The TV Showrunner's Roadmap

by Neil Landau

  In one of my all-time favorite movies, Moonstruck, the answer to the ongoing central question “Why do men cheat on their wives?” is “Because they fear death.” I believe there’s quite a bit of truth in that. The specter of mortality is omnipresent, and so is temptation.

  It’s usually the men who cheat on their wives, but Nurse Jackie (Edie Falco), Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise Parker) on Weeds, and Betty Draper on Mad Men negate that gender bias—for better, for worse.

  The Slow Burn

  Primarily based on the commonly accepted wisdom that opposites attract, this relationship dynamic is all about sustaining the question of “will they or won’t they ever get together?” for as long as possible. These couples tend to clash over almost everything, but there is an undeniable attraction—despite protests to the contrary. “Methinks the lady [or man] doth protest too much” usually applies.

  On Castle, best-selling mystery author Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) is initially foisted upon hardboiled homicide Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) to help solve a copycat murder case (based on one of his novels). At first, she’s infuriated to have a writer shadowing her on the job—and attempts to dump him. But she gradually succumbs to his charms, especially when he breaks through his writer’s block and decides to base his new novel’s heroine on her. And he just may be able to help her solve the unsolved murder of her mother.

  Examples of slow burn relationships: Cheers (overeducated barmaid and brutish, handsome saloon owner); The X-Files (believer and skeptic); Moonlighting (uptown former fashion model and enterprising smartass); Who’s the Boss? (career woman and her housekeeper/manny); The Big Bang Theory (socially awkward physicist and sexy blonde neighbor); Bones (slick, cheeky FBI agent and uptight forensic anthropologist). For Cheers and Moonlighting, keeping the love interests apart was a huge draw for the audience, and getting them together was detrimental to the future of the series; in the case of Moonlighting, the ratings dropped precipitously. In the case of Cheers, persnickety Diane Chambers (Shelley Long) was out, and new slow burn love interest, the tougher ball-busting manager, Rebecca Howe (Kirstie Alley), was in—and the ratings climbed accordingly.

  Conversely, on New Girl, creator/showrunner Liz Meriwether decided to speed up the pace of Jess (Zooey Deschanel) and Nick’s (Jake Johnson) budding romance. To Meriwether: “It felt like holding it off way longer would have been playing with the audience. It felt organic and the right time to do it [have them kiss]. I don’t believe that they kiss and the whole show is over. I believe it creates new opportunities for stories and conflicts and things going wrong. We kind of felt it helped our show and gave it focus.”

  Showrunner Greg Daniels (The Office) points out that you can “miss your window” (by doling out a slow burn romance) “by delaying it for too long.” By giving a potential couple other partners to keep them apart, you run the risk that the audience will get more invested in these new couples instead— and will be averse to going back to the original couple.

  Burn Notice inverts the slow burn formula. The title of the series refers to the “burn notices” issued by U.S. spy agencies to expel intelligence operatives or sources now considered leaky/defective and therefore expendable (and in one fell swoop expunging their entire work history, support network, and finances). The protagonist, former covert operations agent Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) gets “burned” and finds himself in Miami (his hometown) in the care of his estranged beautiful ex-girlfriend, a former IRA operative and explosives expert, Fiona Glenanne (Gabrielle Anwar). Michael basically needs to lay low in Miami or risk being abducted by former allies and persistent enemies. Whereas most slow burn relationships start off platonic and are fraught with tension, Michael and Fiona’s torrid romance is in their past, and the question is “will they or won’t they get back together?” For the roguish Michael, Fiona is too volatile and high maintenance. Sure, they have great chemistry, but theirs was a romance that ended badly, so he’s reluctant to go there again. Fiona, on the other hand, still carries a torch for Michael and enjoys their dangerous missions together. To Fiona, violence is like foreplay, so their partnership is more of a gradual thaw than a slow burn.

