Genre: TV Drama (but sort of a movie, since it’s only 4 episodes)
Premise: A young woman in an orthodox Jewish community in New York escapes to Berlin to pursue a new life.
About: This series is based on the real-life story of Deborah Feldman, who chronicled her exploits in the 2012 autobiography Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. Interestingly, the writers used Feldman’s book verbatim for the “past” storyline but made up a lot of the stuff that happens in Berlin (the present) for dramatic purposes.
Writers: Deborah Feldman, Daniel Handler, Alexa Karolinski, Eli Rosen, Anna Winger
Details: 4 hour-long episodes (I’ve watched the first 2)
So I’m sitting there watching Unorthodox, the sleeper show on Netflix that has no business being in a Netflix Top 10 that favors such frivalous entertainment as murderous lion tamers and something called “Coffee and Kareem.” Yet as of Friday, five separate people had recommended the show to me so I thought, “Okay, I have to check this out.”
While watching the first two episodes, an age-old screenwriting tale began to rear its head: Most screenwriters have no idea how to write engaging character pieces. There are plenty of screenwriters who know how to write boring character pieces. Believe me, I’ve read them all. But there are very few writers who, without gun fights and super powers and end-of-the-world stakes, know how to keep audiences engaged.
Unorthodox reminds us that it can be done.
Esty is a young woman who’s grown up in an orthodox Jewish community inside of New York. But when we meet her, she’s fleeing this world. You’d think she’d been continuously beaten and tortured the way she runs for her life and jets off to Berlin.
Esty seems to be searching for something in Berlin but we’re not told what. In the meantime, she befriends a group of musicians she meets at a coffee shop. Before Esty left New York, she’d been secretly taking piano lessons (in this particular orthodox Jewish community, you are not allowed to play music). Might Esty be able to parlay those talents into a position at their elite school?
Unorthodox institutes a 3-pronged interweaving plot. In addition to following Esty in the present, we also go back in time to observe the events that led to her departure. We start right before the courting process with her soon-to-be fiancé, Yakov. Yakov is so shy and so constricted by this culture that he can’t even look Esty in the eyes.
The third plotline is also set in the present and follows Yakov and his community’s head “fixer,” the ironically unorthodox Moische, as they’re tasked with flying to Berlin and bringing Esty back. The deeply flawed Moische was chosen because he knows the outside world best. Heck, he even has a smart phone. With internet!
We eventually learn that the reason Esty came to Berlin is because her mother ALSO fled the community years back and took up residence here. Esty is hoping to reconnect with her but gets distracted when the music opportunity arises. Will her new music career work out for her? Will she and her mom reunite? Or will everything go back to normal when Esty is captured and pulled back to New York by her husband and Moische? We shall see!
There’s this sort of weird belief among writers that character pieces mean that a certain level of boredom is acceptable. There’s almost an arrogance to it, the attitude being, “Well if you want to enjoy deep thoughtful stories that those big Hollywood movies aren’t giving you, you have to suffer through some slow meticulous setup that isn’t always going to be entertaining.”
To this I say: Hogwash.
It’s possible to make a character piece just as entertaining as a “Hollywood” movie. It’s just more difficult. The trick is a) be a little inventive, b) use time-tested storytelling devices, and c) be unafraid to recruit some “Hollywood” tricks of the trade.
Let’s start off with the inventiveness. Unorthodox jumps back and forth between the present and the past to create a 2-for-the-price-of-1 experience. This results in a constantly changing storyline that keeps you on your toes. Had Unorthodox told its story as a straightforward sequential narrative, it wouldn’t have been as interesting.
But it’s important to keep in mind that just adding a second narrative isn’t enough. You have to do something with it. Its existence must be justified. What Unorthodox does is it creates questions in its present that can only be answered by watching the past.
For example, one of the first things Esty does when she gets to Berlin is find a woman. We see her waiting for the woman. We see the woman arrive from afar. We see Esty about to approach her. But then the woman is met by another woman, who kisses her, Esty is shocked and confused and runs off.
At the time, we have no idea what just happened. But later, during the “past” narrative, we learn that that woman is her mother.
