Five years ago, I had an amazing creative experience with the live-read of CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS

I'm right in the middle of a seven-day period bracketed by unpleasant anniversaries. And yet, right in between those is the oasis that is the five-year anniversary of the Zoom live read of my script CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS. CRISIS might be the personal project I'm most proud of, and definitely was my favorite experience in terms of seeing an audience react to my work.

It was an idea that first arose out of the boredom of the pandemic. It's strange how that period of time feels so fresh and so distant at the same time. We were just a few months in, positive COVID cases were rising, and no end was in sight. Freezer trucks were outside of hospitals because it was the only way to deal with all the bodies and a good portion of the country was trapped at home. The lucky ones were able to work via Zoom. The unlucky ones saw their savings dwindle.

I can't say it's a time most of us care to revisit. And even then, a lot of us were getting through it by binging old TV shows. I was no exception, and on a day in May, my recent binge led me to a stray quips about two characters who shared the same name. I joked on Twitter that there needed to be a CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS in order to iron out some connections between those shows. I should have expected, but didn't, this would provoke people to tweet at me, "you should write it!"

I wasn't serious about it, but I figured I could write a page or two, just to continue the joke.

An hour later, I'd written the first four pages, just as an exercise. At that link, you can see where I've collected some of the Twitter responses to that first blast. It was the pandemic and dopamine was in low supply so I chased that rush again the following night with four more pages. These pages - involving the GILMORE GIRLS - got an even BETTER response.

Truth be told, I don't know if I ever have gotten such immediate positive reinforcement. And so I dropped another four pages the next night, and six more the night after that. Somewhere in there I got a message from Ben Blacker, who said that whenever this was done, he had a platform for doing Zoom live reads and he'd love to host CRISIS.

I was like, "Ben, this was just a fun exercise. I don't have a complete script, or even know what the full story would be!" 

"Then write it," was Ben's simple response. As if it was that easy.

There are a lot of reasons a script comes into being. The best and most noble is when the writer has a story they're burning to tell and it's the right story for that moment.

But a close second is when you have an audience that is telling you they WANT more of what you're doing. When that sincerity is backed up by them telling other people they should read what you're putting out there... it gets a lot easier to face the blank page. 

Suffice to say, about a week later, I finished my full draft. There was some turmoil in the world at that exact moment, so I held onto it for an extra week or so before unleashing it publicly. And that started the process of casting this live read. I knew that if possible, I wanted to get as many teen drama actors reprising their roles as I could... and the start of making that happen was with reaching out to my boss on SUPERMAN & LOIS, Greg Berlanti.

Greg had been a showrunner or an executive producer on a few shows depicted in my script, DAWSON'S CREEK, RIVERDALE and KATY KEENE. The better argument for bringing him into the loop was that the show that was his baby, EVERWOOD, was pretty pivotal to the story and those were the returning actors I wanted to get the most. I have a whole post devoted to Greg's involvement, so I'll merely direct you there and sum up that he got me my white whales of Gregory Smith reprising Ephram Brown and Emily VanCamp returning as Amy Abbott.

I'm not sure what was a bigger boost to my ego - the first conversation where Greg Smith told me that he thought I nailed Ephram's voice, or several weeks later when we were recording it. I was watching Greg and Emily become those roles again and got lost in how seamlessly they fell back into character. It felt like a real episode of EVERWOOD - so much so that for a moment, I kinda forgot I had written those words! And then when that was done hitting me, I remember allowing myself to accept that "Wow, it really works. You totally imitated the voice of the show and of those characters." 

That was a feeling I got several times during the live-read recording. We ended up with an amazing cast. The very first actor to speak was my friend Mark Gagliardi, who was playing the adult Kevin from THE WONDER YEARS. I'd written a narration that felt very in the style of that show, but as we were slotting in actors, we let them know they had the freedom to interpret the parts however they wanted. They didn't have to feel like they were locked into imitating the actual actors. It gave this wonderful suspense to the recording because - yes, we did in fact get EVERYONE on the same Zoom and record them together - whenever a new character popped up, you were eager to see how they'd be played.

Anyway, Mark came right out of the gate with a pitch-perfect Daniel Stern imitation, right down to the cadence he used. I was staring at something like 15 or 20 people in Zoom boxes with expressions of amazement and delight. They all kinda went, "Holy shit! So that's how it's gonna be!" The 90 minutes or so that followed was some of the most pure joy I've ever experienced in a creative setting. I can't speak for anyone else who was a part of it, but for me it was one of those experiences that reminded me why I wanted to be a writer.

I was not prepared for Melissa Fumero to absolutely own the role of Lorelei Gilmore. I was a massive fan of BROOKLYN NINE-NINE, so just getting her was a coup, but to actually HEAR Lauren Graham in her voice was astounding. On the other end of the spectrum, I wasn't all that familiar with Isabella Gomez but I became a fan for life with how she brought Rory Gilmore to life. And then we had people like Jamie Moyer as Sue Sylvester and Matt Lauria as Dawson Leery, two people who I wasn't terribly familiar with and who played their parts WAY outside the original interpretations.... and still killed it!

My friend Nick Wechlser did double-duty as Archie Andrews and Lucas Scott, going his own way on both and just meshed so well with the hilarious Vella Lovell as Veronica Lodge. Vella really threw herself into the musical number, as did Emmy Raver-Lampman, Lindsay Blackwell, and Carloine Ward.

Did I bury the lede? Yes, Paul and Storm put together a Zoom musical number using the GLEE arrangement of Journey's "Don't Stop Believing." When I wrote it, I knew it was the most audacious thing I could put in a live read. I doubted we could pull it off, so that's why it was so gratifying to see the tweet reactions roll in, "Holy shit! They did a MUSICAL NUMBER!"

I saved every one of those reactions, by the way. They all got linked in the reaction post here, and the nice thing about embedding tweets is that even when the original account gets deleted, you can still see the text of what was said. I can't tell you how much I needed those positive vibes that week.

Well, I guess I should. I don't like that it's part of this story, but fate had other plans.

See, just a couple days before this live read dropped, my dad was put on a ventilator. He'd been hospitalized for about two weeks with COVID and that was when he took a heavy turn for the worse. In a segment following the show, I dedicated the production to him, saying that "He'll see it when he wakes up."

He never did. The show premiered on Friday night and he died in the early hours of Monday morning. 

The joy of seeing everyone react to CRISIS and telling me what it meant to them was a necessary interruption of the stress and sorrow of that week. I needed this show to be an intrusion on that horror, but that also meant that any time in the last five years this came to mind, the grief would intrude on the accomplishment. It really sucks to have this particular moment of victory forever tied to one of the worst things in my life. And I think that's all the acknowledgment I want to give that.

In that spirit, I was blown away by how many reactions, tweets, and texts I got AS SOON as the show ended. You could watch it at any point for eight days, so I was very moved by the people who HAD to see it as soon as it was released. I could tell a lot of them were people who had grown up on these shows like I had. 

That nostalgic connection to more innocent times was something we really needed then. I think that's backed up by how many nostalgia podcasts for those shows have launched in the time since - THE OC, GOSSIP GIRL, SMALLVILLE, and ONE TREE HILL all have or had recent podcasts hosted by cast members taking a look back.

My favorite of those is the ONE TREE HILL podcast, called Drama Queens. Sadly it's on the verge of finishing its run after another couple of episodes, but it launched in Summer 2021 with Sophia Bush, Hilarie Burton Morgan and Bethany Joy Lenz as hosts, giving us their perspective on the show episode-by-episode. There's a lot of backstory connected to this, as the women of OTH had come forward a few years earlier about how their showrunner was a sexually harassing, abusive, misogynistic asshole. The podcast was a way for three of the shows stars to reclaim the experience for themselves. When necessary, they cued us in to what was really going on behind the scenes at various points in the series, including how the showrunner would stoke conflict among the women to keep them fighting each other and not himself.

