt Groening, first appeared as interstitials on The Tracey Ullman Show. Sam Simon and James L. (Jim) Brooks helped develop and expand the shorts. FOX had only been in existence for a few years, so when Jim pitched the series, he had personally launched more hit comedies than the entire network.
Months earlier, I’d interviewed with Jim’s production company for a job on Tracey Ullman. The meeting went great. Or so I thought. They didn’t offer me a job. But when my agent pitched me to write a freelance episode for The Simpsons, they remembered my name. Al Jean and Mike Reiss, who’d helped me at Shandling, worked on the show and vouched for me. Since not that many writers were clamoring to work on some weird-ass cartoon, The Simpsons offered me a script assignment. We set a date for me to come to the office and pitch story ideas.
“Where do you get your ideas?” is a question that baffles me. It’s like asking, “How do you grow your hair?” The answer is basically the same: It just sort of happens. Things come out of your head.
Developing an idea into a script can seem equally mysterious, but my Coach boss Barry Kemp once boiled the complicated process down to twelve words. “Writing,” Barry said, “is not an act of creation, it’s an act of choice.”
An episode, article, or book doesn’t flow out of a pen or keyboard fully formed. Each work is built concept by concept, beat by beat, word by word. It’s a process of discovery. You head down a path which leads to another and another and another until you hit a dead end. Then you backtrack to where you made a wrong turn and look for a better way through.
When I write, I feel like an optometrist, constantly flipping between lenses and asking, “Is this better? Is this?” Slowly, the work comes into focus. Here’s how choices, big and small, add up to an episode using my Simpsons as a case study.
The Story Pitch
A story pitch sets up a situation—the “sit” in sitcom—and gives a sense of how the story might play out. It’s “What if?” with a hint of “What comes next?” Most sitcom stories break down to three basic story beats:
Character has a problem. (e.g., Brad has two dates for the prom.)
Character tries to solve the problem but things get worse. (e.g., Brad tries to keep both dates happy by running between the two, until they bust him.)
The problem gets resolved in a surprising way. (e.g., The two dates fall in love. As they ditch Brad, he calls out, “Meg! Jenny! . . . At least, let me watch.” Canned laughter—the “com” in sitcom.)
At a party: (left to right) Me, Sam Simon, then-wife Jennifer Tilly, Mike Reiss, Denise Reiss
Courtesy of the author
The Simpsons employs about twenty-eight writers now, but when I walked into Sam Simon’s office in the spring of 1990, there were fewer than ten. I recognized Al and Mike, and was introduced to Jon Vitti, Wally Wolodarsky, Jay Kogen, and George Meyer. Sam Simon sat behind a desk while the rest sunk into sofas. I sat on a chair rolled in from the outer office. The all-male room was welcoming but also intimidating.
“So,” Sam asked. “What’ve you got?”
Many writers, especially those with backgrounds in standup, like to pitch off-the-cuff. I prefer to write my pitches down on a yellow pad and then read them as quickly as possible. It’s less spontaneous but there are two upsides: (1) reading means I don’t have to make eye contact with anyone; and (2) twenty-six years later, I still know exactly what I pitched.
I took a deep breath . . . it was the last one I took until I walked out of the room.
Pitch #1: Bart is at the free-throw line. There’s one second left in the city-wide basketball game. Bart’s team is behind by a single point. Bart makes a deal with God: If He helps Bart sink these two foul shots, Bart will never be mean to his sister Lisa again. Bart sinks the two. His team wins. He’s the hero!
Bart arrives home exuberant and immediately asks Lisa if her face hurts. “No. Why?” she replies. Bart starts the punch line, “Because, it’s k—” Then he remembers his vow “. . . it’s kinda red on your cheeks, you might have a rash.” Lisa rushes to the mirror to see. Bart notices a kick-me sign on her back. He lines up . . . then remembers his vow. Lisa noticing her shoelace is untied bends over to tie it and coupled with the sign this is too much for Bart. He runs to Homer for
advice: “If you make a deal with someone do you have to keep your end of the bargain?” “Yes,” says Homer, “but only until the check clears.” “What if the deal is with God?” Bart asks. “You got a problem there,” says Homer. “Since God is all seeing, it’s hard to skip town.”
