The creator of Apple’s most popular show, Ted Lasso, has struck a deal with the streamer to produce a new comedy for them!
Genre: TV 1 Hour Comedy
Premise: A suspended Florida Keys cop must solve the strange case of a man’s arm that was found floating in the ocean.
About: Bill Lawrence is going to try and do the same thing for Vince Vaughn that he did for Jason Sudekis, giving him an Apple show perfectly suited for his talents. Lawrence has had an incredibly successful career. He wrote his first TV episode back in 1993 on Boy Meets World. He later developed Spin City, Scrubs, Cougar Town, and most recently, Ted Lasso. This guy must have a house the size of a large island. Michelle Monaghan (Mission Impossible franchise) will also star.
Writer: Bill Lawrence (based on the novel by Carl Hiassen)
Details: 61 pages
I’m far from an expert on cop shows. I just know that it’s the most well-tread TV genre of them all. And that’s something writers have to beware of. Whenever you’re entering well-tread territory, you have to work harder to come up with a fresh angle. Cause you have a lot more competition.
For example, if you write a zombie script, you have to realize that you’re going up against soooooooo many zombie scripts. So if yours is another basic zombie outbreak story, it’s not going to stand out. Just like if you write a cop show, you probably don’t want to set it in New York City.
And that’s actually a great way to separate your cop show from others – find a unique location. A cop show in Alaska is going to be a lot more unique than a cop show in Los Angeles.
Here, we’ve got a cop show set in the downtrodden “backwoods” sector of waterfront Florida – the West Keys – a sort of “Anti-Miami Vice.” That alone is going to separate it. Also, since there are a lot more dramatic cop shows out there than there are comedic ones, you have a secondary factor separating your show.
Which is why Bad Monkey feels like its own thing.
The story follows a suspended cop in Key West Florida named Andrew Yancy. Yancy is either doing one of two things – being a cop or chasing women. And since he’s suspended, he’s happy to use that extra time chasing women.
But then Yancy’s partner comes to him with a severed arm (whose hand still has its middle finger extended) that was found by a fisherman in the ocean. He wants Yancy to get rid of it. Opening up a case for a dead body based on a severed arm would disturb the community and also create a lot of headaches for an incident that clearly happened in Miami (and therefore has nothing to do with them).
But Yancy’s cop training won’t allow him to throw it away. He asks a hot coroner to take a look at it. She’s got nothing for him. His partner eventually gives Yancy good news. A woman claims the arm belongs to her husband who died during a terrible boating accident. “Just give her the arm and walk away,” his partner says.
But Yancy can’t help himself. He starts asking the woman questions. Notices her pull an Amber Heard (try really hard to cry). Now he’s suspicious. So he goes to the funeral and meets the man’s daughter, who swears that the wife killed him. Which means Yancy’s got a bone. And he’s going to hold onto that bone all the way until he solves this case and gets his badge back.
I used to hate that cop movie trope where the officer would lose their badge at the midpoint because they did something illegal but still decide to pursue the case anyway. It was so cliche it actually hurt to watch.
But now I understand why writers do it. It creates a much more interesting character situation. For starters, the character is now acting illegally. So if he gets caught, he’s in a lot more trouble, which of course creates more tension and suspense.
He’s also neutered, like a superhero without his powers, which forces him to be more creative (always force your heroes to be more creative!).
Finally, it allows you to cheat as a writer. There are a lot of rules cops must abide by. But those rules don’t apply if you’re not officially a cop. You wouldn’t go into a dangerous situation without backup for example. But if you’re not officially a cop, you don’t need backup.
I noticed all this while reading Yancy’s story.
I also noticed that Bill Lawrence doesn’t give a crap about impressing readers. His writing style is almost anti-reader. I suppose if every TV project I wrote went to air and became a hit, I wouldn’t worry about readers either. But to give you an idea of what I’m talking about, the first paragraph of the script is 12 lines long!
Here I tell amateur writers they can’t get away with this yet now we have verifiable proof of a professional screenwriting doing so. Like I mentioned, guys, when you have five hits under your belt, Hollywood will let you write your scripts on toilet paper in the comic sans font. Heck, they’ll let you write them in Celtx.
There’s also some very advanced technical stuff going on here. For example, here’s Lawrence writing a highly complicated voice over scenario…
I warn writers away from this kind of stuff only because anything that’s hard to explain might confuse the reader. Too often as writers we think the reader can read our mind. I’ll often tell the writer, save the complex version for when your pilot is purchased and you’re going into production. When it’s still a spec, keep things easy to read. Coming up with some complex voice-over scenario – like something you’d see on Euphoria – it’s too big of a gamble when you’re an unknown dealing with impatient low-level readers.
It’s worth discussing why Bill Lawrence is so successful. Because we’ve seen plenty of writers who write a good show then never write a good show again. What is it that Lawrence is doing differently?
My friends, when it comes to TV, it’s all about the main character. If your main character is the right combination of likable and interesting, we’re going to be on board. Yancy could’ve been written as a deadbeat cop who didn’t give a sh#@ about anyone but himself. Instead, Lawrence kept the lazy morally-questionable womanizing aspect of the character, but balanced it out with a guy who loves doing his job.
It’s such an advantage when your character is active, like Yancy. Because active characters push stories forward. I was talking about this with a writer not long ago. He was wondering if he should write a “Lebowski” type character who didn’t care about anything but chilling and getting high. I told him, if he does that, the character is going to be too passive and hard to root for. The genius about The Dude was that while he preferred to be lazy, the circumstances required he be active.
If Lebowski just sat around all day, we wouldn’t like him at all.
Which is a long of way of saying, find any possible way to make your hero active, even if they don’t want to be. Cause that always creates a better narrative. And here, Yancy can’t help but to investigate this severed arm. Cause he’s a cop at heart.
And by the way, this is why there are more cop shows than any other genre on television. Cops have THE MOST ACTIVE JOB there is. They always have some place to be, some crime to solve, some issue to settle. And as soon as they solve it, they’re handed another one.
Just make sure that if you write a cop show, you check with some people that it’s a unique idea.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Location is a great way to spice up cop show concepts. A cop on the moon. A cop on a tropical island. A cop stationed at the biggest airport in the world. Just like the real estate industry, it’s all about location, location, location!