  Forbidden Love

  This subcategory can include a taboo romance between a human and a supernatural being, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer + Angel (a vampire who gets his human soul back via a gypsy curse and becomes Buffy’s unattainable true love); unfortunately, when they finally consummate their passion, Angel loses his soul again and returns to the dark side as an evil vampire, relegating himself into exile. See also The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Being Human, and Smallville.

  It can also encompass a romance in which one or both parties are unavailable—physically and/or emotionally. On Scandal, political fixer Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) is having an affair with the married president of the United States (Tony Goldwyn). On Desperate Housewives, trophy wife Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria) is having a casual affair with her studly teenaged gardener, John (Jesse Metcalfe); it’s not just naughty—it’s illegal.

  The Love Triangle

  On Homeland, returned POW/U.S. Marine sergeant Nicholas Brody is still in love with his estranged wife, Jessica (Morena Baccarin), but is also rapidly succumbing to his strong feelings for CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes). Complicating matters is Jessica’s serious relationship with Nicholas’ former best friend, U.S. Marine captain Mike Faber (Diego Klattenhoff), because, after Nicholas’ seven-year absence, she had presumed that her husband was dead.

  On the second season of Parks and Recreation, Ann (Rashida Jones) broke up with Andy (Chris Pratt) after living with him because he was irresponsible and self-absorbed, but finds him alluring after he gets a job and becomes more stable. However, by that point, Andy has his eyes set on April (Aubrey Plaza), who just broke up with her two gay boyfriends (who were dating each other) to pursue Andy.

  On the first season of True Blood, Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) falls in love with “young” vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), but when an elder vampire, Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård) appears, Bill gets surly, and Sookie and Eric hook up.

  On the first season of Friday Night Lights, after star quarterback Jason Street (Scott Porter) suffers a debilitating injury on the football field, his steady girlfriend, Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly), finds herself drawn to sexy bad boy Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch), testing both her loyalty and spirit— ultimately leading Lyla from capricious Panthers cheerleader to faithful Christian youth leader.

  On season 1 of Once Upon a Time, Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Prince Charming (Josh Dallas) from the Enchanted Forest fairy-tale realm seem destined to be together in their reincarnations as Mary Margaret and David Nolan in Storybrooke, Maine. Unfortunately, he’s engaged to another woman, Kathryn (Anastasia Griffith), who was also his unrequited love interest, Princess Abigail, in the fairy-tale realm.

  In season 4 of 30 Rock, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) is in love with both Avery Jessup (Elizabeth Banks) and Nancy Donovan (Julianne Moore)— both of whom don’t know about each other. He tries to date them both while he figures out his feelings. Nancy—Jack’s high school love—gets a divorce for him, while Avery—Jack’s female Republican/battle axe counterpart—fights her instincts to be independent of men. The triangle is resolved when Nancy finds out inadvertently that Avery is pregnant with Jack’s baby, unbeknownst to him. Jack realizes that Avery can offer him everything he wants, and Nancy releases him. Jack and Avery get married, have a baby (in season 5), and end up getting happily divorced later.

  Casual Sex: Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

  Even though it’s the twenty-first century, on TV series, the old double standard tends to apply here: men can have casual sex, take a shower, and move on, whereas women on TV tend to get emotionally involved. Mainstream TV audiences are still fairly conservative, and seem to have a much easier time accepting men as aggressors seeking conquests and women as guardians of virtue. Of course, as times are changing and T
V series are evolving, there are a great number of exceptions. But for women on TV series, the thrill of the one-night stand is often mitigated by reality in the cold light of day, followed by neurosis, remorse, and/or a pregnancy scare or even an STD. And men get off (literally) scot-free. Naturally, this all depends on the perspective of the specific characters. For Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) on Sex and the City, women can have casual sex to their heart’s content—just like men!—with no justification or neurosis required. But even the flagrantly naked and promiscuous Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham) of Girls needs to deal with some emotional fallout and equivocation.

  See also Girls, Entourage, Sex and the City, Grey’s Anatomy. This subcategory can also include sexual addiction: Californication, Nip/Tuck, Queer as Folk, and Mad Men.

