The TV Showrunner's Roadmap

by Neil Landau

  NL: How are you at coming up with the crimes? Are they coming from the books?

  JT: No, the crimes aren’t coming from the books. We’ve used one story from one of the books in the pilot. But otherwise we’ve generated the stories ourselves largely because what works in a three hundred plus page book doesn’t necessarily work in a TV show. As for technique, I have a couple ways that I’m sure can make being on my staffsomewhat maddening. Sometimes an episode can start with just an idea for a scene. For example, I wanted to kill a guy in a car wash. That’s how the episode began. Another one began because one of my daughter’s is a dancer. We did a competitive dance episode. My other daughter is massively into art, so that’s figured into several episodes and into Maura’s mother’s background. My brother is currently doing a tour in Afghanistan. Jane’s lover, Lt. Col. Casey Jones, was in Afghanistan.

  I read a lot, I eavesdrop, and I try to listen closely to my children’s worlds because the world of teenagers is nearly impenetrable. I know something is worth pursuing when I hear it—and story just naturally starts to spin in my brain. What I tend to do at the beginning of every season with my writers is we sit in the room for a week or two and brainstorm. I ask everyone to read as much as they can about local politics and life and crime in Boston. I have my former tech advisor turned writer who is constantly digging up murder stories.

  I grew up on the East Coast and lived outside of Boston in elementary school, so I’ve done Revolutionary War–themed episodes, Salem witches, and a marathon. I sometimes find myself wishing Angie, Sasha, and Angela had Boston accents. I’ve been dying to do Strangers on a Train, but every time we try it out, we’re in the world of electronics and cell phones and computers. That is the single hardest piece of a procedural show to get around: there are a bazillion ways to track people now. How do you come up with a crime without an electronic footprint? It’s very hard, so I’m now in the place where I’m trying to challenge myself to make the mysteries stronger and tighter. I think when you think of the show, you think of Jane and Maura and the relationships and the family. But the things that really hold the show together are those flexible walls and the floor, which is the crime. The show is grounded and begins with a good mystery—that crime has to be good and solid.

  NL: So you start with the crime?

  JT: I always start with the crime. That is a rule that I think I’ve always had from my first procedural staff writing job. This has made for some very crazy circumstances for my children. When I was on CSI: New York, I wanted to kill a woman with a redwood stake. I’m very tactile and I’ve already said I was a journalist who liked to do research. So I went to the nursery with my then seven-year-old and the guy came over to say, “Can I help you?” And my daughter piped up and said, “My mommy’s looking for a redwood stake to kill somebody.” The guy rushed off saying something about having to bring the manager. I get myself to think like the murderer and plan it to the point that I think if I’m going to kill somebody, I’m going to get away with it. So I tell my writers that the mandate is this: but for super sleuths, Jane and Maura, the killer would get away with it. It also has to feel like if the stakes [no pun intended] are that high, if I’m willing to commit murder, I’d better have a damn good reason. When you’re trying to sustain this mystery, and you’re trying to get all of your actors on board, it’s got to make sense. Not “TV” sense, but real and true sense.

  NL: What’s one of your favorite mystery stories that you’ve told? And why was that specific crime story particularly powerful/memorable for you?

  JT: I really love the season enders that I’ve done. Given how truly hard this is, it’s easy to get into a not-so-fun place where you’re just brain dead and you have near-panic: the season opener and season ender always throw me for a loop. I go into my “I’ll never get it. I’ve done too many. How are we going to top that?” mode—and drive everyone in my life nuts.

  NL: At what point do you have a sense of where you’re going to end the season?

  JT: I knew early on with season 1 and season 2. I knew in season 1 that I wanted to end on a cliffhanger with something very unexpected with Jane. I figured I’d probably be out of money and have to do a bottle show [a whole episode set primarily all in one location]—which would play into how it was constructed. In season 2, I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to see them in conflict—not knowing if they were going to continue being friends. So the challenge was coming up with the mechanics of how that would happen— and how to do it in a very unexpected but real way. It comes down to the last few seconds of the show after Jane shoots Maura’s biological father, who’s a bad guy, and Maura looks up and gasps and says, “Don’t touch him. Don’t you dare touch him,” as Jane, who is conflicted and tormented, backs away from her best friend. I was really proud of that when it all finally came together. I figured out how I wanted to end last season, which was season 3, only as I started to beat out that final episode. I couldn’t decide how to end it really until I wrote that final scene.

  We’ve just started shooting season 4—and I, thankfully, already know how I want to end it. Not saying I won’t panic—just saying I think I know where I’m headed…

  NL: Talk about Paddy Doyle, the “Whitey Bulger”–like character you created who is Maura’s biological father. When Jane shot him, Maura had incredibly complicated feelings. He’s a bad guy—but she loves him.

  JT: They both had incredibly complicated feelings—and they’re both right. That’s the best kind of conflict (in my opinion) that there is. Neither is wrong … my favorite kinds of arguments to write are ones in which both people feel that they are right.

