nonTV

Parks and Recreation - Season 5

There’s something magical that happens when a TV writing staff decides to go for broke. That is, they write every idea they have within the episodes the network ordered, not saving any ideas for future seasons. Instead of dragging stories over multiple seasons to fill time, writers end them as soon as they instinctually feel it’s right.

Of course, this decision often happens under the threat of impending cancellation, so it can lead to mixed results. For instance, Dollhouse’s final season was exhilarating, but fizzled near the final episodes once the producers ran out of money. Community’s concept episodes are often spectacular, but each one requires so much effort from the writers that the episode immediately after it can feel rushed and mediocre.

But when a show is well-managed, well-funded, yet low-rated enough to leave its fate uncertain each season, you get Parks and Recreation. The results are spectacular. Instead of spreading plot arcs over the course of the season, they’re resolved within six episodes. And unlike The Office, where plotlines are ditched without payoff once it’s clear they’re no longer funny, these short arcs have a satisfying beginning, middle and end. Why? Because the writers refuse to assume they’ll be on the air long enough to resolve those stories later in the season. It’s a genius strategy which has kept Parks and Recreation in Season 5 more creatively fresh than The Office in Season 4. I can’t wait to see how this show continues to mature in the future.

The Mindy Project

Mindy Kaling in NYMag, before her show’s premiere:

One thing that is different than other shows is that my character is weirdly, extremely confident. She feels like she should be dating Chris Evans. That’s something I learned from writing for Michael Scott. He thought he was going to marry Teri Hatcher, even though he was constantly being told that was not the case.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to model a character after Michael Scott, but Carell’s character was consistently presented as incompetent. Using a character’s screentime to laugh at (or with) their flaws and emotional life comes at the expense of highlighting their strengths.

The show presents Mindy Lahiri as a skilled physician, but rarely shows examples of her professional aptitude. Thus, the respect and occasional adoration which her colleagues display towards her seems self-indulgent and not quite credible. That’s when the show falls flat.

A big question, what’s the most satisfying way to end this thing? But then, having said that, is the satisfying way the right way? Without giving anything away, these are the questions we ask ourselves constantly. We stop ourselves every now and then and say: What are our hopes and dreams here? What do we want to see happen? And then we take a consensus around the room, and very often we’re all on the same page with what we want to see happen. And then we say, is that the right thing to happen? What’s the point of it all? What’s the point we want to make? Do we even have one? Some days I’m not sure we do. But then plenty of days, it’s just enough to tell a gripping story, to have showmanship and drama and moments and shock and awe, as it were. Vince Gilligan

The pitch was literally, and I’m not kidding: ‘Monster House….the house….is a monster.’ And when Rob [Schrab] pitched it, he held his hands up one at a time, like Ed Wood pitching ‘Doctor Acula.’ And the head of Imagemovers stared at him, blinked, and said, “I get it. I like it.” And bought it in the room. Dan Harmon

In every episode, the idea is to reveal new things about the characters, and if we don’t do that consistently throughout the season, then I think we’re blowing it. I don’t like shows where you feel like you know exactly who the people are and exactly how they’re going to behave in every situation. Then it just becomes color-by-numbers where it’s like, “Now these characters are at the circus. Now they’re in a coffee shop.” And you watch their complete, set-in-stone characters unfold in exactly the way you expect them to. That kind of television doesn’t really interest me as a writer. Mike Schur, inadvertently explaining why Parks and Recreation will never go the way of The Office

Tommy has decided that he prefers to be buried so “people can do sex on my grave Greg Sestero (“Mark” in The Room). His book on Tommy Wiseau, entitled The Disaster Artist is apparently finished and will be released in January 2013.

Then the shooting has proven my suspicions: he simply does not. Changed at least three times a cameraman, multiple team replaced the stage, and there were people who left there to film themselves in the middle of the day. […] And the rotation of the end of my Wiseau thanked, praised, and he said, because I worked so well, free loan of the total sound equipment provided, if the next movie I’m doing well. Zsolt Magyar, sound engineer for The Room, on Tommy Wiseau. [Apologies for the terrible Google translation.]