Hilarie left the show after season 6, when her character departed, and since then Robert Buckley has filled the third chair. No matter the configuration, I've always enjoyed hearing the actors perspectives, especially when they're so different from what a fan's viewpoint might be. It was a privilege to experience them reliving their early adulthood, and in the show's better moments, we could see the women taking something more profound from the entire experience.

There's a recent exchange between Joy and Sophia that to me sums up not only their journey with their podcast, but also the emotions we get out of reliving these touchstone shows. It happens in Episode 822, covering the finale of the penultimate season. It's a little more than 42 minutes in.

Joy: I'm so grateful for our show. I'm also you know, there are everybody has life experiences where it's packed full of things that you're so grateful for, and then you also realized you've learned so many lessons from because there were a lot of bad things in it too. But you know, overall, I'm so grateful that we got to have the experience that we did.

Sophia: ...The cool thing about the rewatch and the time we get to spend - and I don't just mean us as hosts, I mean all of us - like going to our conventions and doing this podcast together and having all the friends on it all the time... it just it gives you something back... You go through you can go through a hard thing and you kind of lose certain memories. Like when you've been through a trauma or whatever, that thing becomes the biggest thing in your rearview mirror in certain ways in your brain. 

And what I've loved about this journey is that it's kind of right size to that stuff. It's shrunken it down to only take up the amount of space, you know, the least amount of space it should... less space than it did at the time, And it feels like it's increased. It feels like it's blown up the balloons of all our good memories to be bigger. Yeah, and I don't know that we would have had that otherwise.

And so in celebrating this project of pure joy, remembering all the connection and creativity I felt during various stages of its birth, I feel like I can finally shrink down the tragedy it also connected to... the COVID shutdowns, the isolation... the death...

And I'll also remember how simple it seemed to Ben Blacker when I told him I didn't have a complete script:

"Then write it."

Kinda takes away every excuse for not going to work, doesn't it?

If you want to download the script, go here.

And if at any point, you're confused about something in the script and want to know what I'm referencing, the complete annotations are here.

Sometimes you get to work with your heroes while you write for your heroes

Anyone who told you "don't meet your heroes" never got to write an episode of TV with Rina Mimoun.

I'll back up a little bit. Longtime readers of this blog - assuming any of you are still out there - are probably well aware of my affection for the WB TV series EVERWOOD. I not only once wrote a breakdown of the pilot, I also wrote a fun script called CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS that incorporated the characters of Ephram Brown and Amy Abbot in a multiversal teen drama crossover.

And then amazingly, got to see Gregory Smith and Emily VanCamp perform the script for a live read a little over a year ago. My point is, there's little point in pretending I'm not an EVERWOOD superfan, or that the show hasn't been a major touchstone for me in my own writing.

So with that, imagine my delight when EVERWOOD writer and showrunner for seasons 3 and 4 Rina Mimoun joined the writers room of SUPERMAN & LOIS this year. I wasted no time in trying to get EVERWOOD stories out of her. And by no time I mean that I'm pretty sure the first thing I said to her was "Hi, I'm Adam and I'm a huge fan of EVERWOOD."

Flash-forward a couple months. The first four episodes are broken and episode five had yet to be assigned. Our writers were doubling up, so that meant that Rina and I were the only two left without an episode. That didn't necessarily mean we were going to be teamed and at one point it looked like each of us might fly solo on different eps.

As an aside, most of the time episodes are assigned based on seniority and availability. Indeed, you'll see that the writer breakdown this season mostly starts with the highest ranking writers on staff and works its way down. In rare cases, there might be an effort at matching a writer to their particular strength, but usually I'd caution against making assumptions about an episode that are based on what the writer has been credited on before.

For example, my name is on two of the biggest Lana episodes, but I actually didn't write any of her scenes in this week's episode at all.

To make a long story less long, I was thrilled when the assignment came down that I'd be working with Rina AND that we indeed were going to be getting "the quinceañera episode." Also, by that point, our EVERWOOD shorthand was well established so we were saying thing back and forth like, "It's like the Amy Abbott thing."

Our story break went pretty well. Most of the other writers were off on their own episodes for large parts of the break so much of it was just me, Rina and our excellent support staff. Showrunner Todd Helbing kept approving our beats along the way and eventually we were sent off to Story Area.

In the middle of this, Rina and I also reached out to Inde Navarrette, who plays Sarah. We wanted to get her perspective on what was absolutely essential to get right about our quinceañera and what elements of the celebration were likely to vary in real life. One of the notes became something we hammered again and again in our production meetings - "Make sure the tamales are authentic."

The way our show works is that we do a pretty detailed story break, send a 5-6 page Story Area (basically a synopsis of each storyline, broken into A, B, C stories) to the Studio and Network and then are sent off to script. Rina and I divided responsibilities on Story Area, which sailed through with mostly no notes and then had to decide how to divide the script.

The storyline of Sarah's quinceañera is filled with the kind of family drama that Rina is known for, BUT I also was prepared for the possibility that she might feel like she's written all that before and was more eager to dive into the superhero stuff. It turned out she was hungry for the Cushing family storyline, which was a relief to me because I did NOT want to be the guy trying to play "Piano Man" while Billy Joel was in the room.

I took the Jon and Jordan storyline and we divided the Clark/Lois A-story up by act. This worked pretty well, but while I was writing Act Two, I arrived at a concern that hadn't been evident in the story break. When Rina and I compared pages, we discovered we both had the exact same note. Still, we did the job we were sent off to do, completing the first draft according to the story break. Neither of us were shocked when Todd's assessment of that story element was the same as ours.

We rebroke the offending scenes and the second draft played much smoother. At that point, my job was done as the script rewrites become the purview of the showrunner and the upper-level writers. By the time we got to the Production Draft, it was in really good shape.

At the start of November I went to Vancouver for the shooting of my episode. After I arrived, I was told that usually they have separate cars to take the episode's director and writer from hotel to set, but for the first couple days, they needed me to double up with the director because we were tandem shooting with the previous episode. I had no problem with that.

My director was a wonderful woman named Diana Valentine. She's directed about 40 episodes of television and had worked her way up through the ranks to get there. The ice was broken immediately on our 30-minute drive to set. I mentioned she'd directed an episode of TV a friend of mine wrote and that just started a run of stories where we discovered all our various industry contacts in common.

I took my lead from Diana on set and very quickly picked up where I should be standing to be out of the way while still being available and engaged. While we waited in Video Village before our first shot, she said, "You know, I used to be Lynda Carter's photo double on WONDER WOMAN." What can you really say to that but, "Tell me more!" This was how I learned she got her start as a stuntwoman in the 70s and 80s and let me tell you, someone ABSOLUTELY needs to make a movie centered on the stuntwomen of that era because it's an underexplored topic rife with entertainment.

Also, I very much feel like we had extra superhero karma, making a Superman episode with a Wonder Woman calling the shots.

Suffice to say, by the next morning I went to our PA and told them they could just send one car to pick me and Diana up together for the rest of the shoot because we were getting on like a house on fire. It was great to start the day riding with her, and always fun doing a post-mortem on the way back.

On top of that, Diana was just a fantastic director, period. I learned quickly that she could anticipate almost any note I had and was thinking two steps ahead, always with an eye to the edit. She came prepared, knew what she wanted and - most importantly - knew how to communicate that to everyone. This was her first time on our show, but if you wandered onto our set at any point, you'd have assumed she'd worked with everyone there for years. That's a testament to her and to our crew.

I don't want to get into too many set-stories here, but I will say that the very first scene we shot for my episode had Tyler Hoechlin in full Superman regalia. That was a pretty cool moment. The day I traveled to Vancouver happened to be the anniversary of the day my dad died. I was already thinking about him, but as I was standing there, two feet from Superman, I felt very sad I wasn't able to tell him about this moment, and that he missed it by such little time.