  Sex for Money, Power, and/or Political Gain

  This subcategory includes prostitution on The Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Hung, and The Client List.

  More nuanced versions of sex as part of the job include Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings (Keri Russell, Mathew Rhys) on The Americans who pretend to be a happily married couple for the sake of their covert KGB assignments.

  On House of Cards, Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) has sexual encounters with a deceitful, ambitious reporter for his own political gain (and her career advancement).

  On Mad Men, buxom office manager and struggling single mom Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks) makes a strategic career move to break through the glass ceiling into the boys’ club when she agrees to have sex with an all-important client. But it’s a bittersweet victory: she wins the prize, but suffers the shame of having slept her way to the top.

  On Homeland, we’re not sure at first if CIA operative Carrie is seducing war hero/possibly “turned” terrorist as a strategy to break him or if she’s genuinely falling in love with him. And vice versa. It’s a cat-and-mouse love story, and the jury is still out on who’s playing whom and why.

  Serial Monogamy

  This subcategory encompasses characters searching hard for Mr. or Ms. Right, not because they are promiscuous but because they’re seeking their “soul mate.” And so, they’re in a perpetual cycle of dating/hoping/rejecting/being rejected (rinse, repeat).

  On Girls, Hannah Horvath and her best friends, Marnie (Allison Williams), Jessa (Jemima Kirke), and Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) endeavor to snag their respective men, and then systematically self-sabotage their relationships due to insecurity, neuroses, fear of intimacy, abandonment, and self-loathing. It’s all relatable, often very funny, and heartbreaking—but how long can this smartly written series sustain this trajectory?

  30 Rock: If there’s one thing for sure about Liz Lemon (Tina Fey), it’s that she does not give up. From mystery man at the dentist (Wesley Snipes) [Michael Sheen], to nice guys from Cleveland (Floyd DeBarber) [Jason Sudeikis], to handsome pilots with the name of a comedy legend (Carol Burnett) [Matt Damon], Liz has gotten close several times, but something always happens to ruin the dream—including discovering that one boyfriend had been on To Catch a Predator—until she meets Criss Chros (James Marsden), a fellow Star Wars enthusiast, and she finds a way to be a wife, a mother, and a happily working woman.

  The Mindy Project: Mindy Lahiri loves romantic movies and big romantic gestures. Her encyclopedic knowledge of popular films fuels her desire to find Mr. Right. She thinks she’s found him in Josh (Tommy Dewey), a sports lawyer who has everything—including another girlfriend and an addiction to drugs. Like Liz, she is undeterred and meets a cute minister, Casey (Anders Holm), who promptly tells her that she’s too self-absorbed for him and in an effort to prove him wrong, she agrees to go on a one-year mission to Haiti with him. Meanwhile, the audience wants to know when she and Danny (Chris Messina), her copartner in their ob/gyn practice, are going to realize that they’re meant for each other. Will the timing be right next season? Will she go to Haiti? Stay tuned.

  See also Ally McBeal, Sex and the City.

  The Crush

  Subcategory for young love. The iconic series The Wonder Years got the nostalgia of puppy love just right—providing us with a dual perspective of Kevin (Fred Savage) as an insecure, flailing kid in love with the seemingly unattainable Winnie (Danica McKellar), and Kevin’s adult self looking back on his life via voice-over.

  My So-Called Life, a short-lived ABC series, has now achieved cult status for its nuanced, realistic depiction of romantic high school angst. Its heroine was Angela Chase (Claire Danes) who pines for smoldering, aloof, laconic Lothario Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto). Their intense, slow burn relationship was a complicated courtship of fleeting glances and awkward pauses. There was also Angela’s childhood friend, Brian Krakow’s (Devon Gummersall) underdog/puppy love attraction for Angela further confusing her coming-of-age. The touchstone of My So-Called Life was telling as little story as possible and digging deeper into every small moment.

