Eric Boellner
Well-known member
I was moderately excited to give NBC's new show The Blacklist a chance on VOD last night, because despite the atrocious commercials for it, I like James Spader, and the pilot was directed by Joe Carnahan, who's a fav of mine.
Well, I trudged through 14 minutes of that horrendously mediocre excuse of a television show, and here's the best advice I can give in retrospect to writers not wanting to repeat the mistakes of this show: THINK about it.
Think about everything. Second guess your plot points, your dialogue, your characters, your setups and your payoffs.
Seriously, ALL of the shortcomings of the 14 minutes I sat through could have been overcome by the writer and the director (Jon Bokenkamp and Joe Carnahan respectively) not being lazy.
Something a producer friend of mine drilled into my head when I was out in LA is that you can't assume that your first thought is your best thought. You HAVE to second guess things, you have to ask yourself "Is there a better/more interesting/less cliche/less obvious way I could tell this story?"
For instance:
- In a post-9/11 America, when everyone's on high alert, all the time, you'd think that maybe the DOOR SECURITY at CIA HEADQUARTERS in Langley might make a move on a guy (Spader) who turns away from the security booth, sets his briefcase down in the middle of the floor, takes off his coat, sets it on top of the briefcase, takes off his hat, sets it on top of his coat. You MIGHT think that looks like a guy getting ready to blow himself to hell and take a lot of people with him if you were, say, a lowly TSA agent working security at the Detroit Metro, but these guys want to try to tell me that security at the headquarters for the goddamn CIA wouldn't think so? No, all they do is give him funny looks because he's clearly just a harmless old man and not a terrorist.
- It's not until his name comes up on the security booth computer in a obvious, red "THIS GUY'S A THREAT" file that security does anything. The best part is, there's a red warning siren in the security booth that's literally bigger than James Spader's head (subtlety wasn't Carnahan's preferred method of doing things here) that goes blaring, and a swarm of agents pull their guns and train them on Spader. No one SAYS anything, like the usual "Freeze!" or maybe "On the floor, put your hands on your head!" No, they just look at him and aim their guns. He, of course, knows the drill so he gets on his knees and puts his hands on his head.
- Just for show, extra guys coming swarming up on the balcony above with assault rifles pointed down at Spader so Carnahan can feed us a cool low-angle on Spader with the guys overhead that screams "AHHHH, THIS GUY'S A BIG DEAL!" (I think this shot happened, I might have mixed them up in my head)
- Just in case it wasn't TOTALLY F--KING CLEAR, the camera then pans off Spader to see his face on a poster that reads in big, bold print "FBI TEN MOST WANTED."
- They put him in a Hulk cage. They seriously put Spader, this man whose crimes are later explained as essentially being a leak of classified information, nothing more, in a f--king Hulk cage (you know, like the one from Avengers, only it's a box instead of a circle). I'd try to describe it to you, but I think this does the trick just fine:
Spader, of course, summons Elizabeth Keene, and again instead of subtlety and maybe not attracting the attention of every news outlet in a 100-mile radius, the FBI rolls in on Keene's house (BY THE WAY, IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING, WHICH WE KNOW YOU WEREN'T, LIZZY AND HER MAN ARE ABOUT TO ADOPT A KID. DID YOU GET THAT? NO, SERIOUSLY, HONEY ARE YOU READY TO ADOPT A KID BECAUSE I'M SO READY.) with a f--king Black Hawk. Oh, but this comes after Lizzy's boyfriend/husband explains in detail how Lizzy has it all together, but is also lovably forgetful! (As a side-note, Keene stepped in her dog's piss in the kitchen, and she just laughed and took her sock off and then walked out the door a half-second later, so all I can think is that this woman must be open to doing uncomfortably weird things in bed).
In case we weren't 100% certain who this chick was and wanted, you know, some delicious BACKSTORY (YAY!), the guy heading the whole "Get Spader to tell us everything knows!" operation tells Keene to profile herself. She is, after all, an FBI profiler, so why don't we just have her describe directly to the camera how her father left her or something and now she has to identify with criminals and she's trying to adopt so she can make up for her past by having a good family of her own and what? I fell asleep.
Holy f--k, guys, please as a favor to television viewers everywhere, DON'T WRITE LIKE THIS. It's atrociously on-the-nose, it's Jon Bokenkamp telling his actors to look directly at the screen and tell the audience every bit of exposition, and when he's not sure if we got it, he bludgeons us with over-the-top, obvious-as-hell imagery that doesn't suggest, but says EXACTLY what he wants us to know.
On the nose writing and exposition isn't "a necessary evil you have to include in the pilot of your show in order to let people know what's going on and who these people are." It's just a lack of trust and faith in your audience's intelligence, which frankly, might work for NBC's usual viewers, but for an intelligent person like myself, it's f--king insulting. It's insulting in movies, it's insulting in television. It's probably insulting in this post, how often I use super-CAPS even just as a parody of the show's obviousness. I'm making that clear now, JUST IN CASE YOU DIDN'T GET IT. DID YOU GET IT? THAT'S WHAT I WAS DOING. Oh, you got it the first time? Very well, then. My work here is done.
