The writer of the best-written show on television comes to us with his next Boob-Tube project. Will it take over the airwaves like Fargo?
Genre: Supernatural
Premise: A schizophrenic man living in a nuthouse falls in love with a fellow patient who he must team up with when outside forces descend upon them, believing that their illnesses are actually powers.
About: Noah Hawley is best known for bringing Fargo to television and creating the best anthology series, well, I’ve ever seen. This is his new show which will appear on FX. (note: I originally wrote this review having no idea that this was a Marvel character. Now that I now that, a lot of the weaknesses in this pilot make sense. This isn’t Hawley’s baby. He’s constrained by the ubiquitous Marvel universe).
Writer: Noah Hawley
Details: 62 pages
It’s been awhile since we’ve dipped into the TV waters but that’s only because there haven’t been any highly buzzed about projects out there. If you believe all the networks, there’s a scarcity of good 1-hour dramas being pitched. And why wouldn’t there be? There are now 100 suitors for projects as opposed to the old days, when there were 5. So yeah, television, get used to competition.
I’ve been all over Noah Hawley like syrup on pancakes, looking for anything in my archives he may have written. I excitedly found a script he wrote with his brother called Dead in the Water, only to realize I’d already reviewed it (it was good! here’s the review). I was particularly excited to find Legion, since TV appears to be what Hawley does best (though I’d bet we’ll see Hawley dominate the feature world soon enough). Will Legion turn Hawley into the next Ryan Murphy?
For as long as 30-something David Haller has been alive, he’s heard the voices in his head. Sometimes these voices tell him to do good things, but usually they tell him to do bad things. He’s fought these voices tooth and nail, but at a certain point, the battle was too intense for him to fight alone.
So David now lives in a psyche ward with a bunch of other crazies, existing on a steady cocktail of anti-psychotics, which seem to keep the voices at bay.
David’s life is turned upside-down when Sydney arrives, a beautiful young woman who’s, of course, crazy in her own way, as in she refuses to touch anyone. The two begin a unique romance whereby they can never touch, which only seems to make their love stronger.
Then one day Sydney gets better and has to leave, and that’s when things get fucked up. David rushes to finally kiss Sydney and when they kiss they… switch bodies???
This takes the script in a whole different direction. All of a sudden we’re flashing forward to an interrogation session between some guy named The Interrogator and David. He’s asking David about an “event” that happened in the hospital.
Jumping back and forth in time, we eventually learn that this event consisted of all the windows and doors in the facility disappearing, people being locked in rooms, some people being seared into the wall itself. Oh, and this seems to have happened because when Sydney jumped into David’s body, she used his special powers to wreak havoc on the ward. Or something like that. Confused? I know I am.
As we gradually move away from the backstory and to the present, David uses his powers to escape the Interrogator and reunite with Sydney. But for what? What kind of plan does Sydney have in store? We’ll have to see.
Wow.
Um.
I did not like this.
I mean, there’s a lot wrong here. From big things to little things. I’m kind of shocked that this is the same person who wrote Fargo.
For starters, there is no ground floor in Legion. There is nothing to hold this story up. As a result, we feel weightless, unsure, constantly searching for something to grab onto. And there’s nothing but a boatload of confusion.
Not only are we unsure if David’s crazy or not, but we’re also jumping around in time, turning a disorienting experience into an even more disorienting experience. The tipping point for me was when David and Syd kissed and switched bodies. Did we really just pull a Parent Trap? Then Sydney’s using David’s powers to sear people into walls? Why???
When you pose a question in a story, it’s supposed to make the audience want to know the answer. I didn’t care why Sydney and David switched bodies. I didn’t care why Sydney seared people into walls.
Somehow the two go back into their own bodies but it’s never explained how. I guess their consciousness took a wormhole back to the source body after getting bored? Talk about bizarre.
And there were little issues too. Like the dialogue. The characters— would talk— like this— where they would— always— pause— every few words— to find— the next— thing to say. Imagine reading an entire script like that. Wow.
And I kept hearing about these voices David was hearing. Yet we never hear what the voices actually say. It’s written as, “David keeps hearing the voices.” It seems like that would be a really important plot and character point to know what the voices say. Yet we never get one word. If it’s going to be on the screen, it needs to be on the page.
A much better version of this show would be Stranger Things, which has its share of weirdness. But it’s grounded by a clear storyline. A kid is missing. Another kid has escaped a nearby laboratory. This allows for the other characters to make logical choices based on these problems. Either they’re off looking for one kid or helping the one who escaped.
