Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: A group of illegal time travelers must perform the, quite literally, heist of the century, in an attempt to steal a special time piece that, when operated, will change the course of history.
About: This script sold to Original Films and Paramount recently in a competitive situation. I didn’t realize it when I read “Relay,” but the writer, Macmillan Hedges, wrote a Black List script from a couple of years ago called Cosmic Sunday. So my entire review of this script was written before I went back and found that out. I only bring that up because, if I had known, I would’ve been better prepared for what I read today.
Writer: MacMillan Hedges
Details: 119 pages

Now today’s script is more my speed.

We’ve got time travel.

We’ve got heists.

We’ve got… well, do we need anything more than time travel and heists?

Let’s find out.

When we meet Jack Ledger, he’s stealing something from the past while being chased by his nemesis, Zoey Beckett, a time travel cop determined to take him down. This chase is special because, although they are in a foot race in the 100 year old Bismark Hotel in San Francisco, they are jumping through pockets of time. It’s 1910, it’s 1953, it’s 1969, it’s 1992. We have no idea what’s going on here and, unless you received a 1600 on your SATs, you’ll probably never find out.

Jack is able to escape to 2025 (our present) but his criminal boss, Whitechapel, betrays him, siding with Beckett and sending Jack to prison. Ten years later, Jack is released. And Jack knows why he’s released. It’s so that Whitechapel can track him to all his other time travel buddies so he can put them in the slammer as well!

Jack doesn’t care. He’s got other things on his mind. He wants to break into “the vault,” the basement of the time travel headquarters. It’s there where all the things that have been stolen from the past are being kept, including his “timepiece,” the special thing that allows you to travel through time (I think – more on that later).

To achieve this feat, Jack will need to construct a crew of people throughout time… and some from the present. Or maybe mostly from the present and a couple from throughout time. It’d be cool if they were all from throughout time but since this script was so confusing, I can’t definitively say where everyone was from. The point is, he needs to construct a “Mission Impossible” crew.

Oh, by the way, we’re told how time travel works here. During the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, a fault line was established that reconstructed time and space. Any structure along that fault line can be used to travel back through time. The older the building, the further back you can travel. Which is why really old buildings in San Francisco are so valuable to time travelers.

Anyway, for reasons that are still confusing to me, you can’t just go steal something and bring it back to the future. It’s better if you use the “relay” technique. This is where you set all your crew members in different years, and then have each heist member in the chain give it to a person who then puts it in a pouch, where it is then picked up many years later by someone else, who then puts it in another pouch and hides it for someone 30 years from then, and so on and so forth. We’re told this is done because it’s harder for the time police to catch you, if I’m to understand the rules correctly.

The ultimate goal seems to be retrieving Jack’s old timepiece. Unfortunately, we won’t know why he needs the time piece until the very end. So hold onto your shorts and get ready for one final wild twist!

Today’s script is a giant reminder that when you write time travel movies, they need to be simple. In a way, Back to the Future ruined time-travel movies because they made it look so effortless. In reality, getting these things right is nearly impossible, which is why you have to rewrite them to death. That’s what Gale and Zemeckis did. They rewrote Back to the Future so many times, their typewriters broke.

Nobody does that anymore. As a result, you get scripts like this, which have all these big ideas, but you need an industrial sized shovel to dig all those ideas up and assemble them into any sort of cohesive narrative.

The number one rule of time travel scripts is: DON’T OVERCOMPLICATE THE TIME TRAVEL PART. It’s clear, here, that the Relay rules only make sense to the writer and no one else. I don’t say that flippantly because it’s a mistake all screenwriters have made at one point or another. They write a script with incredibly complex rules and simply assume that because it makes sense to them, it’ll make sense to the reader as well.

Here’s the information we’re given about time travel in the first act. There’s something called a “timepiece” that you must have in order to time travel. I think. I’d say I’m 80% sure about that. But when you steal things in the past, instead of, you know, just taking them back with you, you for some reason have to put them in “time caches.” Little pouches. And then, in the future, you can conceivably retrieve your pouch and retrieve what’s in it.

Except you can’t just create a time pouch in 1910 and pick it up in 2025. You must have someone pick it up in 1930 and put it somewhere else. And then someone else pick it up in 1960 and move it. And then someone pick it up in 1980 and move it. And so on and so forth until we reach 2025.

Anyway, so our hero, Jack, rescues his buddy, Brigance, in 1910. They then jump to 1951. Keep in mind, I was told that you needed a timepiece to time travel and we were told that Jack got his revoked from the time travel police in the opening scene. So they don’t tell us how he is still able to jump back to 1910. They only tell us, in a side note, that “it will be explained later.” I’m serious. That’s an actual note in the script.