I also resolved not to immediately turn into a fanboy and ask for a picture with Superman. After all, I was a professional there with a job to do. Also, due to COVID protocols, I had to be masked on set, so what good would ANY picture be?

All of our cast are fantastic people, by the way. I had only met Bitsie Tulloch and Erik Valdez prior to this, as they both briefly visited the writers' office at the start of the season. Both of them were friendly, personable people. I knew Erik slightly better, with our first interaction coming via Twitter. In the early weeks of shooting season 1, he saw a tweet I posted about my dad's death and that led him to realize I worked on the same show as him. He reached out over DMs and was very kind to me during a tough time. The day after that, I got flowers and a lovely note from "The S&L Cast." I'm sure that was Erik's doing, and it shows you the kind of guy he is. By the time I saw him on set, Erik felt like an old friend.

Erik's friendliness is not an anomaly among our performers. All of them proved to be very kind people. Though I didn't get to work with Wolé Parks, I did run into him at base camp and got to tell him, "I'm the reason you're Steel!" He immediately hugged me. I probably ended up spending the most time chatting up "the boys," Alex Garfin and Jordan Elsass. Because L.A. is like Neverland, I foolishly still think I'm the 22 year-old who moved out here and not someone much older. Inevitably, hanging out with the boys would disabuse me of that delusion, such as when I referenced at teen drama character of my youth and one of them responded, "Who?"

But all of our actors were wonderful professionals who came to set prepared and often brought their own suggestions and nuances to the scene. We had a ball spending two days filming the quinceañera scenes because most of the cast was there, but there was a lot of down time between shots when they were needed. They all hung out in the green room area together and I gather that for some of them, they don't often get to work with certain other cast members. Any time I happened back there, it seemed like they just delighted in each other's company and really enjoyed having that time together.

I also have nothing but raves about the crew as well. In the writers' room, we're all very passionate about our show and our characters, but we're very much isolated from the other production workers and the actors. It was very exciting to meet everyone and see they're just as jazzed about the show as we are. It was a very enjoyable two-plus weeks on set.

Our penultimate day was spent shooting a massive fight scene involving Superman. Our stunt coordinator Rob Hayter did an amazing job with this fight. I got to speak to Rob on set during a different action scene for the episode and it was great hearing him talk about how they go about making sure every fight tells a story, and how everyone knows exactly what they should be doing. For this fight, we were in a very large space and so Rob was on the "God Mike" talking our performers through the beats and moves of the fight. It was a little like hearing a boxing commentator call a match.

And I'm talking around spoilers here, but at one point we had one actor on a throwback rig and I got to watch - LIVE - Superman punch a dude and send him flying thirty feet backwards in the air! That was a helluva thing to see, and a great thing to come near the end of the experience.

Oh yeah, and in the middle of all that... I couldn't resist any longer.

I had come over to Tyler during a long downtime between set-ups and said, "So... I can't come all this way and NOT get a picture with Superman." He was happy to oblige. After someone from our crew took the picture, I said, "I just realized, you can't tell I'm smiling with the mask on." They said, "Oh, you can tell!"

You might also be able to tell by the four layers I had on that it was FREEZING there.

I hope you tune in tonight and see the results of all our hard work. The entire experience of making this episode was a delight, and a collaboration with so many awesome people I'm looking forward to working with again.

2020 seemed to give me everything I wanted... and then it took my Dad

As 2020 winds down, I'm left with the realization that it's a year I'm always gonna remember as "the year I lost my dad." Considering how much has happened this year, it's sobering that that is what leaves a mark.

From the time Donald Trump, truly one of the worst Americans alive and easily the worst American president ever, had been elected, I'd spent practically every day counting down to Election Day 2020. In a truly dark turn of events, that day, November 3, 2020, was the first day in 73 years that my father was not on this Earth, having died the previous morning.

I started the year with so much optimism. Just two weeks in, SUPERMAN & LOIS had been picked up and thanks to prior encounters with Greg Berlanti, I had a meeting with Todd Helbing, the showrunner. Having been up for a Berlanti show the prior season, I knew that nothing was in the bag, so I went in as prepared as possible and managed to walk out with the job.

Holy shit! I'm was going to be working on a Superman show! Produced by Greg Berlanti! It was pretty much everything I wanted from the time I first came out here. When I finally met the staff, they proved to be a great bunch of people and for a month, it was a dream job. As writers' assistant, I was spending my entire day in a room with people talking about Superman, and I got to contribute quite a bit too.

Then, about a month into the room, the whole world changed. Due to a complete failure on the part of the Trump Administration to contain COVID-19, the pandemic broke out. The room moved to Zoom, and here again, I have to commend the staff I was working with. Working on Zoom is draining in a way that working in a normal room isn't, but I think we adapted about as well as any team could have.

I think it helped that as a collective, this might be the best writing staff I've been lucky enough to work with. In other rooms, I've watched as animosity brewed between some specific writers, to the point that it was obvious everyone in the room was noticing it too as it led to daily clashes between those two. I've witnessed one writer push another writer so far that the second writer simply walked out of the room at 11:30am, drove home, and didn't return until the next day. I've seen writers not intuit after months in a room which pitches aren't anywhere near viable, or be able to adapt their style when it's clear their personality isn't getting results.

We didn't really have that on our show. It was a great bunch of writers who all seemed to feel that the best part of our day was getting together and talking story. Most days, you could feel the excitement even across Zoom. I'm not exaggerating when I say that working on SUPERMAN & LOIS kept me sane this year, and helped me through what otherwise would have been an extremely difficult several months where I was isolating with only my wife and son.

At one point, we took a brief hiatus, and so, with nothing else to do, I found myself writing the teen drama mega-crossover I was born to do: CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS. I've told that story here, so I won't retread most of that ground again. But as you know, I was as shocked as anyone when - at a point when only four pages of this script existed - Ben Blacker contacted me and told me he wanted to do the Zoom live read of the script. Then, once the script was done and I showed it to Greg Berlanti, Greg generously offered to help us with casting.  This is how we got Gregory Smith and Emily VanCamp to reprise their roles and make it sort of an EVERWOOD reunion.

As I returned to the show, the summer found me focusing my attention on either SUPERMAN & LOIS, or the production of the live read. Both were welcome distractions and as our amazing cast came together, it was clear that we had something special. At the same time, it was the end of the summer when Todd Helbing called me with a question, "How would you like to write the next episode?"

I found myself breaking my episode as the last pieces of the live read were falling into place. That all but confirmed to me that it was time for something that had been long delayed - I was going to remove the anonymity from The Bitter Script Reader.  And so, once we had filmed and edited the Zoom live read and announced a release date, I made that reveal as part of the announcement... on October 11, 2020.

Mere hours after I made that announcement, my mother texted me with news. My father had symptoms that appeared to be COVID and had gone for a test. 24 hours later, while I was in the Zoom Room, I got another text from my father: "I tested positive for COVID."

Late that night, I got a call from my mother. Dad had collapsed and hit his head, necessitating a trip to the emergency room. The next day, Tuesday, October 13, he was admitted to the hospital and was being given oxygen to get his blood-ox up. I spoke to him on the phone that day, immediately surprised that he sounded normal. I expected his voice to be weak, or for him to be coughing heavily, or at least sound winded. He didn't. I allowed myself to believe that this was a relatively minor case of COVID, especially when he was released that Thursday.

Friday night, October 16, he was back in the hospital after his blood-ox remained low. He would not leave again.

I spoke to him on the phone the next couple of days. Dad told me he was looking forward to my live read. He hadn't watched most of those teen shows, but he knew it was a big deal for me. He was impressed to see it all come together. In what turned out to be one of our last conversations, he said, "I'm most excited to see Greg Berlanti as The Flash."

I always took that to mean he was very impressed that I was doing something that someone as accomplished as Greg wanted to be a part of. And I think he was very excited for me that I was working with one of my professional idols.