I don’t know what the hell David and Syd are doing. I suppose The Interrogator is trying to figure out what happened that day at the ward, but there are so many unknowns involved and so many weird choices (switching bodies?? really??) that we lose track of what the point of it all is.
I don’t know. Lost got beat up for its constant mindfuckery. This is Lost x 100 at least. Nothing is clear. Nothing is normal. Nothing is explained. It’s one “what the fuck” moment after the next.
Did I like anything here? I liked the character descriptions. TV shows are more character-dependent than features. So a description like, “Syd is in her 30s and a handful” doesn’t tell me a whole lot. Hawley goes 5-6 lines deep for his character descriptions, and I liked that. Here’s his Syd description:
And here’s what you need to know about Syd, aside from the fact that she doesn’t let anybody touch her: she still believes in happily ever after. Yeah, she knows it makes her a sucker — that it Puts Her At Risk — but she just can’t help herself. Hope is like an ember she can’t stamp out, a place in her heart that knows somehow, one day, things are gonna work out.
Anything that helps me understand a character better, I like. Because most of the time writers will neither describe a character in any kind of specific way or pace them through enough relevant action to help me understand who they are. Any trick you want to use to circumvent this issue, I support.
When you wrap your mysteries in enigmas that are already wrapped in mysteries, the audience isn’t going to know which way is up. And I don’t think the average person is going to be onboard for that. I mean sure, you’ll have your iowaska demographic firmly in hand. “Yeah, make shit even more confusing!” But I don’t think a show can sustain even a few episodes of this level of mind-fuckery, much less 7 seasons. People won’t have the patience.
I was really confused by this one, guys. And sadly disappointed.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: In TV, character is king. So make sure to fully define your characters. It doesn’t have to be via 6-line paragraphs, like Hawley does here. But the more specific you can be in defining your characters, the better. Unlike features, where plot is the engine, characters are the engine in television. Make them big, bright, unique, and specific. Oh, and if you’re having trouble figuring out what’s unique about your character, so will the audience.
Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A federal agent is sent to a crazed woman’s remote home when it’s discovered that she’s built a nuclear reactor to make contact with aliens.
About: The master of the 2016 spec sale is back at it. After a couple of 7 figure sales, Max Landis is back with the second script in his thematic trilogy. The first one was “Deeper.” This one is “Higher.” The third one will be… I’ll let you guys take some guesses in the comments.
Writer: Max Landis
Details: 90 pages – 3/29/16
Regardless of how you feel about Max Landis scripts, as a reader, they’re freaking golden. You know you’re going to be done in an hour at most.
I don’t know if Landis does this on purpose – understanding that the average person in Hollywood values a free hour more than they do their second child – or the famously prolific scribe gets an idea for another script midway through the first and finishes the script as fast as possible so he can write it. Either way, the reader benefits.
Another thing that happens during a Landis script is that it’s impossible to separate the script from the personality. No matter what you do, you can’t NOT have an image of Max Landis with one of his crazy hairdos (the one in my brain is the rainbow one) typing away on his computer in your head. And as a person who believes that a good screenplay should make you forget that someone’s written it, this isn’t preferable.
With that said, there’s always something to talk about after a Landis script, so let’s see what the viral video maven’s latest script has in store for us.
We meet Flynn, an FBI agent, in the midst of a very difficult moment. We don’t know why it’s so difficult. We just know he has to do something that he doesn’t want to do.
Then again, he’s in the middle of America, farmland as far as the eye can see. What could possibly be so terrible out here?
The target is a seemingly mundane barn. But when Flynn walks in, we see that the barn’s been retrofitted into some low-tech lab. There are jerry-rigged planks and walkways everywhere housing ancient computers that spit and sputter as if they’re on their last calculation.
That’s when we meet Polly, a 40-something woman who is the physical embodiment of that barn. She’s a mess. But a smart mess. There’s no denying that it took brains to come up with… whatever’s going on in here.
But Polly’s also lost it. She’s kind of built… well, she’s built a nuclear reactor. And she’s babbling on about aliens. It’s around this time that we learn Flynn isn’t just an agent. He’s Polly’s ex-husband. And he’s been sent here alone to try and talk Polly down, get her out of here so they can contain the reactor.