So I’m guessing that they jumped to 1951 because Brigance had a timepiece and he used it for both of them? Maybe. Who knows? But, for some reason, despite Brigance being able to jump them to 1951, he can’t jump them any further. For that, they need Jack’s timepiece, which is in a local church that is acting as the time travel police headquarters. I do not think the police have the timepiece in this year, though. I believe it’s still in 2025. Which is funny, cause we then jump to 2025. Except I thought we couldn’t jump to 2025……..

I think you get the idea of how confusing this is. But in case you don’t, here’s a standard line of exposition from the movie: “First we need to acquire equipment, map out each time period in The Upstart, place TimeCaches for each handoff through time and acclimatize to our designated time periods — find the specific moment for each change to the alt. timeline.” And another: “The VaultMaker never worked in The Upstart. But Whitechapel will keep a descendent nearby. As a security protocol. So we need to find that descendent. That’s how we can get access to the vault.”

Not that anyone who’s producing this will listen to me but I am making a promise to the producers of this movie that if they don’t massively – and I mean MASSIVELY – simplify the time travel in this script, this movie will fail. I know this because I have read every single time travel script of significance from the last 30 years. I know which ones succeed and I know which ones fail. And the ones that fail are the ones that have massively overly complicated rules such as this one.

I was so disappointed by this script, I can’t even tell you. I was thrilled when I saw it in my e-mail, particularly after yesterday’s yawner. Finally, we have a cool new script in a genre I like! But within the first ten pages, I knew the script was toast. Literally nothing made sense. All this crazy stuff was happening with no context for how it was happening. It was like watching a really intense dramatic dialogue scene in a foreign film without subtitles. You see that everyone in the scene is really emotional yet you can’t understand a single word they’re saying.

If I take a step back, I think I can understand the writer’s vision here: Let’s make a big time travel heist movie. In theory, I love that idea. And, if I’m making an argument for the script, the writer *is* doing what I tell everyone who writes high concepts to do. He’s creating a story that can only exist inside his movie and no other. The heist here is extremely unique.

But there are very few movies that can work which are swallowed up by exposition. And here’s something it’s pivotal to remember as a screenwriter: You decide how much exposition your script will need when you decide how many rules your script will have. The more rules you have, the more explaining you will have to do. That’s what doomed this script. There were so many darn rules that the characters spent the whole movie explaining them, and even when you’re doing your best as a writer to get all of the rules into the screenplay, it won’t matter if there’s too much to keep track of. I tell this to writers all the time: readers are not robots. We don’t simply download whatever you write. There is a limit to what we can process. And scripts like this stretch beyond our processing limits.

Everything needs to be massively simplified here for it to have a shot at being a good movie.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Since you will inevitably ask the question, well then how did this sell? It’s the perfect example of the value of coming up with a big exciting concept. If people love your concept enough and want to make your movie, they will overlook weaknesses in your script. And the more they like the concept, the more they’ll overlook. This combined with the fact that The Tomorrow War set off an industry-wide need for big sci-fi ideas, and that’s how we came to this sale.

Genre: Drama?
Premise: In 1992 a seaplane crash in a lakefront community sparks a relationship between three young sisters and the mysterious, injured female pilot.
About: This script finished Top 30 on last year’s Black List. Jessica Granger has been writing on some TV shows over the last few years. Most recently, she wrote an episode of the La Brea.
Writer: Jessica Granger
Details: 103 pages

There are some scripts you pick up and, within minutes of finding out what they’re about, know there’s very little chance of you liking them. They just aren’t your thing. And that’s fine. Not every movie has to be for everyone. But this is where it becomes challenging to review a script because if you’re bored by the subject matter, it can be hard to gauge whether the script is any good or not.

I do know this. Regardless of whether I enjoy the subject matter, I can tell when dialogue is good. I can tell when a writer’s voice is fresh and unique. I didn’t like the highly controversial screenplay, “Get Home Safe.” I, in fact, hated it. But there’s no way I was denying that voice. That voice was stronger than any script that came out that year.

So I guess I’m saying, there are ways to determine if a script has value even if the subject matter isn’t to your liking. And that’s what I’ll be looking for today.