In that same conversation, I told him that I'd just been on the notes call for my episode story area and that everyone raved about it. I read him the non-spoilery parts of the pre-meeting email, which was "We. Loved. This. Episode." He was so happy for me. I told him that I'd been working on my episode's paperwork, which included applying to the WGA. He asked what that meant. I told him it meant I was a writer. I'd be joining the union, card and everything.

But there became concern that he was talking too much and it was affecting his blood ox, so on Tuesday, October 20, they told me "no voice calls." The last conversation I would ever have with him was the day before that. I didn't realize for a few days that he had been allowed to keep his cell phone and was receiving texts, but once I did, I sent him a few pics of my son and we had a brief chat that Sunday, October 25. We texted again on Monday, October 26.

I woke up on Tuesday, October 27 to the news he'd been intubated and sedated. 

This was three days before my live read premiered. The one he'd been so excited for.

The rest of the week was a series of updates as to his condition, communicated in the forms or numbers and levels and benchmarks that aren't worth recapping. There's be improvement in one area, and then something else would go south. They'd address developing blood clots by using thinners, and then the thinners would cause trouble elsewhere in his body. So they would address that, and the distress then cascaded elsewhere.

What this leads to is a FaceTime call with my unconscious father on Saturday, October 31. He'd had a bad morning, but seemed to be turning around by the time they put me on the phone. I knew why they were doing this. I knew that this was the call where I was supposed to say goodbye, just in case there wouldn't be any other opportunity.

I hate goodbyes. I told him that. I told him I knew why they wanted me to talk to him. And then I said to him that I wasn't going to say goodbye. This call would not be goodbye. Instead I told him about everything that was going on. I told him I'd dedicated the live read to him and that since it debuted, so many people were sending well-wishes.

I reminded him of the line he often quoted from Dumb and Dumber, when Lloyd is told by Mary that his chances with her are "one in a million" and Lloyd says, "So you're saying there's a chance!" I told Dad that I needed him to believe it, and that I believed it.

The next day, I posted a picture of my newly-arrived WGA card to Twitter and spent the day fielding congrats from so many of my followers and peers. This was on the heels of CRISIS being very well-received just two days earlier, so my feed that weekend had been like a geyser of well-wishes and positivity. It was a lot of kindness at a time I truly needed it.

Dad did not have a good Sunday. Late in the evening here, I got a call from Mom that his condition was bad. My brother was making the four hour drive to get there because there was a very real chance that he wouldn't make it through the night. I've already told you as much about that night as I can bear, and you'll find that post here.

What I was left with in the wake of Dad's death was anger, so much anger. His death, like so many of the other 250,000 COVID casualties at the time he passed, didn't have to happen.

Any competent administration and Congress would have put everything on a true lockdown, paid people to stay home for two months, and then done contact tracing to isolate active cases and prevent a spread. They would have promoted the science aggressively, and let it be known that masks drastically reduce transmission and embraced the necessity of social distancing. They would not have prioritized "the economy" over human lives, and they wouldn't have acted like it was encouraging freeloading to take financial burdens off of people so wouldn't have to choose between going to work and staying safe.

My father is dead because of Donald Trump, because he chose to fight a pandemic like a PR problem.

My father is dead because not enough people understood how grossly unqualified and incapable this man was to lead... and that wasn't a hard thing to see. Myself and many others knew from the day he was elected that he would only bring ruin to this nation and we spent four years begging everyone else to see it. 

My father is dead because of every ignorant person who voted for Donald Trump despite all the red flags in 2016, and I promise you that just about all of them voted for Trump again the day AFTER my father died, thereby making it crystal clear their denial that boorish ignoramous completely screwed up the pandemic response. Other countries got a handle on it. We didn't - because we have a sociopathic asshole guiding our response.

I hold all of those people responsible, even those who once might have considered themselves close friends or blood relatives of my family. I will never be able to forgive them for what they did in putting that man in the White House. And I don't want people to tell me that I need to "understand" why they supported this racist garbage of a human. I have zero interest in salvaging those relationships and I could not have a lower opinion of those who tied themselves to Trump.

So you can see how all of that tends to overshadow the overwhelming positivity that happened elsewhere in the year. 

I was grateful for the many people who reached out to me as they heard of Dad's passing. One of the advantages of having a robust social media presence is that news travels fast. One of my oldest friends let me know that he felt "like I lost my second dad." A college friend who I first met at a pre-orientation event for Columbus locals attending Denison emailed me to say that he remembered meeting my Dad at that event 22 years ago, and talked about how friendly Dad was to him then.

A writer I worked with on my last show emailed me to say he spoke to my dad when I dragged my parents along to a cookout hosted by another of the writers earlier this year. Apparently Dad told him all about how we drove across the country together when I moved out here and "You know this already, but it bears repeating: he was damn proud of you. For your hard work, your perseverance, and having landed your dream show. He knew you were starting a new chapter and he was positively beaming. It was clear you and your family were the apples of his eye."

I wasn't prepared for how hard it hit to hear that from someone who'd only had one encounter with him.

So many people who Dad met only once or twice, often YEARS ago, emailed me to tell me details of their conversations with him. I have been to so many parties where a friend introduced me to their parents and I promise you, I probably couldn't pick them out of a lineup today. I don't even know if I often had any kind of in-depth conversations with those people... but Dad had such a presence that even in those short encounters, he made an impression.

These last seven weeks have been about me realizing that this impression is now a gigantic hole in the wake of his passing.

Again, the people on SUPERMAN & LOIS couldn't have been more wonderful to me. The morning of my Dad's passing, Greg Berlanti and Todd Helbing had flowers sent not just to me, but to my mother as well. That night, one of the actors on the show, Erik Valdez, happened to see a RT of my tweets about my dad's passing, noticed that we worked on the show together, and DM'd me to introduce himself and send his condolences. The next morning, I returned from a walk to find more flowers waiting for me and a very kind note from "The S&L Cast." Though he didn't claim credit, I'm sure that was Erik's doing.

All of the writers were so wonderful to me, reaching out, covering for me, being there to listen when I needed it. And in perhaps the most unexpected kindness of all, the other Arrowverse assistants - many of them, mind you, whom I've not yet met aside from email - reached out with a condolence card and gift card.

I'm telling you this because I want you to know that contrary to the stereotype of people who work in Hollywood, my co-workers, bosses, and counterparts on other shows are some of the kindest, most empathetic people you could know. Their big hearts made a horrible situation much more bearable than it would have been. All I can do is try to live up to that kindness and pay it forward when it's my turn.

Everything good about this year was connected to this show and Greg Berlanti. I got to write my first episode of TV. I got to write SUPERMAN. I did a star-studded crossover of my favorite teen shows and got Emily VanCamp and Gregory Smith from my FAVORITE teen show to come read MY words. Because of my job, I didn't have to worry about supporting my family during the pandemic, and because of the attention the live read got, I didn't have to go through the days after it alone.

2020 took my father from me and it feels like the only way it could balance the scales is by giving me everything else I ever wanted. And yet, as I sit here reliving the past year, I'm left with these thoughts:

As your parents get older, you confront the reality that one day, they will leave you. That had definitely crossed my mind the last few years. My father was 73, but he looked nearly a decade younger. He'd been taking care of himself. His father passed at the age of 79 and looking at pictures of him, I'm struck by how he looked at least 15 years older than my father did this year. 

Beyond that, my father's mother - my grandmother - had died only four months earlier at the age of 97. I never expected we could lose him so soon after her. Think about that... my father only lived four months of his life without his mother.

I feel like an entire decade was stolen from him. He should have been here to see my four year-old son grow older. Maybe he'd have even made it to his high school graduation, or at least been around long enough that my son wouldn't only know "Papa" as a distant memory.

It's unfair and it hurts and it never should have happened.

I miss him. And I will continue to miss him forever.

I love you, Dad.

How Greg Berlanti helped make CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS an EVERWOOD reunion

The EVERWOOD reunion in tonight's CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS Zoom live read came about because I broke one of the most unbreakable rules in showing your scripts. With every other script I've ever written, I've never shown it to anyone with any standing in the business until AT LEAST four people have read it - usually many more.