While Polly and Flynn verbally duke it out, we learn about their complicated past, we learn about why Polly believes aliens are coming to kill us, we learn about Polly’s disease (schizophrenia), and the FBI comes in to contain the situation.
Is Polly right about the aliens? If the Feds take her away, will it open our planet up to destruction? Only myself and Max Landis currently know. Locate Higher to find out for yourself!
Like I said in my previous Landis review, the guy writes scripts for the millennial. His stories move so fast, you feel like you should be reading them in an Uber while streaming Yeezy’s latest album on Tidal.
And while that may annoy some people, I remember when all those crusty Hollywood types bemoaned the influence of MTV and its “fast-cutting” culture when it came around, proclaiming it would ruin storytelling. Where are those guys now?
Might we be today’s crusty types by proclaiming the same thing? I mean you have Hell or High Water (formally “Comancheria”), a slow-as-molasses great script and great movie… that nobody has seen. If you guys want less Max Landis-y like scripts, why aren’t you going out to support Hell or High Water?
It’s the kind of hypocrisy that’s always been there with this argument. Audiences complain about the big cliche Hollywood movies but they don’t show up for the smaller smarter ones. Every ticket is a vote, guys. You tell the studios what you want with that vote. That’s how it’s always worked. So when you’re in line for Batman vs. Robin or whatever the hell DC has in store for us next, keep that in mind.
Anyway, back to Higher. Besides moving the story along quickly, Landis made another solid choice. He focused on the emotion. Once it’s revealed that Flynn is Polly’s ex-husband, the story becomes more than a “Is this woman nuts or not” story.
It’s about a man realizing how far his ex-wife has succumbed to her disease and knowing that the woman he fell in love with will never be back. It’s about reliving the pain of her breakdown, how it broke apart their family, and how it permanently broke Flynn.
That’s exactly what I tell you guys to do. If you want to know what separates amateur from pro, it’s when you start exploring characters on a deeper level. The best way to do that is through relationships. While it’s possible to only explore a character’s inner conflict, it’s always more interesting when there’s another player across the table.
Our fears and flaws are magnified best when there’s someone else to bring them out. There’s a moment in Higher where Flynn explains that the reason they found Polly was because her meth-head boyfriend ratted her out. “He’s not my boyfriend,” Polly says. “He’s just some guy I fuck.”
The way that hits Flynn – to see that this is how far the woman he loved has fallen – that she’s now fucking random meth-heads – that creates sympathy for the character. That creates context and complexity to the relationship we’re now watching. It turns a plot-centric script into a character-centric script.
But let me remind you that character exploration is NOTHING if it’s not contained within an entertaining story. If ALL you’re doing is exploring characters, that’s just as boring as ONLY constructing a plot. Entertaining the audience should always be paramount.
So we’ve established that Higher does some good things. But is it good?
This is the question I kept asking myself. And just the fact that I was asking myself is a bad sign. When you’re reading something you love, you don’t ask anything. You’re too busy enjoying the story.
The problem is, I’ve read so many “are they crazy or not” scripts at this point that they don’t do it for me anymore. Even as far back as Shutter Island I was getting tired of this setup. I don’t know if it’s because of the binary nature of the question. There’s only two answers, which feels simplistic. Or maybe I just don’t care if they’re crazy. Once you don’t care about the question, it doesn’t matter what the answer is. And that’s where I found myself on Higher. I didn’t care if there were aliens or she was nuts.
That’s too bad. Because Higher isn’t a bad script. It just [x] wasn’t for me.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Evolving information – the process by which information evolves over the course of the story. If it’s page 80 and we still only know what we knew on page 30, you’re not doing it right. So here, we start out only knowing that this barn has been retrofitted to conduct some sort of experiment. Then we find out it has a nuclear reactor. Then we find out the nuclear reactor is for a spaceship. Same on the character side. First, Flynn’s just some agent. Then it turns out he’s her husband. Then it turns out he left her because she has schizophrenia. Try to advance information once on the plot side and once on the character side every 10-15 pages.
THE WINNER OF WEEK 1 HAS BEEN LISTED BELOW
The Scriptshadow Tournament pits 40 amateur screenplays against each other that you, the readers of the site, will vote on. Ultimately, YOU will decide the winner. These are the first five entries. Read as much as you can from each of the entries and vote for the week’s winner in the Comments Section. Although it’s not required, your vote will carry more weight if you explain why you chose the script (doesn’t have to be elaborate, just has to make sense). I say “carry more weight” because a vote for a script without any explanation from an unknown voter may be seen as fake and not count towards the tally. I will announce the winner of this week here, in this post, on Sunday, 10pm Pacific time. That script will then go into the quarterfinals. Let the tournament begin and good luck to everyone!