  On MTV’s Awkward, social misfit Jenna Hamilton (Ashley Rickards) has a freak accident in her bathroom that everyone at school misconstrues as a suicidal cry for help. So Jenna decides to turn her misfortune into a blessing via her blog. Soon, she loses her virginity to popular hunk Matty McKibben (Beau Mirchoff), who privately likes off beat Jenna but publicly wants to keep their relationship a secret to preserve his image on campus. Their arrangement works until Jenna develops feelings for Matty’s best friend, Jake Rosati (Brett Davern), and now has a secret of her own. The show’s sensibility is reminiscent of the films made by the late, great movie director, John Hughes, who had an uncanny ability not only to make us laugh and cringe, but also to genuinely move us.

  See also Gossip Girl for its depiction of cynical, entitled rich kids and their soapy Dangerous Liaisons machinations; and Pretty Little Liars.

  Pushing the Envelope

  Whether it’s the Dionysian orgies on Spartacus, Game of Thrones, and The Tudors or the promiscuity on Entourage, Girls, Nip/Tuck, Mad Men, True Blood, and Hung, these sex scenes range from graphic and (arguably) gratuitous to simply implied. These are all edgy cable series that get around the censors (aka “Standards and Practices”) at the broadcast networks with the requisite nudity and provocative sexual situations. See also Queer as Folk, The “L” Word, Dexter, Weeds, Sex and the City, American Horror Story, Nip/Tuck, The Americans, Red Shoe Diaries, and Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

  While the love story component isn’t the only reason for a series’ success, it’s certainly a major factor to their longevity. Remove the sexual chemistry from the series and most, if not all, would quickly fizzle. Or as iconic film director and screenwriter Paul Mazursky once said: “All stories are about people trying to get laid.”

  I gave at the office

  The workplace ensemble (excluding procedurals). Notice how each of the following series has its own internal story engine which gives it the potential for unlimited plotlines:

  M*A*S*H: eleven seasons (mobile army hospital as backdrop to Korean war satire)

  Story engines: army doctors and nurses’ lives; wounded soldiers

  Cheers: eleven seasons (Boston bar buddies)

  Story engines: bartenders, waiters, and barflies

  The Office (U.S. version): nine seasons (mockumentary set at the fictional Dunder-Mifflin Paper Company in Scranton, Pennsylvania)

  Story engines: Incompetent personnel and steady office politics

  Mad Men: six seasons (Madison Avenue ad execs, secretaries, wives, and mistresses set in 1960s New York City)

  Story engines: office politics, cronyism, sexism, racism before and during the civil rights and feminist movements; marital and familial strife

  Murphy Brown: ten seasons (The “FYI” political news program in Washington, D.C.)

  Story engines: behind-the-scenes office politics, fresh news stories set against Murphy’s (Candice Bergen) messy personal life

  The Mary Tyler Moore Show: seven seasons (WJM newsroom in Minneapolis)

  Story engines: Incompetence covering fresh news stories at WJM; Mary’s romantic life and
friendships at work and at home

  It’s a Mystery to Me: The Longevity of Law and Order and Medicine

  After The Simpsons, the next ratings champ is showrunner/impresario/producer Dick Wolf’s Law & Order—which spanned twenty seasons and launched multiple spin-offs (Special Victims Unit, Criminal Intent, and the short-lived Trial by Jury). The global success of Law & Order with many cases being “ripped from the headlines,” paved the road for every scripted procedural drama, especially CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (set in Las Vegas), which is at thirteen seasons and counting. Plus its spin-offs: CSI: Miami (recently cancelled after 11 seasons) and CSI: NY (recently cancelled after nine seasons). The following are procedural series that offer closed-ended cases of the week in each episode as A stories, with serialized personal stories that tend to arc over a full season.

  The Truth Is Out There: Phenomenal Anomalies

  The following long-running series and recent hits defy categorization. Each show serves up iconic leading characters and unique storytelling styles (that aren’t just gimmicks) which manage to tap into the zeitgeist. Each series is a hybrid of one or more other genres, as specified in the following:

  Supernatural: nine seasons and counting—two brothers seek out the paranormal and their missing father in this bromance/family drama/sci-fi/mystery series with otherworldly thrills and chills