Bart is depressed. What good is being a basketball hero if he can’t tease his little sister? Life has no meaning as he realizes that tormenting her was his greatest pleasure. The episode ends at the state championships with Bart’s team down by a point and one second on the clock, Bart is back on the free-throw line. “Come on, Bart, do it again!” his teammates shout. Bart gets an idea. “God, let’s say I throw an air ball and we’ll call it even, okay?” Bart tosses an air ball. The team turns on him. Bart whispers to God: “One more to forget the whole incident.” Bart throws another air ball. His team loses. Everyone hates Bart who goes home happy and teases Lisa.
Pitch #2: It’s Lisa’s birthday and she gets to choose the restaurant. She wants sushi. The family goes to Frank’s Raw Fish Emporium. Bart orders a burger. Homer says, “You don’t go to a Japanese restaurant and order a burger.” To waitress, “I’ll have the chicken platter.” Marge tries to get Homer to try the sea eel, he refuses. “Well, how about a little blowfish, it’s a delicacy.” He tries it. Just then the sushi chef comes in yelling “Do not eat the blowfish! It is a poisonous delicacy!” They all look at Homer. What do they do now? Chef says to get to a hospital immediately. “In that case” says Marge “we better get the check.” The restaurant says, “There’s no charge . . . for the blowfish.” BUT the family will have to pay for the rest of the meal. The family feels bad for Homer but worse for Lisa. After all, this has ruined her birthday.
Emergency room at hospital has very long line. Intern comes by to say they can’t treat blowfish poisoning. Homer’s down to his last 24 hours and has to figure out what to do before he dies—“Try to have fun, it’s Lisa’s birthday!”
Phone rings. The restaurant made a terrible mistake. The bill should have been $36 not $42. They can pick up the $6 tomorrow. This gives Homer a reason to live. He decides to fight the poison, turns colors, retches, but manages to survive.
Fans of the show know that Sam liked pitch #2. For the next hour, the room explored the comedic possibilities of Homer eating fugu and thinking he would die. Someone pitched that as soon as the waiter finds out that a customer has been poisoned, he should tell the chef, “Chef, you have disgraced us! Do the honorable thing.” Then we cut to the chef taking an ornamental sword from the wall and raising it to commit hara-kiri.
Someone else chimed in. “Then the Chef suddenly drops the sword and rushes off while the waiter shouts after him, ‘Hey, come back here! Do the honorable thing! Do the honorable thing!’ ”
My notes don’t say who pitched this joke, but if I had to guess, I’d attribute it to George Meyer, who once told me that he thought the funniest thing in the world was a frustrated guy shaking his fist at the sky. I can picture the waiter doing that here.
Deconstructing who contributed what to a script can get messy. Jokes are often joint efforts and it’s hard to say who deserves credit. The person who pitched the concept? Who honed the precise wording? Who added the additional kicker at the end? There’s a story of a TV writer, who while on set, watched a line get a big laugh and then whispered to the person next to him, “I helped on the path to that joke.”
It sounds pathetic but every TV writer has thought the same thing.
Once the room landed on the general storyline, we moved on to “what comes next?”
“What if Homer says, ‘I guess I’ll just lie down and die,’ ” someone pitched. But Marge has other plans. “Homer, you have twenty-four hours. Do all the things you wanted to do. Let’s go!” Marge says.
Homer doesn’t move. “I’m thinking,” he says, channeling Jack Benny’s famous response to “Your money or your life.”
We laughed at the idea of keeping Homer on the couch for the entire episode, but that seemed one-note. We jumped ahead and discussed what perspective Homer could gain from a near-death experience.
“Maybe he learns, ‘I’m a one-dimensional, shallow man,’ ” someone suggested.
“Or maybe he becomes determined to live life to the fullest . . . only to discover that he has no thoughts, no interests, and no desires,” Sam said. “His last twenty-four hours on earth are about desperately trying to find meaning in his life . . . right before it ends.”
This suggestion led us down a path of Homer looking for a hobby. Someone pitched Homer going over to Ned Flanders house.
“I know Flanders is the neighbor,” I interjected, “but I’m a little unclear on his character.”
It was so early in the series that Flanders had only appeared a few times.
“Flanders is the All-American nice guy,” someone explained. “Very encouraging. So, of course, Homer is bitter toward him.”