  When I don’t know how to write a scene, I know I’m headed in the right direction. That’s the piece of me that wants to eventually write novels. I think a lot of TV writers worry that viewers don’t think of us as writers because they’re not aware that everything they are seeing in a television show has been imagined, processed, thought-through repeatedly and then written and rewritten—from every action line to parenthetical to line of dialogue. To me, the two best compliments are when an executive says, “That was really fun to read,” and then way down the line we hear from viewers who don’t just think it was fun to watch, but they have the sense that they’re having these experiences along with the characters—as if they’re transported into this world we’ve created.

  In moments of massive shock or trauma, we are both capable of being our truest selves and of completely surprising ourselves with what we do or say. These are unpredictable catalysts. In that finale with Paddy, what I wanted was Maura to react in a way that she couldn’t have anticipated. That’s a universally human experience. It’s that moment when you wonder, “Why did I just laugh at the most hideous thing that has happened to me?” I wanted to drop these best friends into a situation that threatened to sever years of friendship in an instant. Can you a lifelong relationship go away with one interaction? I think we know it can. How do you dramatize that in one scene?

  But then of course, I had to pick up the pieces of that shattered relationship in the next season opener. Jane and Maura were no longer “best friends.” In fact, they weren’t speaking to each other. Paddy Doyle, Maura’s father, was dying. Jane was equally pissed: what else was she supposed to do? Doyle was one of the FBI’s Most Wanted—and he pointed a gun at her. I thought, “How do I revive this and how do I put this friendship back together? How do I do it in a way that doesn’t feel like television, but feels real?”

  NL: That comes through in every episode because they’re both equally intelligent and equally impassioned. One comes from intellect and science, and the other much more from instinct, guts, and street smarts.

  JT: I had an executive tell me that I couldn’t have women fighting, that no one would watch women fighting. It’s possible that there was a part of me that thought, “I’ll show you how women fight and how you can be invested and how you can learn something if you’re male.” One of my favorite scenes of them going a
t it in season 3 is in Maura’s office and Pike [Ed Begley Jr.] comes in and calls it a catfight. Yet, there are all kinds of real things being talked about in a funny way.

  If we do our jobs as writers and students of human beings, we can hopefully get to something that feels both complex and simple and, at the same time, both resolvable and unresolvable. That’s friggin’ life.

  NL: When I’m talking to my students about their one-hour drama pilots, I tell them to think of every show as being about a family—whether they’re related by blood or not. In your show, you have both. You have the work family and mainly Jane’s family because of her brother being a cop and her mom who is now working at the café. Jane and Maura are like sisters. Her mentor character, Vince (Bruce McGill), is like a father. How important are family dynamics to you when you’re plotting?

  JT: Originally, FBI agent Gabriel Dean [Billy Burke] was going to play a much larger role, but I didn’t want a love triangle with my two female leads fighting over a guy. Because these two women are so committed to what they do professionally, their familial relationships would happen at work. And yet, once I had the use of Lorraine Bracco, I had to find a way to integrate her into their world, so that we weren’t constantly stepping out of the Boston police department or the medical examiner’s office to go visit Ma. But did I sit down and think: “How do I make this family important?” No.

  We all are dramatists, and even if you grow up as an orphan, you have some patchwork of a family. We’re all familiar with the archetypes, so maybe we just all naturally go there—to “family” both by blood and by choice. I think the contrast between these two people is that Maura had a little benign neglect with plenty of books and lots of intellectual stimulation, but not that huggy, kissy mom throwing her arms around her. Angela is a huggy, kissy, in-your-business Ma, but Jane is not a hugger. Why? Because it feels like Jane: nature won out over nurture. That’s why you love it so much when there is that contact because it breaks down that hard shell Jane has on, and hopefully, that it also feels real. One of my favorite scenes is when Maura is really in pain, yet won’t let Angela hug her, and it breaks her heart.

  NL: One of the conventions of television is that characters don’t change because you want to tune in and see who they are, but in some shows like Breaking Bad, Walter has changed enormously—that’s the whole point of the show. Do you see your characters as evolving over time? Do you want them to? Or will they stay rooted?

  JT: I think that since these women go through some grisly experiences, they can’t help but be changed. So I do feel that they have to evolve. Like all human beings, we become more of who we are or more of who we want to be. I wish in some ways that I could figure out a way to do five or ten seasons where they do stay the same. It’s also about your thoughts of who you want to be—but paying attention to what the world is telling you about who you are—or at least which face you’re showing.

  I also think they are naturally affected by the friendship that’s deepened as they go through experiences that we see them having. Truthfully, I miss some of the wonkiness of Maura from season 1. In some ways, it was easier. But to keep the actors interested, I have to keep them alive as creative people and as artists so that they’re allowed to pick up a different colored pen—and flex different muscles.

  Seeing Maura angry tonally is something we don’t get to see as much. There’s a scene at the end of season 3 where she’s rude to her biological mother. She says stuff she wouldn’t normally say. I struggled mightily with that scene because we’d never seen Maura do that. Was it consistent with who she was? Hell, yeah. She’d never been in that particular set of circumstances before. I do think that viewers don’t always love that, particularly viewers who drop in and out. They want the same meal every time. But here’s the thing: real people are full of contradictions. They don’t always say what they mean. They don’t always tell the truth. I love discovering something new about someone you’re certain can’t surprise you.