The year is 1992. It’s rural Connecticut. A beautiful place with lots of trees and lakes. But you wouldn’t know if it you talked to our 16 year old protagonist, Isla. Isla hates Connecticut and wants nothing more than to get out of this miserable town as soon as possible. Her younger sisters Elliot (13) and June (10) are a little more tolerant of their town. But maybe they just need to catch up to Isla in age and then they’ll want to escape as well.

One day, while canoeing in their lake, a small plane crashes in the nearby water. They hurry over and help the pilot, Sky (30s, half African-American), until the boat medics can show up. Later, they learn that Sky is the daughter of some guy from around here who just died. That and she’s really mysterious. She left here when she was Isla’s age and hasn’t been back since!

The mystery is answered not long after it’s posed. Sky is gay. And her father didn’t approve. So she ditched town and became a bush pilot. That’s not a play on words, I promise. She came back for the funeral and, once she’s heeled up, she’s going to leave again.

The girls take an interest in Sky, especially Isla, who finds her cool and empowering. So they make up two excuses to hang around her. One, Isla wants to interview Sky for a local radio show she does. And two, they’re going to help her fix up the crashed plane so it can fly again. Sky is resistant at first, but eventually warms to Isla, seeing a bit of herself in her, and the four develop a friendship, if only for this one summer.

So, since I can tell you’re all dying to know: Did the script make up for the subject matter with a strong voice and kick-ass dialogue?

Unfortunately, no. The dialogue was standard. And I would actually categorize this as the poster child for a voice-less script. That sounds like a diss but it actually isn’t. Not every script needs the overly-inflected voice of its author telling the story with flash and panache. One of my favorite directors ever, Robert Zemeckis, was known for having no voice. He just wanted to tell a good story.

But therein lies the problem with Candlewood. I just don’t think it’s a good story. It took me forever to figure out what the story actually was. For a long time it seemed like it was about three sisters getting to know a random bland 30 year old woman. There were no goals. The stakes were lower than sea level. And the urgency was non-existent.

Eventually, I realized, it was a coming-of-age story.

It was about this girl, Isla, trying to figure out what to do with her life. A young person living in a small town that they want to escape is the pre-text for some successful movies. But it was all told in this really blasé casual way where nothing ever felt that important.

I think that Sky being gay was supposed to be this intense plot point that made the story feel big and important. But there are so many movies and TV shows covering this subject matter right now that sexual preference goes right through the front of the head and out the back for the large majority of audience members. You gotta give us more than “Character X is gay” to move the interest needle.

I think the big mistake this script made was one I encounter every so often. Which is that when you write these “stuck in a small town coming-of-age” stories, the tendency is to have the story mirror the slow lazy environment of the setting. But if you do that, you risk the story feeling too casual. Which is exactly what this felt like.

One of the ways to offset this is to include some monster stakes. Make the stakes sky-high. That way even though the story is slow, we feel like it’s building toward an important conclusion. Sky had zero stakes attached to her story. And I didn’t give a crap if Isla left town or not. To be honest, I found her ungrateful. She grew up in this idyllic town and her single mother is doing everything she can to prepare her for life and it’s not enough for her.

When it comes to coming-of-age stories, I much prefer when writers come up with a PLOT. Instead of plopping your characters down in a town and having them wander about, dealing with whatever randomness comes up that day, give them something big and important to do. The classic example that comes to mind is Stand by Me. They could’ve easily written that movie so that the four kids stayed in town and dealt with jerky bullies for 2 hours. But by creating this road-trip aspect, they provided their coming-of-age movie with purpose and structure. Going on that trip to find the dead kid is what made it feel like a movie.

I think the hope here was that Sky was a strong enough hook to make this a movie. She was, in theory, just as compelling as four kids traveling by themselves through the woods to find a dead body. I couldn’t disagree more. I found her to be both boring and predictable. Again, we’re seeing gay characters doing so much more these days than deal with parents who don’t accept their sexual preference. I feel like that’s a very dated storyline. And yes, I know this is set in 1992, but that doesn’t give you a pass. It’s still dated character storyline.

There wasn’t anything in this script I could connect with, unfortunately.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: I think writers still make the mistake of forgetting that they’re writing A MOVIE. The two hours that someone sits down to watch a movie must be time significantly better spent than doing something else. A movie is supposed to be a special experience. It’s supposed to be something someone leaves thinking, “Wow, am I glad I saw that.” Writing a slow casual story where the biggest plot moments register a 3.3 on the Richter scale, that’s not good enough. Or else write for TV. TV allows for these slower stories to take shape. But not movies. Movies need some thunder behind them. And this script was a light drizzle.