Sam threw out the idea that Homer recovers from the blowfish poisoning at the end of the first act and then joins a theater group that’s putting on Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. We all laughed. Mike Reiss suggested that Homer shows up to audition for the part of “Stanley” and the director exclaims, “Normally I don’t like it when someone dresses in character, but you are a perfect slob.” (I’m not certain this was Mike’s pitch, but it sure sounds like him.)
The third act would begin with Homer peering out from behind the curtain.
“Ooh, a full house,” he says. “Twenty-five people!”
At the afterparty, the cast gathers to read the review. In a twist, critics love the production, calling it “a tidy hour and a half in the theater.”
Homer tears up. “And to think I almost didn’t live to see this.”
Sam loved this idea but something about it didn’t appeal to me. Sam noticed my expression.
“What?” Sam said. “You don’t like the idea of Homer being in a play?”
I really need to work on my poker face.
“It’s fun,” I said. “But if it becomes an episode about community theater, then don’t you miss out on the character exploration raised by the question: If Homer had only twenty-four hours to live, how would he spend it?”
Sam tilted his head in a way that made me think that I shouldn’t have said anything. But the most mportant choice you make for any episode is the story area. All other choices flow from that. Sam said he’d run both options by Jim Brooks and get his thoughts. Once he had a clear direction, they’d bring me back in to flesh out the story.
A couple of days later, Sam called.
“I guess you’re the genius,” he said. “Jim liked your way better.”
Sam didn’t abandon his funny Tennessee Williams notion. In the fourth season, “A Streetcar Named Marge,” written by Jeff Martin, featured Marge joining a community theater’s production of the musical “Oh, Streetcar!” That episode makes every “Best Simpsons” list so maybe I’m not such a genius after all.
Breaking the Story
With the broad strokes of a beginning, middle, and an end, the room can start to place the dots that later connect into a story. Writers often have different strengths: some are better at plot or jokes or visual gags or emotional moments. Using all the voices in a writers’ room allows you to pool strengths. It’s writing as a team sport.
We mapped out a loose structure: Act One would focus on the family going out for sushi and end with Homer being poisoned. Someone pitched a doctor saying, “There’s a test, but ironically it takes twenty-four hours to get the results. I still recommend you take it to protect me.” Another pitch had the doctor asking, “Homer, how’s your eyesight? You should donate your organs . . . except your stomach.”
Act Two would start with Homer making a list of things to do on his last day on earth. We brainstormed possibilities based on Homer’s existing relationships: make peace with Dad, tell off boss, have a beer with the boys, listen to Lisa play her sax, teach Bart how to shave. Homer adds, “Be i
ntamit with Marge.”
Although it’s never mentioned in dialogue, number eleven on the list is “Plant a tree.” I wrote that into the script as a nod to my grandmother, Frances who liked the quote: “In their life, everyone should plant a tree, write a book and have a child.” (Like Homer, I’m putting off the tree planting until the last possible second.)
Detail from animation
The Simpsons™ and © 1990 written by Nell Scovell. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved
The easiest way to build a story is not to use your imagination, but to simply apply logic. Maggie is a baby, so logically Homer would want to make a videotape for her to watch when she’s older. To do that, he would logically need a camera. If he doesn’t have one, then logically he needs to borrow one from his neighbor. This line of logic led to pitching a scene where Homer goes next door and finds the Flanders family pulling taffy. While saying goodbye, Flanders invites all the Simpsons to a barbecue that weekend. Homer offers to bring the thickest, juiciest T-bone steaks. As soon as the door closes, Homer chuckles, “Joke’s on him. I’ll be dead by then.”
In addition to exploring things Homer would logically want to do in this situation, we discussed things he would need to do. Someone pitched a scene where Homer stops by to check in on his life insurance policy.
“I’m afraid your life insurance has lapsed,” the insurance agent says, peering at the policy. “Oh, sorry! It will lapse tomorrow.”
“Heh heh heh,” says Homer. “How much?”
“Fifteen thousand dollars.”
“Up it to fifteen million.”
“Isn’t that a lot?” says the agent.
“Hey, I feel lucky,” says Homer.
Another scene—pitched by Jim Brooks via Sam—had Homer going to church to seek solace from Reverend Lovejoy. Instead, Rev. Lovejoy comments on how often Homer fell asleep during his sermons.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Simpson, this is probably a little small of me, but I bet right now you’re wishing you’d been a better Christian.”
