So, this Friday was the much buzzed-about Severance finale. Word on the street was that it was better than even the beloved first season finale. Well, I binged the last three episodes and have, unfortunately, decided to terminate my show innie and no longer show up at the Severance offices.
There are a couple of reasons why, both screenwriting related. The first is the lack of variation in the tone of the show. It is sad slow scene after sad slow scene after sad slow scene after sad slow scene. Sure, the finale had a lot of craziness. But the three episodes before that made me want to commit show suicide with how slow and depressing they were.
Severance initially struck the perfect balance between ‘serious’ and ‘fun’ in that first season cause it had Dylan, who always provided levity. And it had this fun mystery component to it – a ragtag group of offbeat anti-heroes try to find a way out of a dungeon. But this new season was too slow and sad for my taste. The field trip episode and the “Harmony goes back to her hometown” episode destroyed the series for me. I only watched the last couple of episodes because I heard people saying the finale was so great.
The other reason the show isn’t for me is because it’s too intelligent. It’s rare that anyone says that these days. The Hollywood system seems to be designed to make sure stupidity reigns. But maybe this is why Apple TV is losing a billion dollars a year. Cause they don’t care about following the rules.
I don’t always understand what’s going on in the series or what’s at stake or what the rules are or what the heroes are trying to accomplish, and it takes away from my enjoyment. (Spoiler) In the last episode, I was struggling to understand which Mark was which and why he wanted one girl over the other and which of those versions wanted which of those girls, since every character had two versions of themselves (I think his wife actually had 26 versions of herself) that were constantly switching back and forth. Trying to figure out what was happening began to feel like work rather than fun.
By the way, I don’t begrudge anyone who loves this show. I admire how unique it is. I admire how many creative risks they take. But it’s too sad and too complex for me. That’s all. So say goodbye to Severed Carson. DING!
Back to Outie Carson!!!
And you know what Outie Carson loves? He looooovvveeeees White Lotus.
This night’s episode may as well have been titled “The Aftermath.” The entire episode focuses on the aftermath of the big party last night. For the three women friends, they’re dealing with Jacyln secretly sleeping with Valentin (despite Jaclyn encouraging Laurie to hook up with him all night). For poor Saxon, he’s got to deal with the drunken memory of hooking up with his brother – yikes. For Belinda, she finally slept with fellow masseuse, Pornchai. And Timothy, the father, was seconds away from committing suicide last night.
From a dramatic standpoint within the context of screenwriting, the aftermath is rarely interesting. Why? Because stories fly the highest when characters are going after things and being active. In the aftermath, characters are merely dealing with the memories of being active. And that can never be as compelling as the actual active stuff. Usually.
I say “usually” because there was a little movie called The Hangover built entirely around the aftermath. And I’m pretty sure that movie did okay. But note how it achieved that feat. It placed a ticking time bomb on the story (missing groom 24 hours before the wedding) that forced the characters to be active once again.
You can feel the problems present in this episode due to its dependence on the aftermath format. There’s a laziness to the scenes – a quiet slow pace (a lot of lying around) that doesn’t inspire a ton of plot movement.
The one plot development the show had was Piper’s visit to the Buddhist temple, where she’s hoping to study next year. But first she has to convince her parents, who will come along for the ride and meet the head monk. So, at least here, we have some activity. We have activity because we have a goal – Piper needs her parents to approve of the temple so they’ll send her here.
But let’s be honest. This is probably the weakest storyline in the series. So we don’t care that much. It’s a good reminder that the mechanics of storytelling can only do so much for you. You still have to create storylines we care about. And those boil down to inspired creative decisions, which Mike White is usually great at. But when you’re coming up with a dozen character storylines, some are, naturally, going to end up at the bottom.
What I did like about this storyline, though, was that the monk turned out to be helpful. We’ve been building up to this moment for six episodes and most writers probably would’ve made Piper’s meeting with the monk a disappointment. Maybe make him an asshole, or not care about her, or worse. Mike White does the unexpected, though, and has the monk be supportive, helpful, and even reenergize the dad.
The more I think about this episode, the stranger I find the decision behind episode five to be. Cause Mike White basically creates a mini-climax to the show. A lot happened last week. Which requires him to waste this entire sixth episode on rebooting everybody. I feel like there was a better way to do that. One way would’ve been to make the big party episode 4 instead. Cause that would’ve been midway through the season and a good “midpoint” plot marker. By making it episode 5, it throws the last three episodes out of balance.
There are two other lightweight attempts at adding some activity to the episode. The first is security guard Gaitok needing to get the gun back from Timothy, who covertly stole it a couple of days ago. And the second is Rick’s (Walton Goggins) Beijing trip where he’s attempting to orchestrate the murder of the man who killed his father.
In regards to Gaitok’s storyline, something about it isn’t revving on all cylinders. Technically, when I break it down, the stakes are high. Gaitok needs to retrieve the gun before his boss finds out because if his boss finds out, he’ll surely be fired. And, if he’s fired, there’s no way love-of-his-life, Mook, will go out with him.
And yet it never feels like he’s truly in danger of anything bad happening to him. There’s something missing from that storyline that makes the stakes feel low. One possibility is the “connect-the-dots” approach. This is when you build stakes around a series of dots that the reader must connect in order to understand the severity of the situation. For example: Joe has to let his daughter go to a concert (dot 1) so that he’s in good standing with her (dot 2), because she’s friends with another girl at school (dot 3) whose father happens to be the CEO of a compay Joe wants to work for (dot 4) that’s having an event he wants to be invited to (dot 5), etc. At a certain point, we lose interest in keeping track of the stakes. It’s always better if the stakes are upfront and clear.
As for Rick’s murder plan, that storyline actually has some potential but holy Moses is it developing slowly. Wow is that storyline moving at a snail’s pace.
All in all, it’s a tough episode for my idol, Mike White. He kind of painted himself in a corner, making his job difficult. But in spite of all this, I still think it was a solid episode. I’m fascinated by Saxson’s character and watching him realize what he did last night and how he’s going to mentally deal with that moving forward in his life.
There were also little moments I enjoyed, such as wife Victoria telling Timothy that if they ever lost all their money, she wouldn’t want to live. This is classic Screenwriting 201 stuff here, with dramatic irony driving the exchange. We know what Victoria doesn’t know yet. Which is that they *have* lost all their money. So seeing Patrick realize the effect this realization is going to have on his wife is fun stuff.
Look, Seasons 1 and 2 of The White Lotus are perfect television. I realized that could not be replicated a third time. But it’s still good. I care about a lot of these people and I’m excited to see how this ends.
Two episodes left!
By the way, everyone, THE SCENE SHOWDOWN IS THIS WEEK! You have until Thursday to get your scenes in. Here are the submission details.
What: Scene Showdown
Rules: Scene must be 5 pages or less
When: Friday, March 28
Deadline: Thursday, March 27, 10pm Pacific Time
Submit: Script title, Genre, 50 words setting up the scene (optional), pdf of the scene
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