Well, I trudged through 14 minutes of that horrendously mediocre excuse of a television show, and here's the best advice I can give in retrospect to writers not wanting to repeat the mistakes of this show: THINK about it.
Think about everything. Second guess your plot points, your dialogue, your characters, your setups and your payoffs.
Seriously, ALL of the shortcomings of the 14 minutes I sat through could have been overcome by the writer and the director (Jon Bokenkamp and Joe Carnahan respectively) not being lazy.
Something a producer friend of mine drilled into my head when I was out in LA is that you can't assume that your first thought is your best thought. You HAVE to second guess things, you have to ask yourself "Is there a better/more interesting/less cliche/less obvious way I could tell this story?"
For instance:
- In a post-9/11 America, when everyone's on high alert, all the time, you'd think that maybe the DOOR SECURITY at CIA HEADQUARTERS in Langley might make a move on a guy (Spader) who turns away from the security booth, sets his briefcase down in the middle of the floor, takes off his coat, sets it on top of the briefcase, takes off his hat, sets it on top of his coat. You MIGHT think that looks like a guy getting ready to blow himself to hell and take a lot of people with him if you were, say, a lowly TSA agent working security at the Detroit Metro, but these guys want to try to tell me that security at the headquarters for the goddamn CIA wouldn't think so? No, all they do is give him funny looks because he's clearly just a harmless old man and not a terrorist.
- It's not until his name comes up on the security booth computer in a obvious, red "THIS GUY'S A THREAT" file that security does anything. The best part is, there's a red warning siren in the security booth that's literally bigger than James Spader's head (subtlety wasn't Carnahan's preferred method of doing things here) that goes blaring, and a swarm of agents pull their guns and train them on Spader. No one SAYS anything, like the usual "Freeze!" or maybe "On the floor, put your hands on your head!" No, they just look at him and aim their guns. He, of course, knows the drill so he gets on his knees and puts his hands on his head.
- Just for show, extra guys coming swarming up on the balcony above with assault rifles pointed down at Spader so Carnahan can feed us a cool low-angle on Spader with the guys overhead that screams "AHHHH, THIS GUY'S A BIG DEAL!" (I think this shot happened, I might have mixed them up in my head)
- Just in case it wasn't TOTALLY F--KING CLEAR, the camera then pans off Spader to see his face on a poster that reads in big, bold print "FBI TEN MOST WANTED."
- They put him in a Hulk cage. They seriously put Spader, this man whose crimes are later explained as essentially being a leak of classified information, nothing more, in a f--king Hulk cage (you know, like the one from Avengers, only it's a box instead of a circle). I'd try to describe it to you, but I think this does the trick just fine:
Spader, of course, summons Elizabeth Keene, and again instead of subtlety and maybe not attracting the attention of every news outlet in a 100-mile radius, the FBI rolls in on Keene's house (BY THE WAY, IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING, WHICH WE KNOW YOU WEREN'T, LIZZY AND HER MAN ARE ABOUT TO ADOPT A KID. DID YOU GET THAT? NO, SERIOUSLY, HONEY ARE YOU READY TO ADOPT A KID BECAUSE I'M SO READY.) with a f--king Black Hawk. Oh, but this comes after Lizzy's boyfriend/husband explains in detail how Lizzy has it all together, but is also lovably forgetful! (As a side-note, Keene stepped in her dog's piss in the kitchen, and she just laughed and took her sock off and then walked out the door a half-second later, so all I can think is that this woman must be open to doing uncomfortably weird things in bed).
In case we weren't 100% certain who this chick was and wanted, you know, some delicious BACKSTORY (YAY!), the guy heading the whole "Get Spader to tell us everything knows!" operation tells Keene to profile herself. She is, after all, an FBI profiler, so why don't we just have her describe directly to the camera how her father left her or something and now she has to identify with criminals and she's trying to adopt so she can make up for her past by having a good family of her own and what? I fell asleep.
Holy f--k, guys, please as a favor to television viewers everywhere, DON'T WRITE LIKE THIS. It's atrociously on-the-nose, it's Jon Bokenkamp telling his actors to look directly at the screen and tell the audience every bit of exposition, and when he's not sure if we got it, he bludgeons us with over-the-top, obvious-as-hell imagery that doesn't suggest, but says EXACTLY what he wants us to know.
On the nose writing and exposition isn't "a necessary evil you have to include in the pilot of your show in order to let people know what's going on and who these people are." It's just a lack of trust and faith in your audience's intelligence, which frankly, might work for NBC's usual viewers, but for an intelligent person like myself, it's f--king insulting. It's insulting in movies, it's insulting in television. It's probably insulting in this post, how often I use super-CAPS even just as a parody of the show's obviousness. I'm making that clear now, JUST IN CASE YOU DIDN'T GET IT. DID YOU GET IT? THAT'S WHAT I WAS DOING. Oh, you got it the first time? Very well, then. My work here is done.
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