REMINDER: A quick reminder that you have one month left! The month of March on Scriptshadow will be me guiding you through your first act. Which means you still have a month to figure out a great concept. If you’re on the fence and need feedback, I do logline evaluations for $25. You get a 150-300 word analysis, a logline rewrite, and a 1-10 rating. My threshold for whether a concept is “write-worthy” is a 7 out of 10. So you’ll instantly know if you have a keeper on your hands. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you need help.

Flashbacks.

Around here we call them “flashbads.” Cause it’s never a good time to use flashbacks.

Remind me again why that is, Carson. It’s because movies work best when every scene pushes the story forward. When you’re flashing back, you are obviously violating that rule. I mean, the word “back” is literally inside the word “flashback.” That should tell you everything you need to know.

This topic is all up in my face this year because The Book of Boba Fett is obsessed with flashbacks. The majority of the first four episodes were set in the past.

Now I don’t want to get too sidetracked but since I think it’s part of the larger picture, I’ll bring it up: The Book of Boba Fett is a total mess. The last two episodes have contained three seconds of Boba Fett…… IN A SHOW CALLED ‘THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT!’

There’s clearly something weird going on behind the scenes. I don’t know what it is. But this cannot have been the original plan. My theory is that they didn’t complete the overall set of scripts for The Book of Boba Fett, necessitating that they pull in the first few episodes of Mandalorian Season 3, which had already been shot, and shoehorn them into this show.

The reason I bring this up in relation to today’s article is because the flashback issue in Boba Fett is clearly a symptom of a bigger problem. They didn’t know what to do with this series. They didn’t have a story. And when you don’t have a story, you run in place. Think about it. How can you move your characters forward if you don’t know where they’re going?

That’s when, as writers, we get these ideas that we think are good at the time – “Let’s go back to Boba’s past and see how he got here” – when in reality, we’re procrastinating the story. We’re writing about sh*t that doesn’t matter since it’s set in the past. No matter how much depth it adds to the character, you still haven’t moved the present-day story forward, and that’s caused the audience to get bored.

Which brings me to Station 11.

Station 11 is this weird show on HBO Max. It covers a pandemic that wipes out 99% of the population. And we cut to 20 years later where a traveling Shakespeare Theater Company goes from apocalyptic small town to apocalyptic small town, putting on plays. The central character is a woman named Kirstin, who tends to play the lead character in all their plays.

The structure of Station 11 is a bit schizophrenic. While we do spend a fair amount of time with the Shakespeare Company, we’re constantly flashing back to before the pandemic, to the early days of the pandemic, and to a year after the pandemic.

And we’re doing it with multiple characters. Sometimes we follow Young Kirstin and the man who saved her, Jeevan. Sometimes we’re covering movie star Arthur, a man who died of the virus on day 1 but who’s left a strong influence on many of the other characters, including Kirstin, who was in his play. Sometimes we’re covering headstrong Miranda, who was once married to Arthur, and who has written a graphic novel called “Station 11” that plays into the story in a myriad of ways.

Anyway, something funny happened as I took in the first few episodes of the show. I found that I enjoyed the flashbacks. And not just enjoyed. I looked forward to them! Being a person who loves to deal in absolutes, this blew up my newfound theory that The Book of Boba Fett had enshrined upon my screenwriting coda – that all flashbacks were bad. Obviously, flashbacks could be good. So what was it that Station 11 did that Book of Boba Fett did not?

Before I answer that, let me first acknowledge that when it comes to flashbacks, more so than many other aspects of screenwriting, there is gray area. It’s not always clear why flashbacks don’t work sometimes and do work other times. What I do know, however, is that they usually don’t work. Which is why I advise against using them. But since there are examples of them working, it’s worth figuring out why.

The biggest reason that The Book of Boba Fett flashbacks failed is because they filled in a storyline that was unnecessary to know. There was nothing about Boba Fett being helped by sand people that affected the present day story. It affected a few things about his character, such as the way he fought. It also made him more forgiving and nicer.

But one of the best ways to identify whether a flashback is needed is to ask yourself, “Does the present day story suffer if I get rid of this flashback?” I would argue, 100 times out of 100, that nothing in the present day story changes if you eliminate Boba’s flashbacks. That’s how you know they’re not needed. “Let’s get to know him a little better” is never a good motivation to write flashbacks. Flashbacks need to do more than that to justify their existence.

