Today’s TV pilot packs a surprising punch while teaching us a few necessities to writing a good pilot. Never underestimate the Lopez.
Genre: TV Pilot – Cop Procedural
Premise: A dirty female cop thinks she’s got the city by the balls until an unexpected event forces her to deceive the crew she runs with.
About: This is a BIG show NBC is banking on. It stars Jennifer Lopez and Ray Liotta and was written by Adi Hasak, who gave us the Travolta film, From Paris with Love and the Costner thriller, 3 Days to Kill, which Hasak co-wrote with Luc Besson. The pilot is being directed by Barry Levinson (Rain Man). I’ve heard good things about the script so I decided to give it a shot!
Writer: Adi Hasak
Details: 57 pages – First Network Draft (January 20th, 2015)
You know, I used to see a show like this and go, “What are they thinking? Another major network cop procedural? We’ve got 50 of those to choose from already.” Then you’ve got the judge from American Idol and an actor whose best roles are 20 years behind him. And you expect me to get excited about this?
But I’ve grown to respect how hard it is to get a TV show on the air. Much like when I saw Transformers 10 years ago and thought, “Anybody could write that,” I’ve since learned that only the biggest screenwriters who have worked, at minimum, ten years in the business, get to write those films. We may see this stuff as yet another generic cop show or yet another generic popcorn movie. But don’t be fooled. This is the top of the mountain. This is the most studios and networks pay to put a show together. So they want the best. And therefore, the scripts and writers who make it to this mountaintop? They’re doing something VERY RIGHT.
And usually, when you look a little closer to these big pickups, there’s more going on than you think. With cop procedurals (or medical procedurals, or legal procedurals) the genres are so crowded, you have to find a new angle. How do you do that with a format that’s been around for 50 years? You do it by locating a CURRENT ISSUE and exploiting that. Because besides going high-concept, the only way to differentiate yourself from the past is to focus on the present.
What’s the current issue in Shades of Blue? Cops illegally killing people and cooperating with one another in order to get away with it.
In fact, that’s how our show starts. 36 year-old Harlee Santos, a tough female cop who lives for her 16 year-old daughter, is escorting her green partner, Loman, on what should be a routine Q&A with a local drug dealer. But Loman freaks out and shoots the man despite the fact that he didn’t do anything.
While Loman goes white, Harlee methodically dresses the scene to look like the thug shot first. We’re going to get through this fine, Harlee assures her new partner. Loman, however, doesn’t look so optimistic.
It turns out this isn’t Harlee’s first foray into Sketch City. Her Lieutenant (and godfather to her daughter), Bill Wozniak, runs an inter-precinct outfit with Harlee and a few other dirty cops that skims money off the local establishments. That’s right. Harlee’s dirty. Very dirty. But hey, she’s doing it for a good cause. Her daughter. So it’s all right, right?
While Harlee frets about internal affairs investigating the shooting, she’s told that the deceased’s partner is still on the loose, and so he becomes her target. But just when she thinks everything is going smoothly, she’s caught skimming money from a local drug dealer, and the FBI swoops in. Uh oh. She’s been set up.
Robert Staal, the agent in charge of this operation, wants Harlee to do the worst thing imaginable. He wants her to go undercover and take down her entire corrupt crew. If she does this, she won’t do 8-10 years. Harlee balks at first, until the steely Staal reminds her that a daughter growing up in a rough neighborhood without any parental figures usually doesn’t end well for the daughter.
Harlee reluctantly signs the deal with the devil, and begins the hardest job of her life – deceiving the only people in the world she trusts.
When you write a script, whether it be a pilot or a feature, you have a choice at the beginning. You can either set up your characters, or you can dramatize the situation. Dramatizing something means finding an interesting situation with conflict and suspense, something an audience will want to keep reading about until it’s resolved.
Character walks into ice cream shop and talks with an old friend? – not dramatized.
Character walks into ice cream shop to tell an old friend that she has to end their friendship? – dramatized
Since today’s script is about shades, the balance between setting up characters and dramatizing is never a set percentage. There are shades. You can focus mainly on the setup while doing a little bit of dramatizing. Or you can focus mainly on a big dramatic event and squeeze in a few decent character setups when possible. Every script will have different requirements.