When I sent CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS to Greg Berlanti, NO ONE had read it in full, not even my wife. It was one of those scripts that was just so dense, and so inside baseball that I couldn't really thinking of anyone in my trusted circle who would "get it." But I was putting it out there publicly and I was playing with some of Greg's most beloved characters. Also, if you go back to the first day of reactions to the initial pages I posted, you'll see that Jonathan Gabay, an executive at Berlanti Productions was one of the first people to be intrigued by this concept, telling me, "I need this script finished asap." Since I was sending it to Jonathan, there was really no reason NOT to send it to Greg, at least as a heads-up.

Within days, Greg replied he couldn't wait to read it over the weekend and that it sounded awesome. I'd mentioned that Ben Blacker was already on board to produce this as a live-read fundraiser, and so Greg generously said if we needed help from anyone on his team, we should let him know. When I asked, he said he'd be happy to make a few calls. 

During the planning, I discovered one trait of Greg's that might explain some of his success. It was the first phone call with me, Greg Berlanti, Ben Blacker and Gregory Smith as we were hashing out the best way to do this live read. Greg Berlanti jumps on the call, and very quickly he's saying things like, "I think this could be something really special! You could raise a lot of money with this, do a lot of good! I think it's the kind of thing people need right now with the state of the world and it'd be a really fun show!"

It felt like he was selling ME on MY script! Obviously I agreed with him, but hearing him say that got me even more charged up to do it - and I think that's the point. It's like a coach giving the halftime speech to the team, it just brings up the energy immensely. If there's one thing I've learned from Greg it's to be the most enthusiastic person in the room. Be that beacon of positivity. Be the one who believes the most in what you're doing because people WILL follow you.

I've had bosses in this business who seemed to exist in a state of permanent jadedness and world-wearyness. Every move came from a cynical place. Even if they were right, they didn't fire you up about what you're working on. In the entertainment industry, you have to be the biggest believer in what you're working if you're ever going to make something people care about.

Anyway, within a couple weeks it was official - Gregory Smith and Emily VanCamp were onboard. I - perhaps one of the biggest EVERWOOD fans alive - had written something that would be a mini-EVERWOOD reunion.

As protective as some actors are of their iconic roles, I knew to temper my hopes as far as getting anyone to reprise their role. I really don't think that Gregory Smith and Emily VanCamp would have returned without the script having Greg's blessing. It really meant a lot to have three of the most important people in EVERWOOD put their weight behind this.

How did I get to the point of being able to email Greg Berlanti directly? Well, it started with Twitter.

A quick look at my archives will substantiate that I've been writing about EVERWOOD for a long time, and that it's not the only one of Greg's shows I've raved about. Whenever one of those posts went live, I'd tag Greg on the tweet promoting it. Greg's not particularly active on Twitter, so I never got the kind of interaction I'd had with some other showrunners, but every now and then he'd send a brief reply of thanks.

Then one day out of the blue, he followed me on Twitter. It was strange because I hadn't engaged or tweeted anything that should have caught his eye. My best guess is that maybe he saw my breakdown of the EVERWOOD pilot, which I'd posted about a month earlier. There was no interaction then, but it's important because it meant almost exactly a year later, I was able to DM him directly.

I was setting up a live read of THE MAKING OF STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII, a script I'd written with Brian Michael Scully. The occasion was my ten year anniversary as the Bitter Script Reader and I decided to mark the event by throwing a live read and inviting the many Twitter friends I'd made, and some of the professional contacts I had yet to meet in person.

To that end, I sent Greg a DM that read something like, "please excuse this one-time intrusion into your DMs, but I'm doing this live read as part of an anniversary celebration. I'm inviting a lot of people I've met via Twitter. Your work's meant a lot to me for a long time. It's part of the reason I want to be a writer and it'd be an honor to have you."

And then I waited to get unfollowed. But that didn't happen. Four or five days later, I woke up to a DM from Greg that began, "First of all, I'm touched you asked. And by all means this doesn't need to be an intrusion so write anytime." He went on to tell me that he had a conflict with that date - and it was a legit conflict - but he'd try to send someone from his company.

I wrote back to thank him and that I was glad it wasn't annoying. I mentioned that at the moment, I was working at Warners, so at least now I knew not to be shy if I ran into him on the lot.  On the day of the show, Greg sent me a message wishing me luck and saying that since I was on the lot, maybe I could stop by the office sometime and say hi.

Well, I'm not gonna say no to that, am I?

What eventually happened was we agreed to meet for coffee on the lot, and I learned something valuable from that. I got to meet Greg outside his office and then within like thirty seconds our chit-chat led me to bring up my son... and we discovered our kids are literally just days apart in age, so as Dad's we were dealing with the exact same things, same TV shows they were obsessed with and so on.

At this point, I'm pretty good at not being star struck, but I always worry I'll make a fool of myself in front of someone who's work I've really been into. By meeting Greg on neutral territory and having the conversation go the way it did, I didn't feel like I was meeting "Greg Berlanti, most prolific TV producer." I was talking to "Greg Berlanti, fellow dad" and from that moment on, it was like talking to a new friend who I was on equal footing with. When you're taking a general meeting that you're nervous about, try to find some way to get to that place in the conversation.

And then we went back to the office anyway. Greg said, "I want to know what you're writing now, your two best scripts, and what shows you're really into at the moment." My technique for answering was to make sure there was a thruline that ran through all of these. In other words, figure out how your favorite shows relate to what you've written before, and how all of that informs what you're writing now. As a bonus, if you can make all of that relevant to the person you're talking to, that's gold.

After I weaved through those answers, Greg said, "Okay, let's skip to the end of the meeting and then we can just chat for 40 minutes. I'm gonna give you my email. Send me your two best scripts. Give me a couple weeks to read them because we're about to work on some pilots, but after that we'll have hired some new execs for staffing and then I can pass what I like onto them, if that's okay."

If that's okay? Yeah, I think I'll be fine with you reading my work personally and then considering me for staffing.

I sent him my teen drama thriller pilot and my 13 REASONS WHY/AWAKE spec. Since at least ten minutes of our meeting ended up discussing THE MAKING OF STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII, I also included that, while specifying it was independent of my submissions. I was just sending to him in case he was curious.

He read all three - which means that even before Greg read CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS, he'd read more of my work than every showrunner I've worked for - put together! 

As it turned out, that staffing season wasn't my year. Had some meetings with his execs and one of his showrunners, but didn't get it. I kept up contact with Greg and ultimately, when SUPERMAN & LOIS came along, I was offered Writers' Assistant.

That was a no-brainer. My favorite character in a series produced by one of my favorite writer/producers? It felt like destiny that after all the time I waited to break in, THIS was going to be it.

And this is where I've buried the lede. I can't tell you anything about the episode's plot. I can't even tell you which episode it will be, but by the end of first season of SUPERMAN & LOIS, you will see an episode with the credit, "Written by Adam Mallinger."

(That's me, in case you forgot already. Craig Byrne at KSiteTV was the first to break the news in this interview with me today.)

My first episode of television is going to be a Superman episode. This is something like 35 years of my life in the making. There are so many things in my life that have led up to the developments of the last couple months that if my life was a TV show, I'd feel like this was the endgame leading to the series finale.

I hope you all enjoy the show tonight. The entire act of making this program is an experience that has meant a lot to me.

CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS will be a Zoom live read for charity AND feature an EVERWOOD reunion!

You read the script. You told me I should do it as a live read. Well, guess what? I listened, and thanks to Ben Blacker and Greg Berlanti, you are at last getting the teen mega-crossover you deserve!

Coming Friday, October 30... a Zoom live read of CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS! An all-star cast will bring to life this unprecedented crossover event featuring characters from nearly a dozen teen dramas and a few surprises!