One of my favorite storylines in Station 11 is the relationship between Young Kirstin and Jeevan. What happens is that Jeevan is at a play right before the pandemic. Spoilers, obviously. In the play, Arthur dies onstage. In the chaos that ensues, Young Kirstin, who has a part in the play, has no one to take her home. So Jeevan reluctantly offers to take her. But when they get to her house, nobody is home. So Jeevan has to take her back to his place. That’s when he gets the phone call about the virus and Jeevan and Young Kirstin get stuck together as the virus cascades over the city.

When we cut to the 20-years-later storyline, we have Kirstin. But we have no Jeevan. And here’s where Station 11 establishes why its flashbacks actually matter. We now want to know what the hell happened to Jeevan. Why is he gone? It’s a mystery. And every time we cut back to Young Kirstin and Jeevan, we get a little more information on what happened to them.

In addition to this, the writers of Station 11 established conflict between Jeevan and Young Kirstin. He’s resentful towards Kirstin. He was supposed to be able to leave her at her home and go. Instead, he’s been made responsible for this girl, which is something he never wished for. So there’s a burden there that creates an ongoing unresolved conflict between the two. And the reason that’s relevant is because conflict is what generates entertainment in scenes. If the two were hunky-dory, their scenes would not be interesting. It’s the fact that he doesn’t want to be responsible for this girl, combined with the fact that he isn’t around in the future, which has us asking, “What happened?” And makes us actually look forward to the flashbacks.

Another big flashback sequence occurs in episode 5. In this flashback, Clark, an actor who used to do stage work with Arthur before Arthur became a movie star, gets stuck at a small airport at the early stages of the pandemic. At first, everyone at the airport thinks it’s your average delay. But, the next thing you know, it’s been five days, and then ten, and then 30. So we watch it play out as the people realize they’re stranded here. This is their new home.

Theoretically, this episode should not work. Up to this point, Clark has been an ancillary character. All of a sudden, he’s getting his own episode. Shouldn’t this fall under the same blanket as the Boba Fett episodes? Will the present day story still work if this flashback is eliminated? It probably would. And yet, this was one of the best episodes of the series. Why?

This is where we enter the gray area of screenwriting theory. The reason this flashback episode works is because it’s a really good story. You’ve got all the ingredients for a good story in place. These people get stuck at the airport. A worldwide pandemic hits in real time. They realize nobody’s coming for them. They have to live there. They have to make rules. There are some people who don’t like the rules so they push back, causing conflict. At a certain point, one of them may be infected. The actions the group takes towards the infected character up the intensity considerably. We’re curious if the airport group is going to make it or if they’ll implode. It’s an interesting story.

In the spirit of debate, I would bet that the writers of Boba Fett would argue that Boba being captured by the sand people was, likewise, a good story. That the viewers would be caught up with what the sand people did to him and how he escaped them. And they’d love the fact that Boba eventually befriended the sand people and they worked together to take on the bad guys who were raiding their land.

This is where storytelling becomes subjective. I thought that storyline was C+ at best. It wasn’t very compelling. We never got to know any of the sand people well enough to care that their land was being stolen. The drama was mild. The plot development was standard stuff we’ve seen a million times before. You never felt like you NEEDED to know what happened next. Whereas, with that airport episode in Station 11, there were several developments (one of which included a plane full of dead infected people) that definitely pushed the plot forward in interesting ways.

That may be what flashbacks come down to. If you can justify a flashback’s existence (it must affect the present-day story in some purposeful way) then it comes down to the exact same challenge you deal with in writing your present-day stuff: Are you telling a good story? The airport story was way more intricate, way better thought-out, and had way better reveals, than the sand people storyline in Boba Fett. So we were more eager to see it through.

But just remember this. While a film or a show can withstand slow scenes here and there, it cannot withstand slow scenes IN ADDITION TO a slog of a flashback story. Which is why it’s so important to scrutinize the addition of flashbacks. A lot of writers just add flashbacks to fill up the time. They don’t add them because they’re essential or because they want to use them to tell a story they can’t tell in the present. And that’s what you need to do to justify your use of flashbacks.

Now some of you might be saying, “But Carson. You’re talking about TV shows here. They have a different set of rules than movies.” That’s true but it’s also false. Let’s be real. TV shows have become long movies in disguise. So they should still operate under that same mantra of: KEEP THE STORY MOVING FORWARD. That’s not to say you can never use flashbacks. But if you do, they better be justified. And they better be damn entertaining.

Anybody else see Station 11? What did you think about the flashbacks?