But I’m going to let you in on a secret that only the pros know. When you DRAMATIZE a situation, you set up your characters without even trying. That’s because we get to know characters best when they’re under pressure and faced with difficult choices.
For instance, here, we get to know Harlee and Loman through the actions they take in this opening scene. Loman accidentally kills this guy. He’s frozen, freaking out, unable to process what he’s done. Meanwhile, Harlee moves into cover-up mode without blinking. She’s cool and calm under pressure, a total pro.
We learn a TON about these two from their actions here (or, in Loman’s case, his lack of action). It’s still the best way going to set up characters. So stop with the clever dialogue scenes or played-out cop banter. Put your characters in a difficult situation and watch how they react. That will tell us everything we need to know about them.
I knew Shades of Blue was going to be good when I read that opening scene. If a writer shows skill in highly important areas (like setting up characters), I know he knows what he’s doing and will make more good choices.
So I wasn’t surprised when I saw Hasak interweave his scenes. What did you say, Carson? Inter-what? What the hell are you talking about?
To understand interweaving scenes, one must first understand compartmentalizing scenes. When you compartmentalize scenes, you say: This is the interrogation scene THEN This is the investigation scene THEN This is the scene where they visit Joe at his apartment and ask if he’s the killer THEN This is the scene where Harlee gets caught. If you write like that, with everything so separate and insular, your script is going to get predictable and boring.
Instead, you want your scenes to have tentacles and for those tentacles to intermingle and wrap around each other to create not scenes, but more like scene-hybrids, a series of moments that tackle multiple story issues.
Let me give you an example.
In the middle of Shades of Blue, Harlee gets caught by the FBI. They bring her to their hideout and tell her she’ll be arrested unless she helps them. This has the potential to be a compartmentalized scene. It’s insular. It’s straightforward. We’re heading towards Boringsville. So pay attention to how Hasak avoids this.
Throughout the script, we’ve been building up Harlee’s daughter’s recital. It’s extremely important to her daughter. If her mother misses it, she may disown her mom. That recital happens to be happening RIGHT NOW.
So Harlee pesters the FBI about this. She HAS to be at that recital. She’ll talk to them. She’ll consider what they want. But she HAS to be at that recital. If she isn’t, they can expect nothing from her. Staal, the leader, begrudgingly lets her go. But he has to accompany her.
We then get a scene where our FBI agent who’s going to make our hero rat out all her accomplices, joins her while watching her daughter’s recital. To make things even more fun, Hasak has Wozniak (the guy who’s leading the group that Harlee will have to take down) show up at the recital and sit down on the other side of Harlee.
We realize we’re experiencing the best scene in a cop show and it’s not taking place in an alleyway, in a drug den, or on the Number 4 train at 2 a.m. It’s taking place at a high school cello recital. And that’s why you interweave shit as opposed to compartmentalize it. When you interweave, you get much more interesting scenes that put your characters in environments or situations that they wouldn’t normally be in.
Amateurs NEVER DO THIS. They always have the “FBI gets the cop to agree to their terms” scene take place back at the boring office, a compartmentalized scene we’ve seen a billion times before.
When you read Shades of Blue, you realize how it beat out so many other pilots to get on the air. It’s good writing. I mean shit, it’s got a bad guy who, while yelling at a guy at the morgue, stuffs human ashes down his throat to shut him up. Where else ya going to find that??
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: In features, every loop that is opened must be closed. Not in pilots. You can open as many loops as you want and leave them open. Take advantage of this. You can set some pretty crazy stuff up even though you don’t yet know how you’re going to resolve it. But hey, if it sounds cool and makes a producer want to buy the thing, what do you care? You’ll cross that bridge once you’ve got your fully-staffed writers’ room. ☺
What I learned 2: Unfinished business. Always keep some unfinished business going on in the background of your story. If you finish business, make sure there’s other unfinished business threads going on as well. This is particularly important in TV, where you’re forced to write a lot of low-budget one-on-one character scenes. These scenes stay interesting, in part, because we know that unfinished business is still out there needing resolution. The example of that here is Harlee’s pursuit of Malik, the other guy who was in the apartment when Loman killed the dealer. Harlee has numerous scenes with other characters where she’s dealing with other story threads, and even though they’re occasionally slow, we roll with them because we’ve got that juicy unfinished business thread with Malik to look forward to. If all your business if finished, you may as well end your show.