A Crisis is erasing the world of the Teen Drama multiverse and the only thing that can save it is an all-star cast of teen archetypes assembled by Kevin Arnold and Dawson Leery! The worlds of VERONICA MARS, EVERWOOD, RIVERDALE, ONE TREE HILL, GILMORE GIRLS and 13 REASONS WHY are just a few that collide in this meeting of the angstiest, sexiest and fastest talking teens in TV history.

And in a special treat, this dream team includes Ephram Brown and Amy Abbott from EVERWOOD - played by their original performers: Gregory Smith and Emily VanCamp! Yes, it's an EVERWOOD reunion, and that's not the end of the surprises here!

From producers Greg Berlanti (Dawson’s Creek; Everwood; The Flash; Riverdale, and many more) and Ben Blacker (Thrilling Adventure Hour; Dead Pilots Society) and writer Adam Mallinger comes a tribute to the classic WB teen dramas of yesterday and an affectionate parody of the CW superhero shows of today.

Who's Adam Mallinger, you ask? That's me! That's right, this project is so huge, I HAD to have my real name on it, so after over 11 years - the mask has totally fallen.

Most of you are going to keep calling me "Bitter," and I'm totally fine with that, btw.

Starring

Gregory Smith (ROOKIE BLUE) as Ephram Brown

Emily VanCamp (THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER) as Amy Abbott

Melissa Fumero (BROOKLYN NINE-NINE) as Lorelei Gilmore

Isabella Gomez (ONE DAY AT A TIME) as Rory Gilmore and Brooke Davis

Emmy Raver-Lampman (UMBRELLA ACADEMY) as Veronica Mars

Vella Lovell (CRAZY EX- GIRLFRIEND) as Veronica Lodge

Nick Wechsler (REVENGE) as Archie Andrews

Matt Lauria (FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS) as Dawson Leery

Anjelica Fellini (TEENAGE BOUNTY HUNTERS) as Hannah Baker

Mark Gagliardi (BLOOD & TREASURE) as Kevin Arnold

Caroline Ward (HOST) as Peyton Sawyer

Jaime Moyer (A.P. BIO) as Sue Sylvester

Lindsey Blackwell (DAVID MAKES MAN) as Young Veronica Mars

Autumn Reeser (THE O.C.) as Taylor Townsend

And Greg Berlanti as The Flash

Tickets available here. The cost is $8 plus a $2 fee, but you're allowed to donate more, and I hope you do, because the proceeds are going to two great causes:

1) The Hollywood Support Staff Relief Fund - This has been established by the Actors Fund to benefit L.A. based support staffers affected by the COVID-19 shutdowns. I'm a Writers' Assistant on SUPERMAN & LOIS, and I'm very fortunate to have a job right now. Many of my peers aren't as fortunate and I really want to help them out with this show. Please give generously. You'll be helping a lot of future TV writers stay in the game.

2) The Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation - This is a non-profit that protects heirs’ property and promotes its sustainable use to provide increased economic benefit to historically under-served families.

The show goes live on Friday, October 30th at 8pm ET / 5pm PT and will be available until midnight on Sunday, November 8th.

I'll have more to say about this in subsequent posts, but getting to be a part of this live read, seeing this script come to life, has been one of the great thrills of my career. Getting to do it with people whose work I've not only enjoyed, but admired and emulated is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime experience that I'm going to cherish for a very long time.

If I start gushing about this amazing cast, I'll end up leaving someone out, but just LOOK at that list of people and tell me that's not a show you'd kick in a few bucks to watch.

If you want to read the first draft of the script (which is not EXACTLY the draft we're performing) and get a little history behind the script, go to this post.

The full script for CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS is now available!

You guys were here at the start of this less than two weeks ago when I dashed off four pages of CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS as a joke. It was basically taking the format of the big comic book mega-crossovers (and the Arrowverse crossover that the original CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS inspired) and applying it to some of the biggest teen dramas of the last 30 years.

The reaction was so good that I wrote another four pages. And then another. And another.

By then it was becoming clear to me that I'd have to finish this script I had no plan for when I started. It makes sense that I'd be drawn to something like this - teen dramas are among my favorite shows. Three years ago, when I listed the 16 Great TV Shows that made an impact on me as a writer, THE WONDER YEARS, GILMORE GIRLS, EVERWOOD and 13 REASONS WHY all made the list. Two years ago, I wrote an alternate season 3 premiere for 13 REASONS WHY, using it as an example of how to write a spec episode.

This script went from idle joke to completed spec in about eight days. I've held it for a few days because with all the protests happening across the country, it didn't feel appropriate at all to say, "Hey guys! Check this out!" It's now clear that several days into this, there IS going to be no golden time to be silly. The next five months until the election (and probably several months after) are going to be marked by continuing tragedy and aggression from Donald Trump and his party as they terrorize a nation to distract from their terrible pandemic response - and maybe make an undemocratic power grab as a bonus.

The world sucks, and things are bleak right now. Take joy where you can find it. If this script is in line with your interests, I hope it can make you smile for 75 pages. It's a loving tribute to many of the shows and creators whose work has inspired me and healed me throughout my life.

You can download the full script here.

After you click that link, press ONLY the button that says "Download" next to the script title, and ignore any pop-ups you get or any messages telling you that your Adobe Flash is out of date.

Some credit where credit is due:

BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 created by Darren Starr

DAWSON'S CREEK created by Kevin Williamson

EVERWOOD created by Greg Berlanti

GLEE created by Ryan Murphy & Brad Falchuk & Ian Brennan

KATY KEENE developed by Roberto Aguirre-Sacsa & Michael Grassi, based on characters by Archie Comics

PRETTY LITTLE LIARS developed by I. Marlene King, based on the novels by Sara Shepard

GILMORE GIRLS created by Amy Sherman-Palladino

ONE TREE HILL created by Mark Schwahn

RIVERDALE developed by Roberto Aguirre-Sacsa, based on characters by Archie Comics

THE OC created by Josh Schwartz

VERONICA MARS created by Rob Thomas

13 REASONS WHY developed by Brian Yorkey, based on the novel by Jay Asher

THE WONDER YEARS created by Neal Marlens & Carol Black

The EVERWOOD and 13 REASONS WHY pilots show how to make hurtful choices empathetic

I've been preparing to address the notes on my teen drama pilot and it brought to mind two pilots that were touchstones for me as I wrote: Everwood and 13 Reasons Why. And I hadn't noticed before they not only share similar scenes, but they're KEY similar scenes.

13 Reasons Why's pilot has two moments that I think are essential to getting the audience invested in the story. The first is an interaction between Hannah and Clay at the basketball game. There's a little bit of banter exchanged that halts when Clay realizes she's there to check out one of the players. "Don't be jealous, Clay" she teases. It's clear on the page he's pining for her, but the way the scene is played is essential. Hit just the wrong note, and her teasing seems mean-spirited. Instead, it's a cute moment.

The second moment is when she seeks refuge with him at lunch when rumors spread lies about her being promiscuous. Instead of being supportive, he's cold and hits her with a jealous barb about how "maybe it's better to wait." Clay looks like a dick there, but THAT was the moment that made me lean forward and say, "Go on..." You get a lot of notes in a pilot warning how you need to keep your characters "likable" but having someone be clearly wrong for human reasons is often more effective. He's not a bad guy, but he's having a teenage boy reaction. he was rejected, he's hurt, he's jealous, and in a moment he instantly regrets (also an important component), he does what a lot of boys would do in the same situation: act like an immature dick.

And here's the rub: on the page, both those moments play harsher. You don't have the performances of the actors to soften the blows or really make you feel the subtext. But that's no reason NOT to write the scene. As for EVERWOOD, there's a similar kind of moment...