Title: PREHISTORIC
Writer: Nicholas Malik
Genre: Action/Thriller
Logline: After a viral outbreak causes animals to de-evolve into their monstrous, prehistoric forms, a troubled CDC investigator races to the Manhattan epicenter to stop the virus and save his trapped son.
Title: BURNING BRIGADE
Writer: David Kushner
Genre: DRAMA/HISTORICAL/PERIOD
Logline: Based on true events, BURNING BRIGADE tells the story of the captured Jews forced by the Nazis to burn Holocaust victims, and their daring attempt to escape their captors.
Title: Cratchit
Writer: Katerine Botts
Genre: Mystery & Suspense, Fantasy
Logline: “A Christmas Carol” reimagined, told from the point of view of Bob Cratchit as he and Ebenezer Scrooge race to track down Jacob Marley’s killer — the same killer who now targets Scrooge and Cratchit’s son, Tiny Tim.
Title: The Honorable Doctor
Writer: Ben James Johnson
Genre: Sci-Fi/Thriller
Logline: In a dystopian future ravaged by a never-ending war, an insane military surgeon pits his enslaved cyborg experiments against a general’s men in a battle to the death.
Title: The Bait
Writer: Billie Bates
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Logline: An untrusting woman attempts to seduce men prior to marriage for concerned wives-to-be, but when she falls for her latest bait while he remains rocksteady in his denial of their mutual attraction, her world is turned upside down.
WINNER OF WEEK 1: “BAIT” by Billie Bates. Congratulations, Billie. Under the Scriptshadow Tournament rules, you may start incorporating changes into your script for its Quarterfinal Showdown. Good luck!
1) Fear of getting your idea stolen – Fear of getting your idea stolen is so synonomous with being a beginner that it’s a dead giveaway to your newbie-ness (the second I see a copyright number on the title page I know FOR A FACT that the script will not just be bad, but one of the most terrible scripts I read all year). You have to realize that in Hollywood, people are exchanging thousands of ideas all day long without worrying about those ideas getting stolen. Why? Because what’s the alternative? Keeping your ideas to yourself? Is the goal to have your idea die with you so you can brag in your will, “Haha! No one got their hands on my great movie idea!” The only way that anything is going to happen with your idea is if you get it out there, someone hears it and says, “Ooh, that sounds good, I want to take a look at that.” Otherwise, you’re hoarding an idea that probably isn’t as amazing as you think it is in the first place for no other reason than you’re irrationally petrified.
2) Dialogue – We talked about this the other day. Dialogue isn’t nearly as important as THE SITUATION that dictates the dialogue. Set up a good scene and good dialogue will flow. The exceptions are genres that celebrate dialogue, such as rom-coms, teen movies, and quirky character pieces.
3) Getting an agent – An agent cannot do ANYTHING for you if you’re not ready. In fact, an agent will even have trouble helping you if the last project you sold was a year ago. The only time an agent is good for you is when you’re desired by production companies that are coming to them with offers for your services. Once you are making an agent money, they will help you find the best project, send your scripts out with confidence, even get you onto projects you weren’t initially considered for. But let me stress that you first must MAKE THEM MONEY on a consistent basis for this to happen. If I had a dime for every time I heard a repped writer tell me their agent won’t return their calls, I could buy my own agency. Always be your own content generator and marketer first. When the buzz on your writing gets big enough, the agent will find you.
4) An emotional obsession with others’ success – There is this obsession by a large swath of screenwriters with any project that has been purchased, developed, produced or done well at the box office that they think “sucks.” I want to say this as gently as possible: WHO THE FUCK CARES!!?? If you’re so concerned with what everybody else is doing, you’re not putting your energy into what really matters, which is your own content. Listen, I hate that Transformers is a major franchise too. But how does that help me become a better writer? It doesn’t. It’s wasted energy is what it is. So stop worrying about it. Yes, you want to be aware of what’s doing well from a strategic point of view. But don’t let it emotionally encroach upon your screenwriting.
