Flashpoint

Is a hit!

This despite a lot of snarky reviews in the American (and to a lesser degree, Canadian) press. John Doyle has an interesting take on the Canadian-American cultural dynamic here.

Personally I quite enjoyed Flashpoint. Doyle has it right when he says that this isn't a show "...aimed at bending anybody's mind or exploding the genre of cop-drama into smithereens..." Rather it's a solid police procedural...with a twist (c'mon, you knew that had to be there).

Flashpoint is about a Toronto SWAT team (they call it something different, but that's what it is). What sets it apart is that rather than focus exclusively on the cases, it focuses on the emotional aftermath of when the team's forced to pull the trigger.

The pilot ("Scorpio") did a great job of exploring this premise. A man takes a hostage during rush hour. The SWAT team's called in and one of the sniper's eventually ordered to take the gunman out.

All in the first half hour of the show.

It was a great bit of television. Tense, beautifully shot, well acted. All around top notch.

Then things get interesting. On other cop shows an officer would shoot a suspect, be hailed as a hero, might be put under review by Internal Affairs, and then move on.

But the cop is never (or very, very rarely) treated as a suspect.

That's not the case in Flashpoint.

From the moment our sniper pulls the trigger he's treated as a suspect. The cops rope off his rooftop vantage point and treat it as a crime scene. He's forced to strip off the clothes he was wearing so they can be bagged as evidence, before he's interrogated.

Compared to a lot of other shows that have come before, this actually felt like what would probably happen to a police officer after they had to shoot someone in the line of duty.

This was Flashpoint at its best, pulling back the curtain to give us a glimpse of how things might actually work behind the scenes.

It wasn't all good though. The pilot suffered from a lot of problems pilots usually suffer from. Too many characters being introduced at once, so many that we don't really care about half of them (So the black guy gets stuck in the truck? Who cares? The other white guy gets promoted? Whoopdiedoo!). This is exacerbated by the fact that the characters are, for the most part, interchangeable.

In this regard they would have been better off taking a page from The Border's play book. Introduce your characters slowly, focusing on a few per episode, and give them all very specific functions on the team (or at least defining characteristics) to help the audience differentiate them all.

I also wonder how sustainable the show will be in the long term. How many variations of hostage negotiations / sniper shootings can they do? Will the audience tune in week in, week out, to watch the various characters deal with their emotional fall out from similar events? Obviously the show will have to branch out eventually, but when they do will they lose some of the unique elements in the premise?

Ultimately it's important to remember that this was a pilot. It had a few rough edges, but overall it was good, light, summer fun. It'll be interesting to see where the show goes over the next few episodes.

I, for one, am pulling for it though.

Things you can do to piss off development monkeys

I'm sure I've posted about this before...but trust me...it bears repeating.

1. Spell Check!

If your script has spelling and grammatical mistakes don't submit it! The dirty secret is that development monkeys (like me) are looking for reasons to not read your script, don't give it to us.

2. Do your research!

Don't pitch us ideas that don't fit our company. If it's not a fit, we won't consider it (funny that).

3. Don't harass us!

Your average development monkey will have anywhere from 5 to 10 scripts to read at any given time (at least from my personal experience). It will take AT LEAST several weeks to get back to you. If you harass me it'll take longer.

4. Learn to take no for an answer!

It's not personal. If I tell you a project's not for my company, that's just it, no need to get hostile.

5. Have something else to pitch!

If we like you, we'll ask you what else you have. If you don't have anything else (even if it's rough) you'll go to the bottom of the pile.

Have something else.

What have you been up to?

In the last 177 days?

Things I've done:


1. Got promoted to the lofty rank of Development Coordinator.

That's right, monkey's got some say now.


2. Participated in some TV writing workshops. Met some cool people. Learned a lot.

If you get a chance to do a workshop with Chuck Lazer or Esta Spalding, I highly recommend it!


3. Started a writing group with said cool people. So far we're meeting once a week, and everyone submits about every other week.

It is glorious!


4. Finished polishing a new pilot and a spec episode of Dexter.

Not sure they're glorious, but don't think they're steaming piles of donkey shit either.


5. Applied to the Canadian Film Centre's Prime Time Television Writing Program.

Hopefully I'll be in Toronto come September.


6. Attended the CFTPA Prime Time Conference, crashed the VIP reception.

Never seen so many suits in my life. Drank myself stupid with some other creatives.


7. Registered myself for the Banff World Television Festival.

Drunken debauchery, here I come!


8. Came up with three solid ideas (two pilots, one spec) that I'm planning on writing in the near future.

Not sure which I'll be focusing on yet, but we'll see how the beat sheets go...


9. Was approached to Produce a doc about exotic dancers in Vancouver.

Very tempting (for reasons I'd think were obvious), but ultimately had to pass due to scheduling problems...

10. Got a TiVo! And it has changed my life!

Seriously, if you have yet to experience the wonderfulness that is a PVR, you're missing out...


That, in a nutshell, sums up how I've spent the last 177 days. Had a bit of burn out on the blog, but am jumping back on the bandwagon now. Guess we'll see where it leads!

The Future...

"...24p and Final Cut are the car bombs of television."

Strike!

Sorry for the lack of updates...chalk it up to doing lots of other writerly things...

I'm sure everyone knows that the WGA's out on strike at the moment. I'm not going to rehash it other than to say that they're fighting the good fight. If you're curious or want to know why they're striking (or are just hungry for news) I've added some great links on the sidebar...

This one's for the whole shebang kids...