Setup: Ephram has just been forced to move to a small town by his widowed brilliant brain surgeon father. he hates it, but popular girl Amy seems to take an interest in him. But Ephram is crushed when he finds out Amy has a bf and apparently was using him but then she explains herself. Her bf is actually in a coma following an accident. The doctors can't do anything for him. Amy befriended Ephram because she was hoping he could get his father to do something. It felt like fate that a world famous brain surgeon came to her town.

So you can't hate her after that moment. Was she manipulative? Sure. But it was for a good reason. You get why she would have done it and you get the sense that she's a nice enough person she might have been friendly to Ephram anyway. You empathize with her, you empathize with Ephram because he likes her and now WE like her too... and now you want these two to get together. But they can't get together and get everything they want because her coma boyfriend complicates everything. It's a perfect knot.

So fuck writing "likable" characters. Write human people who make human mistakes and make bad choices that have empathetic motivations behind them. When Clay hurts Hannah, it's awful, but I also thought, "I've done that. And it didn't feel good."

Breaking down the pilot of EVERWOOD

Previous Pilot Breakdowns:
Veronica Mars
Alias
The Office
Homicide: Life on the Street

Find the original twitter thread here.


NOTE: So the @CWSeed version of the EVERWOOD pilot is apparently the syndicated version. I'll be doing the Extended DVD version, which is about 5 min longer. I'm doing this one because it's my favorite Greg Berlanti pilot and I wanted to do another ensemble drama pilot.

Like a lot of pilots, EVERWOOD starts with narration, and this is accompanied with sort of a montage info-dump. The storyteller is not the lead, Dr. Andy Brown, played by Treat Williams. It's Irv, who we'll meet later.

Meet Andy Brown, who in the first scene, forgets his son's piano recital. Scene 2 shows that he's one of the best neurosurgeon in the business, and is everything you'd expect of a New York City doctor. He tells a patient, "Don't thank me now. You can thank me when I save your life."

Dr. Brown misses the recital. Police arrive at his office. We don't hear what he's told. Irv fills us in. Car accident killed his wife on her way to the recital. Andy's left alone to raise 15 year old Ephram and 9 year old Delia. We have to cover a LOT of ground, particularly in making the wife someone we care about.

Five minutes in, Andy's doing his second consult. To our surprise, he tells a patient to forget surgery, go live his life in the time he has left. "I can't save your life. At most I can prolong it... so this hospital can brag about its success rate."

Andy's made his own choice. Smash cut to "MOVING WHERE?" from Ephram. Andy's moving them to the small town of Everwood, Colorado. Ephram doesn't want to leave NYC, thinks his dad is crazy. Andy puts it to a vote and buys Delia's vote with the promise of a pony. Act one took 6:45. Ends with them moving out of their New York City home.

Act two kicks off as we arrive in Everwood. Irv drops some local exposition on us. It immediately comes off as a folksy small town in the middle of nowhere. Oh, and Andy's grown a beard.

Delia gets on the bus and we meet Irv in the flesh. A large friendly African American man.

Ephram's off to school. Andy offers to drive. E: "Appreciate the offer but it's about ten years too late." They don't get along.

Another character intro: Andy meets his neighbor Nina. She already knows who he is. See, Time Magazine wrote an article about Andy leaving medicine. He's kind of a big deal.

At school. Ephram mouths off to some would-be bullies. And IMMEDIATELY seems to catch the eye of Amy, every guy's teenage crush. She knows who he is too. They banter easily. Ephram's shown as witty and snarky. Amy invites Ephram to eat lunch sometime. Ephram clearly thinks she's into him.

Next scene: new info is that Andy's planning on opening a new general practice. There's already a doctor in town, he's informed.

Transition to Dr. Harold Abbott. A local asks him to "just check me out" here on the street for an ailment. Dr. Abbot gives a long speech about how he could misdiagnose something and expose himself to a malpractice case. It's a very efficient way of showing that Dr. Abbott has a bit of a rod up his ass. Big thing about this pilot: EVERYONE's voice is instantly clear.

Both Andy and Abbott speechify, but they do so in different ways. Looking for office space, Andy is intrigued by the abandoned and dilapidated train station. he's decided this is the perfect place. END ACT TWO

Top of Act Three: Ephram and Amy. Ephram is gassing on about manga. She's into it, cooing "Who knew comics could be so hot." Makeout music comes on. And if you haven't guessed by this point, Ephram's clearly dreaming. And when he wakes up, it's THAT kind of dream.

(This is probably what's cut on the online version, which is followed by a scene where Ephram tries to wash his sheets as Andy asks what he's doing). Andy ends with another attempt at an olive branch, "I'm making pancakes, you want some?" Ephram: "Go to hell!" Ah, fathers and sons.

Dr. Abbott confronts Andy about parking in his spot. "I'm sorry I didn't see a name on the curb." "It's implied." Abbott doesn't take kindly to another doctor in town. This whole scene is gold.

Abbott boasts his golf club belonged to Tiger Woods. Andy: "I'll have to tell him." Yep, Andy knows Tiger.

Abbott sneers that he's been there for 15 years, "Before me it was my father." Joviley, Andy inquires, "Was it your father's father before him? Because that would be cool!"

The script has to NAIL this relationship and that scene's a good microcosm. Abbot is arrogant and confrontational. Andy is breezy and friendly. Sets the tone that you can instantly build on. From here, we get to the OTHER major relationship the pilot has to nail Amy/Ephram. She asks what it's like having a doctor. Ephram's response is revealing, "He misses your birthday. You want to hate him, but he's in the paper for separating Siamese twins." So yeah, Ephram has issues.

Showing he's not entirely blinded by his crush, Ephram asks, "Why are you hanging out with me?" "You've got kind of a tragic, lonely thing going on," she deflects. As they split up, her brother (Chris Pratt!) tells her dad's not gonna like them hanging out. She blackmails him into silence.

Andy sets up the office and an older woman named Edna Harper shows up. Calls Delia "Private," she has "40 years nursing experience, includes 2 tours in 'nam." She also drops that she worked for Dr. Abbott "Senior and Junior." Again, another intro, another info dump.

Back at the house, we learn Ephram hasn't played the piano since his mother died. Andy's concerned, Ephram says "Like you ever cared if I played or not." We hit this note a lot, but it's a big one.

Andy now imagines/recalls a conversation with his wife. She suggests he grow a beard (Ah! so THAT'S why he grew a beard!) The talk is the "what would you do if I died" talk. Andy deflects. He imagines dancing with his wife, and when we pull back, we see that Delia is watching him dance alone.

ACT OUT: Dr. Brown is not well, and his daughter is concerned.

Act In: Two doctors park side by side, Andy is cheery. "My first day, you gonna wish me luck?" Harold: "If you're done blathering, one of us has patients to attend to." Andy, unfazed: "Have a nice day!" I'm SURE there's fanfic about these two. (See what I mean about what's conveyed just in dialogue? Especially in a pilot, you've got to be efficient in getting to the heart of character's attitude.)

At the office, Andy persuades the town gossip to consent to an exam, comparing her to Elizabeth Taylor (whom he has operated on. Because OF COURSE he has.) Andy's very charming, even with the name drop, but he clearly knows what he's doing. Treat hits the PERFECT genial note.

After an Irv/Delia scene that shows Irv as the wise man of the town, we're back at Andy's office. He says "I'm not charging. My services are free...I was a brain surgeon for 15 years. I have a few pennies tucked away." I liked that way of revealing Andy's not just rich, he's RICH.

Amy's brother Bright - played by CHRIS PRATT -  confronts Ephram. It's hate at first sight. Amy arrives, and Bright says, "Tell him why you're really hanging out with him." Also mentions she's got a boyfriend. This starts another mini-mystery. They fight. Lands them at the principal's office. Andy shows up, as does Bright's father... Dr. Abbott.

So the girl Ephram likes has a bf and her dad hates Ephram's dad's guts. That almost sounds like... conflict!