5) “Good writing” – Who the freck cares if your script is well-written? I don’t. And neither does Hollywood. All anybody cares about is IF YOU’VE WRITTEN AN ENGAGING STORY. I always ask writers, what story would you rather hear? A homeless person give you a rundown of how he just witnessed the president get assassinated? Or Stephen King tell you how he spilled his coffee on his new pants this morning? It doesn’t matter who the writer is if the story is weak. Whoever has the best story stands the best chance at engaging the reader.
6) The Nicholl – This antiquated contest is way past its prime. It celebrates non-marketable winners in an industry that’s obsessed with marketability. And while a few winners have gone on to have successful careers, not nearly enough do for a contest that has the highest number of submissions. What the Nicholl IS good for is seeing where you rank amongst your peers. It tells you what percentile you ranked in, which is typically accurate, and therefore allows you to gauge your progress as a writer. But as far as what the contest can do for you if you win, so many other contests have risen up over the years that give you much better industry access if you come out on top.
7) Talent – Talent is important. Don’t get me wrong. But it is NOT the most important factor for success. I’ve read lots of writers with talent who never went anywhere because they overestimated the importance of their talent and didn’t do the other things necessary to find success. I specifically remember a conversation a year ago with a recent Ivy League grad who was a talented writer. He shared with me his struggles. “I just don’t understand it,” he said. “I’ve succeeded in every aspect of my life. Why is this so hard?” Hmm, I thought. Well, for starters, you’ve been at this for all of SEVEN FUCKING MONTHS. Maybe that has something to do with it. But I didn’t say that out loud. What I did say was that the important components to screenwriting success are hard work and perseverance. This is the most technical of all the writing formats, which means it’s the least dependent on raw talent. You have to learn how to navigate the limited and awkward format that is screenwriting before you even have a chance at telling a good story. Work hard. Keep learning.
8) Features – I love features. I will continue to pimp them from now until the day I die. But if you’re not aware of a changing industry dictated by a young generation seeking entertainment on more platforms than ever before, you’re limiting yourself. Specifically, TV offers writers an amazing opportunity. You can still tell big stories, but now actually have the TIME to do them justice. Westworld, The Night Before, Stranger Things, Fargo. These writers are telling 6-12 hour movies here, not lame procedural TV shows like they used to make 15 years ago. Take advantage of this, guys. Did you know that the TV industry FREAKED OUT this pilot season because there wasn’t enough content being pitched to them? Keep writing features but don’t rule out television.
I hope these were helpful and feel free to add your own “overrated” observations in the comments section!
Genre: Drama/Dark Comedy
Premise: A young man attempts to recreate his suicidal sister’s failed high school prom, with the belief that it’s the only way to save her life.
About: This script finished on the low end of the 2014 Black List. The writer, Chai Hecht, hasn’t landed any major assignments yet off of his Black List finish, but has gotten a couple of his short films produced.
Writer: Chai Hecht
Details: 111 pages
So I was talking to a professional reader the other day and the conversation quickly turned to recent script reads and how most scripts fall into two categories.
The first is the Polarizing Category. These are scripts that create a reaction. Now that reaction may be positive OR negative. But at least it’s a reaction.
The second (and much bigger) category is the Safe Category. These are scripts that can also be perceived as good or bad, but the reaction isn’t strong.
Take the script, Lore, which I reviewed last month. I could appreciate the execution. I liked the overall story and understood why a studio would find it marketable. But it was all done in a very blase “Screenplay 101” way and therefore wasn’t polarizing.
On the flip side is “Deeper” by Max Landis. I didn’t like the script. But I have to admit, the thing took chances, it was different. It made me mad at times. And I still remember all the major story beats three months later. That was a polarizing script.
A good analogy is singers. Almost every singer that becomes extremely popular does so because they create a polarizing reaction. The people who have opinions on them have really strong opinions, good or bad. Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Kanye.
The funny thing is, even if you hate one of these artists, you can’t deny that the opinion you have of them is strong. I’ve never heard anyone say, “Kanye West is decent.” It’s either, “He’s a genius!” or “I fucking hate that guy.”
That’s what you’re aiming for when you write. You want people to have strong reactions. And for people to have strong reactions, you need to take chances in your story. You need to let your voice come out. You can’t try and please everybody or write “the technically perfect script.” Part of writing a great screenplay is being brave enough to go to strange places where you don’t know if it’s going to work. And really, that’s true for any artistry.
The reason I picked up In Real Time is because it seemed like it would be a script that, love it or hate it, I’d have a strong reaction to. Let’s see if I was right!