  NL: You’ve gone to CSI camp. You’ve gone to Bones camp. What are the most important skills of being a showrunner to you?

  JT: This is my second profession. My news skills have been absolutely invaluable. My ability to write very quickly when there are no second chances has also been invaluable. I also have a ton of production and postproduction experience. I was very lucky that way because writers don’t always get exposed to that. When I walked into the Rizzoli & Isles edit bungalow, I already had ten thousand hours under my belt and that was a huge bonus. I think that many screenwriters don’t understand the need to really go and learn post, and the only way to do that is to sit there and watch for a long time. There is so much story crafting that goes on (or should go on) in post, it’s a terminal mistake for a writer to think of it as “some guy pushing buttons” or that it’s someone else’s department—it’s often where you will rescue a show that’s about to tank.

  I am also one of those people who is very pragmatic. I know what my budget is and what I can and can’t do. I prefer to only write stuff that I know we can do. It’s a team sport. Production is not my adversary. They are my allies and the more they know, the earlier they know it, the better the “wedding” we’re planning is going to be. You have to be able to handle criticism and problems and bounce back with great ideas and solutions quickly. I think I’m well suited for the sort of ADHD environment of showrunning because you don’t have the luxury of days and days or even sometimes an hour to think through a problem and solve it through writing. You also have to be able to switch gears very quickly. So I think that my first profession and my news training was invaluable. I would say that writers who have come up through the TV drama system or have only been somebody’s assistant are missing out. I’m very interested in writers who have had another career. I was interviewing a writer today who was a professor of philosophy. Those people are immensely, enormously valuable to me because they come at it from very different places. Their work tends to be less derivative. I find that some television writers’ whole frame of reference is television. I don’t want a writer copying me. I want them to go out and do what I did by seeing it for themselves: experiencing and smelling and touching in order to bring me something I don’t see anywhere else. I’m not saying I’m able to do that in every story beat, but that’s always the goal. Every time I write something, my goal is to give viewers some new experience. Even if it’s just an interaction with someone they would never, ever run across in life. That’s the part I miss the most about being a journalist: I went everywhere and talked to anyone. It was like an all-access pass to life.

  NL: Production-wise are you a seven-day?

  JT: Seven and a half.

  NL: And do you have rules about how many days in or how many days out?

  JT: I try to be flexible. Some episodes beg for three days out. It just depends on how well you’ve planned your season or how ahead you are. We generally go out one to two days an episode. The purse strings are very tight. There’s no room for error. Everybody matters. When you’re not doing your job, somebody else really feels it. The point is to get people who embrace the challenge. I can’t imagine what we’d do with a shitload of money and time. How fabulous that would be, but there’s also something exciting about knowing that even though you couldn’t afford this, you made it work by collaborating and coming up with a solve. My brain loves puzzles—and I’m picky. Which means I have to figure out a way to get what I want. If we can’t afford an idea, we’ll find a way to make something else—or even something different but just as good—work. And when you’re surrounded by people who rev up at a challenge, that’s creativity at its finest.

  Note

  1 On shows involving supernatural characters and magical realism, their specialization usually comes in the form of a power. On True Blood, Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) has mental telepathy and photokinesis (the ability to manipulate light). On Medium, Allison Dubois (Patricia Arquette) is a clairvoyant who works with the police as a psychic. In Ghost Whisperer,
Melinda Gordon (Jennifer Love Hewitt) can see and talk to dead people. See Chapter 18 for more on series mythology.

  21

  Make us Laugh

  There are no rules in comedy except that it needs to be funny—which can be highly subjective. Not everyone is going to find the same material hysterical. Dark, edgy, subversive and/or “gross out” comedy is laugh-out-loud funny to some, and an offensive turn off to others. Dry, droll, sophisticated “British” humor is the bomb to some, but for others: not their cup of tea. If a joke is told badly, no matter how good the joke, it’ll fall flat. The opposite can be true as well. If a bad joke is well told, it could be funny.

  I believe that screenwriters can be taught structure and how to deepen a scene with heart and subtext. I even believe that some writers can learn to improve their dialogue. However, to me, comedy writing and performance is a gift: you either have it or you don’t. Sure, you can master the comedic tropes of the rule of three, fish-out-of-water, role reversal, and odd coupling. But, seriously: no one can teach you how to be funny.

  Nevertheless, I decided to ask the experts. This chapter contains words of wisdom from several of today’s top comedy showrunners from 2 Broke Girls (Michael Patrick King) , The Mindy Project (Mindy Kaling), and Parks and Recreation (Mike Schur and Dan Goor). I also interviewed three showrunners from three very different kinds of half-hour comedy series:

  Modern Family: A single-camera broadcast network (ABC) sitcom with a large ensemble and no laugh track. Creators/showrunners: Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd.

  How I Met Your Mother: A multi-camera broadcast network (CBS) sitcom that also uses a single-camera style for some flashbacks and exterior sequences. Creator/showrunners: Craig Thomas and Carter Bays.