Sophomore Slump

So things aren't going all that well in TeeVee land this season. There haven't been any break out hits. Gossip Girl's been picked up despite mediocre numbers, but a lot of the supposedly flagship new shows (Bionic Woman, Private Practice, I'm looking at you) have failed to impress.

Even more disturbing is the fact that a few of the returning series are also struggling. Heroes may never have been a great show, but at least it was entertaining. This year? Not so much.

Even worse than Heroes has been the disastrous opening to the new season of Friday Night Lights. Now, the first season of FNL came as close to perfection as a season of television can. The characters, storylines and the feel of Dillon, Texas were all so real that you'd swear you could hop in your car and drive there. It felt more like Hoop Dreams than a scripted series.

But boy have things ever gone off the rails.

Now I don't think it's as bad as some people (take Alex for instance), but it's pretty bad. Of course I'm talking about the Landry / Tyra murder plot.

Now I'm not completely opposed to the murder (unlike Alan), but getting rid of the body? Oy vey! Killing someone in the heat of the moment (even if he did it while the guy was walking away) I can understand. But Landry and Tyra are smart kids, after whacking a guy in the head with a pipe they'd call the damn ambulance or at least drop him off at the hospital.

This plotline is frustrating as all hell because it fractures the reality of Dillon, Texas with unnecessary melodrama. And it's a real shame too, because even in the midst of this misbegoten excuse of a story there are moments where Tyra and Landry (probably my two favorite actors on the show) really shine (specifically I'm talking about episode two, "Real Man" scene and the last scene in the episode).

There's still a lot to like in FNL. The Julie / Matt storyline is still strong (though I'm a little worried about this new live in caregiver at the Saracen's). Mrs. Coach is still riveting. Buddy's meltdown is amazing to watch. But compared to last year, the new season's been wildly inconsistent.

Rum and Spies, Dust Busters and Samurais

Wow. The pace is definitely picking up around here. Canadian funding deadlines are looming, VIFF is shifting into high gear, my online UCLA extension class starts today and TeeVee continues its deluge of new shows.

What's been on lately?

Chuck

I quite liked Chuck. Josh Schwartz is channeling the funny, pop-hipster bits from the OC. The action sequences were good, and there's some great comedy (the western showdown at the end may have been a joke we've seen/heard before, but it was well executed).

There are some problems inherent with the premise though. It feels overly familiar, hard to escape when every second show at the moment is an "ordinary man develops special abilities" show, but Chuck also reminds me a bit too much Jake 2.0.

Also, as others have noted, wouldn't all the super secret information in Chuck's head be obsolete after a couple of weeks? Last I heard intelligence was...ahem...time sensitive...

Journeyman

I'm a sucker for time travel stories, so I really, really wanted to like Journeyman, but it just left me feeling "meh."

The love triangle is interesting and offers some fun dynamics to play with. The scenes of Dan in the past, interacting with friends and family, were by far the best parts of the show. The modern drama (trouble with his wife, intervention, etc) fell flat because the audience is out ahead of the characters. We know that Dan's not doing drugs. We know he's not cheating on his wife (does time travel cheating count?). So all the speculation by his wife / brother / boss lacks drama because we know they're wrong.

I loved the murky morality of the time travel plot (he's going back in time to save a guy, only to kill him in the end), but it lacked cohesion in my eyes. I kept wondering what he was doing, how the pieces fit together, and even once it had all played out (turns out he was meant to save the guys unborn child) I couldn't help but think "what's the point of all that?"

Reaper

Reaper and Chuck are the same show. I found the sidekick in Reaper to be more obnoxious than the sidekick in Chuck. The comedy in Reaper was broader, more slapstick. It had some nice moments (love the dogs and the DMV), and the I think that the premise is better than Chuck (at least there were less logic gaps in Reaper than in Chuck). And there's nothing cooler than sucking up souls in a Dirt Devil.

Safe to say I'm a fan.

Cane

I love Jimmy Smits. He's almost enough to make Cane watchable, but in the end he can't save it. At the end of the day this show was flat out boring. I'm falling asleep writing this...

Heroes

Heroes is starting to piss me off. As I watched the first season on DVD all my old niggles (poor payoffs, annoying characters, muddled storylines) really started to come to the fore. The second season premiere didn't do much to alleviate my concerns.

The biggest problem with Heroes is the number of characters and plot lines they're trying to juggle. There are already too many, and the premiere introduced two more!

So the premiere had: Claire and HRG adjusting to their new life (which was good), Suresh infiltrating the company (Suresh irks me to no end), Parkman kicking ass and taking names (detective? nice!), Hiro in feudal Japan (and with a gaijin Kensei? WTF?), Ando and Hiro's dad sitting around drinking coffee and getting death threats, Nathan as an alcoholic with a beard, Peter tied up naked in a cargo container, oh and the two new people on the run in Honduras (if they were heading south they could guest star on Prison Break!).

Anyone else confused by all that?

Scary thing is it's only going to get worse if they follow through with their plan to incorporate a character introduced on Origins into the main show.

Anyways, so much was going on that the episode really just served to reintroduce everyone (with some heroes not even mentioned...Sylar? Nikki / Jessica?). I can't help but feel that they're just throwing bucket loads of stuff at the audience in the hopes that some of it's going to stick.

I think Heroes would be better off if they just focused down onto some of their core stories (Claire/HRG, Hiro, maybe the Petrellis) and get rid of the rest.

All in all there are a lot of shows I want to like this season, but most of them just aren't there yet.