Genre: Comedy
Premise: Mickey Rourke loses his mind after he’s forced to take a gig on television’s highest rated show: The Masked Singer.
About: This script finished Top 25 on the most recent Black List. Believe it or not, it’s kind of based on a true story. Mickey Rourke really did appear on The Masked Singer (something I did not know when I originally saw the logline) and randomly took his mask off while being interviewed after his first performance, unintentionally (or intentionally?) disqualifying himself. Maybe Mickey didn’t know the rules?
Writer: Mike Jones & Nicholas Sherman
Details: 94 pages

We’ve had a long and winding journey with comedy scripts on this site. The short of it is that 99.99999% of them don’t do well. Even the ones that are funny don’t have enough laughs in them to justify their existence. I’ve long struggled with whether this is more about me having read too many comedies and therefore being numb to overused jokes or if it’s more the fault of the writers, who aren’t delivering.

Well, this weekend’s mini-binge of Peacemaker reminded me that when you have a group of funny characters and a writer who’s good with dialogue, you’re funny, even to people who have read a million comedy scripts before and know what to expect. In other words, no excuses.

Since this was the funniest premise on this year’s Black List, I felt if any script had a shot at making me laugh, it was this one. Let’s find out if I was right.

Mickey Rourke had one hell of a career in the 80s and early 90s. The script lets us know just how good he had it, giving us all the movies he turned down (Bad Boys, The Big Chill, Caddyshack, Dead Poets Society, Platoon, Tombstone, The Untouchables, Pulp Fiction, Top Gun, 48 Hours, Beverly Hills Cop, and Silence of the Lambs).

While Rourke had a brief career resurgence with The Wrestler, that was almost a decade ago. With those mortgage payments on that Malibu five bedroom getting harder to pay, Rourke does the unthinkable – he accepts a job on Fox’s weirdo reality game show, The Masked Singer, which has celebrities dress up in bizarre costumes, sing a song, and then a panel of judges tries to figure out who they are.

When Rourke gets to set on his first day, he falls in love with a big purple gremlin costume, insisting on wearing it. Then, during his first performance singing the upbeat Barenaked Ladies song, “One Week,” Rourke has a breakdown and begins crying in his suit. He continues to sing the song though, now as a slow ballad, and America instantly falls in love with him.

Of course, nobody knows that Purple Gremlin is Mickey. So Mickey can’t capitalize on his newfound fame. When he attempts to extort Fox-Disney for some money, they remind him what they did to Armie Hammer when he was difficult. When Mickey keeps pressing the issue, they recast Purple Gremlin with Wanda Sykes!

Furious, Mickey kidnaps the president of Fox TV and, as Purple Gremlin, livestreams a list of requests that, if Fox doesn’t meet, he will blow her up. After Mickey calms down, he decides against blowing her up, but is able to negotiate his way back onto the show for the big finale. He then gives one of the longest monologues in movie history decrying the death of art. (Spoiler alert) He then refuses to take off his mask. The End.

Screenwriting Trigger Warning: This script is heavy on the asides and fourth-wall breaking. If you are not into that sort of stuff, do not read this script. It may put you in a permanent anger coma.

“The Masked Singer” screenplay is almost as absurd as “The Masked Singer” concept. It’s one-part fourth-wall breaking, one part emotional character study, one part absurdist comedy, and one part thoughtful commentary on the state of the industry. I don’t know what to make of it if I’m being honest. On one page, Rourke is threatening to blow someone up in a purple gremlin costume and, on the next page, Rourke is giving a “Leaving Las Vegas” level exploration of debilitating drug addiction.

One of the things you’re always battling as a reader is how the script you expected compares to the script you actually got. This was a funny concept so I was thinking the script was going to lean into Mickey being a diva. Instead, it leans into Mickey being a sad depressed old man. And my question to the writers would be, “Which one is funnier?” I contend that Mickey being a diva is funnier. So I was miffed that that was scrapped in favor of Sad Mickey.

Ultimately, comedy scripts are judged by whether you laugh or not. And I did not. I suppose I giggled a few times, like at the ongoing joke of Mickey being pathetically sad about the fact that he never had kids. But mostly I read this script with a giant confused look on my face. I couldn’t understand exactly what I was reading.

Some people have called this a “parody” script. It’s supposed to get the writers noticed. It was never meant to be a movie. I call b.s. on that. If Mickey’s agents called these guys and said he wanted to do the film, would they say ‘no?’ Of course not. Therefore, it’s a legit script. I bring that up because some writers try to hide behind the parody label so they can have it both ways. If it’s made fun of, it was never supposed to be a real script anyway. And if it gets made, it’s a great story about how a script that wasn’t even real got made.