Oscar (or “Osc” as he’s known here) is a 28 year-old piece of shit. Well, maybe “piece of shit” is a strong term. He’s a con artist who pretends to be a door-to-door salesman and, once he gets inside the home, takes whatever looks valuable. Actually, yeah, he is a piece of shit.
Osc hasn’t seen his mother, Lauralie, or sister, Agnus, for a decade. But that changes when he learns that Agnus just tried to commit suicide and is being held in the hospital for two weeks on precautionary measures.
Osc zips back into town and rushes to see his sis, who he loves more than anyone in the world. He realizes that the second Agnus gets out of the hospital, she’s going to complete the deed, and therefore he needs a plan to save her life.
He runs into his old flame, Nicole, the most beautiful girl in town, who still loves him dearly. Nicole is trying to bring awareness to illegal jaywalking by jaywalking back and forth across major streets.
The two investigate what could’ve made Agnus suicidal, and Osc remembers Agnus said the last day she was happy was June 15, 2003, her senior prom.
Osc and Nicole believe that everything went great on that night up until Agnus’s date didn’t kiss her. So Osc plans something spectacular. He’s going to recreate the prom and get her old date to kiss her at the end of the night.
All of this is complicated by Osc’s mom being a nutjob who wants to do things her own way and also by the fact that Osc doesn’t have any money to pull this off. But Osc will stop at nothing to save his sis’s life. Even if there’s no guarantee of success.
I was hoping for In Real Time to be a biting dark comedy in the way that Charlie Kaufman might have treated this. Instead, I got something akin to a John Greene collaboration.
We’ve got a girl who’s going to die (a girl always needs to be dying in a John Greene novel!). We have a quirky romance brewing on the side. We have a strange attractor driving the narrative (the prom recreation).
From a screenwriting standpoint, the foundation is here. GOAL: Recreate Prom. STAKES: His sister’s life. URGENCY: 2 weeks (the second Agnus gets out of the hospital).
That was actually the most clever story point. I admire when a writer can organically insert urgency into his story. “A man must rid his house of a ghost in under 24 hours!” is a typical example of how you can force false urgency onto a story.
Being held at the hospital after a suicide is a real thing. So it felt organic.
But the rest of this script felt like the typical “quirky romance script” every writer writes early on in their career. No judging. I wrote one too. We all do.
The problem with these scripts is that they all scream out, “My early career quirky romance script!” The star isn’t the engaging story. It’s the quirk. And when you make the quirk the priority, it never works. I mean the jaywalking thing is the perfect example. Never in a MILLION YEARS would a real person ever do that.
Then how has John Greene managed to pull off his career? I don’t know. I haven’t seen either of his films. But I did read Nuestadter and Weber’s adaptation of his book, and I can tell you that their focus was not the quirk, but rather the emotion. They didn’t want to gimmick you. They wanted you to fall in love with these characters. And I didn’t see that priority here. This gimmick was definitely the priority.
And that’s important to note. Because when you “gimmick” the reader, you focus on the wrong things, especially in a talky script like this. You’re keen on “cool” or “quirky” dialogue rather than exploring the emotion in the scenes.
The emotion is always what the audience connects with the most. They might not say that. They might even outright tell you they don’t want it. But their favorite movies are almost always movies where they connect with the characters on an emotional level.
And that’s not to say there isn’t an attempt at emotion here, but it’s misguided or something. Osc seems to be battling something within himself but I was never sure what it was. Is he battling the fact that he’s a fuck-up? That he left his family? It’s never clear, so I don’t know what I was supposed to be emotional about!
And the most emotion-potent story thread, that between Osc and his sister, is neutered by the fact that we barely spend any time with his sister! She’s cooped up in this hospital room so we never see her. This puts the bulk of the emotional weight on Nicole, and Nicole just isn’t that interesting (probably because there was so much emphasis put on the quirk – the jaywalking stuff – rather than making her a real person).
So which category does In Real Time get left in? I’m afraid the second one – “Safe.” It does take chances, but those chances never feel organic. They seem forced on the story. Therefore, when the best part of the story arrives, the prom, it’s too little too late. We’re not as invested as we should be. It’s too bad. Cause this concept had potential.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Never let the quirk be the priority. That’s not to say you shouldn’t take chances or go to unique places. But choices shouldn’t be made so you can say, “Look at how unique I can be!” Choices need to first stem naturally from the story for the quirk to work.
