Genre: TV Pilot – Drama
Premise: A group of Boston friends’ lives are changed after a member of their group unexpectedly commits suicide.
About: Today’s pilot comes from former comedy writer DJ Nash, who took a chance in writing his first drama. That chance paid off when ABC made it their first pickup of the season, positioning it as a This is Us counterstrike. Nash formally created Growing up Fisher and Truth Be Told. Ron Livingston and Romany Malco star in the show.
Writer: DJ Nash
Details: 57 pages
TV pilots are funny things. The shows with the longest staying power tend to have the weakest concepts. That’s because TV shows are character-driven as opposed to concept or plot-driven. Why is that? Well, if you’re writing 20 hours of television per season, that’s 18 hours more than a feature film. Seeing as it’s hard enough coming up with a series of cool plot points for a feature, you can imagine how hard it must be when you multiply that by ten.
Therefore, TV has no choice but to focus on character.
But this is what’s always confused me about TV. How do you get anybody’s attention with a lame character-driven concept? Like if you pitched me, “Four Boston friends have their lives uprooted when their friend dies,” I’d be like, “Annnnnnnd???” With a movie pitch, you know what you’ve got after the logline. With these things, it seems like a crapshoot.
Anyway, I’ll continue to stir fry that thought in my head while I dish out today’s review.
Rome, an almost-30 commercial director with the perfect life, is two minutes away from ending it. He’s got the pills. He’s prepping the deed. It’s only a matter of time. But before we watch him kill himself, we cut to his friend Jon, who has an even better life. The master of the deal and a real estate titan, Jon is currently on the phone, closing a deal in his kick ass high-rise office. How easy is it to love life when you’re killing it?
Cut to friend numero 3, Gary. Gary is getting the results from his doctor about whether his cancer’s back. His breast cancer. Yes, Gary is in the one percent of males who have breast cancer. But the good news is, he’s making it work for him. Gary bangs a new breast cancer survivor every week at his breast cancer support group.
Finally, there’s Eddie. Eddie hates his wife. Every day she drags him deeper into the pits of married hell. And while Rome’s about to off himself and Gary’s ready to get his results and Jon is ready to close the deal, Eddie is throwing all of his clothes into a suitcase. Eddie’s about to run away with another woman.
But then he gets the call from Gary that changes everything.
Jon just committed suicide.
That’s right. Not Rome. Jon. After he closed that deal, he leapt out the window.
The rest of the script has the guys coming together for Jon’s funeral and the gathering afterwards. The wives are all there, including Maggie, the latest girl Gary banged from his support group. Yes, their first date is officially a funeral.
As the group ponders the impossibility of someone like Jon, who had everything, ending his life, little hints pop up that there may be more to the story. When the guys go get tonight’s Bruins tickets from Jon’s office (going to Bruins games is a long-standing tradition), they get into Jon’s phone and find out that he made one call before he jumped. To Eddie.
The guys turn to Eddie, who looks back cluelessly. He never got a message. But later that night (major spoiler), when Eddie is alone, we see why he’s being so coy about that call. We finally find out who Eddie’s been planning to run away with. It’s none other than Jon’s wife.
I had mixed green feelings about this script.
I loved the early misdirect. Nash totally got me with Jon’s death. And I liked the ending twist, that Eddie was running away with Jon’s wife. Not only for the twist. But because you’re setting up a line of dramatic irony that can be drawn out for 5-6 episodes. Us and Eddie know that Jon may have killed himself because he found out that Eddie was sleeping with his wife. But the other friends don’t know that. And like any good line of dramatic irony, it’s the kind of thing that viewers will stick around for to see what happens when that bomb explodes.
My problem with A Million Little Things was the rest of the script, the middle part.
It’s mainly just a bunch of characters being sad, talking to each other, remembering things. And I think the problem here is that Nash didn’t use a good old fashioned goal. There are some writers who don’t think you should use goals in TV one-hours. That it’s more about “covering the bases” of each subplot. But I find that when there’s an overarching goal pushing the characters along, it gives the narrative an engine. We feel like there’s a PURPOSE to the story.
It’s not to say you HAVE to do this. If we’re inside of a particularly dramatic portion of a season, then each storyline (the A, B, or C) in an episode can be powerful enough that a uniform goal isn’t required. But my theory with pilots is that you can’t take any chances. You can’t even RISK a 3-5 minute down period. Because 3-5 minutes is all it takes these days for someone to decide your show is boring and never watch it again. TV viewers are not a forgiving bunch. I’ve met them.
With that said, there are still plenty of good things to talk about. When you’re writing a character driven pilot (as opposed to concept-driven pilot), you want to get an inciting incident into the story ASAP. Usually within the first 5 pages. This is to alleviate any suspicion that your show will be a group of characters talking for an hour. You need that “thing” to happen so that they know you mean business. A character dramatically killing themselves, via a misdirect, was a great way to get audiences hooked.
Building off of yesterday’s character development talk, we see again today how important it is to establish characters immediately. The first scene we meet each character in A Million Little Things is a scene where we learn the essence of who they are at this moment in their lives. Gary has breast cancer. Eddie is about to leave his marriage. Rome is suicidal. One of the biggest mistakes I see amateur writers make is they take 3, 4, 5 or MORE scenes to tell us what professional writers can tell us in one.
That’s not to say you can’t have characters of mystery, like John Locke in Lost. That’s a different discussion. But when dealing with straight-forward characters, you want to start developing them from their first frame.
A Million Little Things is obviously ABC’s attempt at a This Is Us killer. But it’s not as good as that show. One thing Dan Fogelman is great at it is he knows exactly how hard to press the melodrama pedal in each scene. He knows when it’s too far. He knows when it’s not enough. He knows when to alleviate tension with a joke. He knows the right tone that joke needs to be.
A Million Little Things is more hit and miss in these categories. There’s a scene late where they’re at the hockey game and Rome reveals out of nowhere that he tried to commit suicide. It’s an odd moment for the admission and the aftermath is too heavy-handed (“With nothing to say, Gary does the only thing he can do. He puts his arm around Rome and gives his friend a hug. Rome cries harder. So Gary just squeezes harder.”)
But hey, Fogelman’s the master at this stuff so let’s not hang any competitors out to dry here. The pilot isn’t great but it’s got just enough presence to make it worth your time.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Whether it’s a movie or a TV show, the simplest plotline you can use that uniformly works is to start with a dead body. In other words, I don’t think this pilot gets picked up if it’s this same group and we don’t get a suicide at the beginning of the show.