But ever since Being John Malkovich got produced, these celebrity-focused screenplays are legit scripts and need to be judged as so. While I didn’t dislike this script. I found it too messy. It’s trying to do too many things. Trying to cover too many bases.

And we can’t forget that these scripts have a ceiling. They do well with lower-tier readers, people who haven’t read many scripts, because this is probably the first time they’re encountering this style. But when the scripts move up the ladder to the seasoned readers, there’s a lot of eye-rolling that goes on because they’ve seen this act before. Probably dozens of times.

What’s so frustrating is that this is a really funny idea. An actor who takes himself more seriously than most world leaders is forced to accept the most humiliating job in show business – The Masked Singer. There’s so much comedy to mine from that.

But the focus is more on the fourth-wall breaking description (talking directly to the reader) than the script itself. When you have a good concept, you don’t need that. That’s what good concepts give you. They make it so that you don’t have to depend on gimmicks. You should only bring in gimmicks when the concept is weak.

Take one of my favorite comedy concepts of the last decade, Neighbors – A young couple who have just started a family find out that they’ve moved next to a fraternity house. Imagine writing that script in a big wacky voice where you’re constantly talking to the reader. It would’ve distracted from the story, right? Yet that’s what’s happening here.

The final issue is the script tries too hard. The writing really wants you to love it. I’ve always struggled to figure out where the “try-hard” line is. How does one be big and boisterous with their writing and it not sound try-hard? Well, Peacemaker just did it. So I know it’s possible. But there definitely seems to be a line and, unfortunately, The Masked Singer crossed it.

Based on the overcooked writing and uneven tone, this one wasn’t for me.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: In a comedy script, you should never try and make the asides funnier than the jokes in the movie itself. Your funniest stuff should be coming through great dialogue or a clever payoff or a hilarious set piece. It shouldn’t come from you sharing an off-screen opinion about whether Nick Cannon should be in your movie after his anti-Jewish comments or if Donald Trump is soulless. Save your best jokes for the actual movie, the stuff that audiences are going to see.

High-profile television IP is a fairly new space so I suspect we’re going to be scratching and clawing our way into a workable structure for these shows for the foreseeable future. What I do know is this. Marvel shows have been average. And the Star Wars shows have been below average. Boba Fett’s latest episode confirmed to me that they don’t know what to do with that character or the story, for that matter. The show has little bursts of fun moments. But, for the most part, it’s a show in search of a coherent story.

The Marvel shows have fared a little better. Hawkeye and Falcon & Winter Soldier were no-frills empty calorie entertainment. And Wandavision and Loki, while better, never quite lived up to their ambitious objectives.

One of the things I’ve realized is that superhero characters are built for big flashy moments. The caravan chase in The Dark Knight. The train sequence in Spider-Man 2. The airport sequence in Captain America: Civil War. TV doesn’t allow for this to happen. The budget just isn’t anywhere near what it is for those films. That’s where superhero shows have struggled. With their identity stolen away, they’ve tried to reinvent the genre. And what we’re learning is that there isn’t anything low-budget that can replace those big crazy set-pieces.

Which brings me to Peacemaker, easily the best high profile television IP that’s hit streaming so far. I went into the series skeptical only because I didn’t think Gunn’s Suicide Squad was very good. I did that thing where you put a show on in the background while mindlessly looking up new coffee tables online. Despite only casually following along, I found myself consistently giggling at the dialogue.

The next thing I knew my laptop was on my current ugly coffee table, completely closed (a rarity) and with each passing minute, I was more pulled into Peacemaker’s charming irreverent slice of superhero fiction. You know what it reminds me of? If Community was an R-rated superhero show. It’s got that balls-to-the-wall “who cares” attitude to it.

Hell, I was singing along to the opening dance number by the second episode!

There are a lot of things to like here but I’ll point out a couple that stood out. The first was the bridge between episodes 1 and 2. At the end of episode 1, Peacemaker is being chased by a scary powerful alien woman. That’s the end of the episode. The second episode 2 begins, we cut to the continuation of Peacemaker being chased by the alien woman!

You might be asking, “Why is that a big deal, Carson?”

Well, whenever I watch an episode of Boba Fett, they draw EVERRRRYYYYTHING OUUUUUUT FOR AS LOOOONNNNNNNNG AS POSSSSSSSIBLE. If we’re in the middle of a chase at the end of an episode, you can bet your bottom dollar that the next episode is going to start with a 20 minute flashback. And maybe – MAYBE – they’ll show us the continuation of the chase after that.