This is something Unorthodox is good at. It doesn’t give anything away upfront. This forces you to keep watching to find things out. This is one of the most basic tenets of writing. If you don’t provide us with any unanswered questions, why do we need to stick around?
Moving forward, let’s talk about time-tested storytelling techniques. And I’m going to give you one that you have to master if you’re going to write a good character piece. It’s a little something called STAKES. But I’m not talking about the stakes of the entire story. I’m talking about takes INSIDE INDIVIDUAL SCENES.
You see, when you don’t have two people pointing guns at each other, you need to find other ways to raise the stakes. And you do this through a) setting up the importance of something, b) taking your time to build it up, and c) paying it off in as big of a way as possible.
In Unorthodox, we’re given multiple references to the fact that Esty is a pianist. We don’t see her play. But her love for it is carefully woven into the story (for example, the person who helps her escape New York is her piano teacher).
When she gets in with the musicians, a new storyline builds where she wants to audition to get into the school. After multiple scenes of watching them play and conversing about music, they’re all together at a dinner party and someone finally says, “Hey Esty, there’s a piano. Why don’t you play for us?”
The mood all of a sudden becomes serious. We’re going to find out after all this time if Etsy is actually good or not. And not only is this her first time playing onscreen. But she has to do it in front of a dozen musicians who have all been playing music since they were in diapers. These are the best of the best.
This is how you create stakes in a scene. It’s a careful process of setting things up and then coming up with a scenario where the moment has major consequences. A lesser writer might’ve had Esty play in front of her best friend in the group. That would’ve lowered the stakes considerably. It needed to happen in front of this group to truly feel big.
Finally, when you’re writing character pieces, don’t be afraid to borrow from Hollywood storytelling. Unorthodox does that in two ways. The first is it creates a PURSUIT STORYLINE. You usually see pursuit storylines in big crime movies. Our murderers have escaped but we keep cutting back to the cop who’s close on their tail. This creates a sense of urgency in the story since we know that the antagonist is always closing in (you can also use Darth Vader closing in on Luke in Empire Strikes Back as an example).
Unorthodox does this with the husband and Moische. This was the best storytelling choice the writers made because one of the biggest reasons character pieces are so boring is because they’re so slow. Creating a storyline that adds urgency to the proceedings fixes that problem.
Another way Unorthodox borrows from Hollywood is the “buddy cop” trope. The buddy cop trope is when you pair up two opposing characters to ensure that whenever we cut to them, there’s always conflict. Yakov and Moische could not be more different. One is naive and meek and close-minded. The other is aggressive and intense and world-traveled.
This would’ve been a less interesting story if Yakov and Moische were equally timid and close-minded.
If you’re writing a low-concept character piece or a low-concept TV show, you’re going to want to check out Unorthodox. It understands where the pitfalls of this genre are and makes sure it has solutions to them. It knows that unless it entertains you, you won’t give a damn. So it always keeps entertainment at the forefront.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Treat your key story threads like sex. DON’T GIVE IT UP RIGHT AWAY! The reason that piano scene plays so well is because they built it up over a long period of time. There was a moment early in the story where Esty sits down at a piano in an empty room. She places her fingers on the keys. Weak writers would’ve had her play something amazing right then and there. “Oh,” they would’ve said to themselves while writing the scene, “she’s playing this beautiful piece to an empty room! It’s so powerful!!” No. No no, no no, and no again. What Unorthodox does is it cuts out before she plays anything, further building up the suspense of the piano storyline. This ensures that when she finally does play in front of all those people, the tension and suspense are at an all time high.
What I learned 2: Combine characters when possible! It always makes your script smoother. This script needed someone to teach Esty piano. The script also needed someone to help Esty escape. Of course you could’ve had two separate characters for each need. But why not combine them into a single character like Unorthodox did? — Incidentally, one of the easiest ways for me to spot a newbie writer is someone who adds a new character for every single task in the script. They never look to combine characters.
What I learned 3: Never limit yourself when adapting material. You have to think outside the box, even when the story you’re adapting is true. I find it fascinating that the writers here decided the stuff about the escape wasn’t enough and created this whole fictional present-day storyline as a way to add an extra, more accessible, layer to the story.