Don’t get me wrong, I know this is a narrative technique. You give us the beginning of a big moment then you cut to other characters or other storylines so we have to suspensefully wait to see what happens. However, it’s clear with episodes of Boba Fett, and most of these Marvel episodes, that that’s not the reason they’re making us wait.

They’re making us wait because they don’t have enough story. And when you don’t have enough story, you lean on trickery. You lean on false story engines. You’re basically finding things that fill up time so you can make the episode’s minimum time requirement.

This has become so predominant in high profile IP shows that I was legitimately shocked – in a good way – when we continued right where we left off in episode 2 of Peacemaker. Gunn understands that the lure of flashbacks – they help flesh out characters – can also act as story roadblocks, sending you off on some long not-well-thought-out detour that always takes too long to get you back to your original route.

Good writers develop characters in real-time. They don’t need that flashback crutch.

The other thing I like about Peacemaker is that Gunn didn’t say, “What’s the best Peacemaker show?” He said, “What’s the Peacemaker show that would best highlight my strengths as a writer?” Gunn’s biggest strength is putting characters in a room talking about nothing. As many of you know, I’ve railed against doing this. But IF YOU’RE GREAT AT SOMETHING then it doesn’t matter if you’re not supposed to do it. Your strength should always take precedence over what you’re “supposed” to do. And Gunn is a master at funny observational dialogue.

I’m beginning to realize why I didn’t like his last two movies (Suicide Squad and Guardians 2). It’s because, in features, you can’t sit characters in rooms and have them babble on for three minutes. Every scene in a feature has to push a ten-ton movie forward. Without that constraint, Gunn can now let loose. And he’s really good at letting loose. The way his mind works is so funny and he’s finally found a medium that allows him to go to town in this area.

By the way, one of the reasons he’s able to do this is because he’s created eight full-on dialogue-friendly characters. If you’re new to my site, there are dialogue-friendly characters and dialogue-unfriendly characters. If you’re trying to write great dialogue with two dialogue-unfriendly characters, it’s never going to sound right. I mean, can you imagine Boba Fett and Fennec having even a single entertaining conversation together? Of course not. Because neither of them is dialogue-friendly.

Gunn made sure that every single character here had their own entertaining personality type. Peacemaker is a blabbermouth who says a lot of ignorant things. His hilarious best-friend, Vigilante, is like Deadpool-lite. Co-team leader Emilia is always angry and always ready to take that anger out on you. Tech Specialist John, probably the most introverted of the bunch, is still willing to engage in awkward opinionated debates about what they should be doing. New Girl Leota isn’t afraid to throw quippy insults Peacemaker’s way.

I know it seems obvious. But if everyone is designed to be entertaining when they speak, you’re going to have a lot of good dialogue.

But I’ll tell you my favorite moment in Peacemaker – the moment that confirmed to me the show was special. And, believe it or not, it’s a moment that doesn’t have any dialogue. It occurs when Peacemaker is hiding outside the house of a man they need to assassinate with Emilia, his hot-headed boss who hates him but who Peacemaker has a major crush on.

They’re far off, in the bushes, waiting for the target to arrive so they can take him out with a sniper rifle. As they sit in silence, waiting, Emilia is eating a bag of trail mix. Peacemaker keeps looking over at it, hungrily. Finally, reluctantly, she holds the bag out so he can have some. He eagerly reaches in and takes a handful. Then, just as we think he’s going to start eating it, he begins to pick out the little pretzels and, one by one, place them back in the bag that she’s holding while she stares at him like he’s a crazy person.

I like this moment for two reasons. I love scenes that tell us who characters are by showing and not telling. This twenty-second moment tells us so much about these characters without saying a word. She hates this guy so much that the act of giving him her food must be coupled with an animated production of how much she hates doing so. Through that simple action, we know how much she detests Peacemaker. Meanwhile, the fact that Peacemaker starts placing trail mix pieces he doesn’t want back in her bag tells us that he is so ignorant to others’ perceptions of him that he doesn’t even know when someone hates him. That is Peacemaker in a nutshell: oblivious.

And two, most writers wouldn’t think to come up with this moment. It’s too subtle. To know your characters well enough to create a subtle moment as specific as this one is rare. Or, at least, in the scripts I read, it’s rare. It’s a great reminder to think about what your characters could do while they’re not speaking to each other. Moments do not always have to start with words.

This show came at just the right time for me. I’ve been looking for a good show. And this one is so fun. I would go so far as to say it’s the best thing James Gunn has ever done. And I dare anyone to challenge me on that because I’m obviously right. What about you? Have you seen Peacemaker? What did you think?