And now we finally get the big Ephram/Andy confrontation. Ephram calls him out on losing his mind. "I knew her! You were never around! I wish you died instaed of her!" Andy volleys right back, "I wish I did too, you little bastard!" It's a pretty raw ugly moment. Smartly, Berlanti has Ephram refuse to go in the house as ordered while Andy impotently says, "At some point you're going inside." Nina sees all this. Andy, dryly, "I run a tight ship." Look for those moments. You can't just have your characters say they hate each other. You need to have a way out of that scene.

Andy/Nina talk: he says Julia was better at parenting. Nina asks if the reason he came there has to do with Julia. "I need to prove I can be the kind of doctor and father she wanted be when she was alive." - Mission statement for the show.

Top of the next act: Harold and Andy bicker. Andy again tries so hard to be his friend. Andy also shows him up with a correct diagnosis of Nina's son's illness, which he clocked in the last scene. "Not bad for a nutbag. You should see what I can do with my hands." There's some silly banter as people show up for Andy's free services. Dr. Abbott confronts Edna, calling her "Mother." Ah, more family conflict between the Abbott and Brown clans.

We're seeing all parts of the engine that drives the series and the next scenes give us a big one. Amy gets Ephram to see her boyfriend Colin. He's in a coma after a car accident on 4th of July. He was Bright's best friend. Bright was actually in the car with him but doesn't remember anything. "Every night I pray for a miracle.. When I heard your dad was coming to town I figured if anyone could help him, it would be him." Emily VanCamp sells the HELL out of this scene. Has to make us forgive Amy's manipulation and we're totally with her.

It would have been easy to write Amy as a manipulative liar. By the end of that scene, we feel like we'd have done the same thing. What I like about this show. People are more complex than good/bad. The audience always relates to them.

The next scene was another Andy/wife convo. She tells him about passing through Everwood as a child. Says essentially, that if anything happens to her, that's where she'll be. Yes, I know it sounds SCHMALTZY, but it works, dammit.

Delia comforts her father... and piano music wafts in from the other room. Ephram is at last playing again. "I found out I'm in love with a girl who's in love with a guy in a coma." Andy and Ephram make up. Ephram doesn't make eye contact.

And we go out on Andy observing of Ephram's playing, "I forgot how good you are." "Mom used to say I had your hands."

And with Irv's final narration, we end the pilot.

So let's count the relationships that drive the series:
Andy/Ephram - conflict at the core of everything
Andy/Abbott - conflict. Also affects everything with their kids. We can see a potential domino effect for stories to exploit
Edna/Abbot - Conflict

Love triangle: Ephram/Amy/Colin. Ephram likes Amy. But the guy she loves is someone only his father can save. So if he asks his dad to help, he probably loses the girl. But how can he not ask? And hey! it's a triangle with no bad guys, just normal teens, sorta.

(Later on in the series, they make a VERY smart choice in making us like Colin. He's the most beloved guy in town, which makes the triangle even more complicated. We can't hate him.) Then we add the fact that if Andy gets involved, it's another chance for Abbott to feel like an inferior doctor. And what must it feel like to see your daughter pinning her hopes to your rival.

Bottom line: there is a LOT of pipe laid here. Two families, multiple layers of conflict both within and between the families AND the love triangle. And it has heart and characters you want to spend time with. And there's no high concept, sci-fi twist or anything.

I love this show. It's my favorite Greg Berlanti show and Ephram and Amy are some of the best teen characters to appear on TV.

Other Pilot Breakdowns:
Life
Revenge

16 Great TV Shows, Part 13: Everwood

Part 1: The Wonder Years
Part 2: The Simpsons
Part 3: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Part 4: Seinfeld
Part 5: The John Larroquette Show
Part 6: ER
Part 7: Newsradio
Part 8: The X-Files
Part 9: Law & Order
Part 10: Homicide: Life on the Street
Part 11: Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Part 12: Gilmore Girls

The further I get from Everwood, the more I realize it was something of a sneaky Trojan Horse that used some of its conventional trappings to slide through development on a network that really doesn't seem like the most obvious home for it. This Greg Berlanti-created show debuted on The WB in 2002 and at first blush, seemed to have one foot in the "family drama" groove held by 7th Heaven and another foot in the "teen drama" one.

The backstory: Treat Williams plays Dr. Andy Brown, a world famous neurosurgeon who's left to raise his two kids teenage Ephram (Gregory Smith) and 9 year-old Delia (Viven Cardone) after his wife dies in a car accident. In a sudden, seemingly spur of the moment decision, he quits his Manhattan practice and uproots his kids to a small Colorado town called Everwood. There, the predictably quirky locals buzz about the arrival of the new doctor who's been on the cover of TIME, though his new (free!) practice leads him to quickly butt heads with the town's family doctor Harold Abbott (Tom Amandes.)

Ephram, who has long butted heads with his distant father, finds himself in another complication. The cute girl he likes, Amy (Emily VanCamp, in one of the best teen drama "teenage girl" roles ever), wants him to convince Andy to do brain surgery on her boyfriend, left comatose after an accident. As if competing with a guy in a coma wasn't enough for Ephram, Amy's father is Dr. Abbott.

It soapy when you lay it out like that, but the pilot is one of the best examples of how to introduce a complicated ensemble with a lot of connections to each other. If there's a core relationship in the pilot, it's the tension between Ephram and Andy, which at once point devolves into a shouting match where Ephram says (and means) "I wish you'd died instead of [Mom]!" It's raw, painful stuff, and it's not fixed by the end of the pilot. The two spend years rebuilding their relationship with a lot of one step forward, two steps back moves. There eventually comes a time when Andy does something unforgivable and an entire season is spent waiting for Ephram to discover it, with the viewer knowing that neither of them can come back from it.

It's a teen show where the main character is a man in his fifties, and about half of the ensemble is his age or older. It's a family drama where even a detente between parties doesn't lead to any resolution. It's a show that doesn't take the easy route of demonizing the manipulative popular girl OR the brash bully that's her brother.

Oh, I forgot to mention: Chris Pratt is in this, playing Amy's brother Bright. NOW will you check it out?

The seemingly simple tropes that each character falls into upon introduction belies the depth revealed as the story goes on. There are entire seasons where Amy Abbott is frustrating and exhausting but it's always compelling because Emily VanCamp and the writers sell the shit out of it. Same with Ephram, there are so many times where you know you should want to smack him but you can't help but understand his point of view. And Andy... this is the story of Andy Brown learning to be a father and a human and I like that it's not easy in the least.

Is there another WB show where one of the main cast relationships was an interracial marriage between a couple in their 70s?

This is another one of those "character first" shows where the writers found wonderful ways to weave in social issues and hit them from all sides by using their entire ensemble. A standout from the first season is "the abortion episode," where Dr. Brown is asked to terminate a pregnancy and the request sparks tension between not just him and the conservative town, but Harold as well... and not for the reasons we'd expect.

Some of the social issues were "hit and run" topics for one episode. (Television Without Pity had a fantastic moniker for these "Medical Epidemics Of the Week" or MEOW.) Here they'd hit topics like "teen sex parties" or "teen pregnancy." Other topics provided fodder for an entire season, as when Harold's sister returns from Africa and joins her family practice... not revealing until much later that she's HIV-positive. It stokes concern and mistrust in the town and destroys Harold's family practice entirely.

The Ephram and Amy relationship provides the expected amount of teen angst, but unlike other series, that plotline doesn't exist in its own bubble and so the ripples from that will touch and affect other plots like the Abbotts' marriage and the dynamic between Andy and Harold. This is one of those writings things that's generally invisible when it's done well.

If you watch most shows carefully, you'll start to sense divisions between various plots or "pods," as I call them. Supporting characters may have parallel stories, but you won't often see a lot of butterfly effect where one subplot knocks over major dominos in another subplot. (This is particularly true of The WB at the time. On Gilmore Girls, it was rare for anything happening with Rory at school to somehow impact anything going on with her grandparents.)

Everwood was never afraid of emotion, or of showing flawed characters who took time to evolve out of those failings. The writing always seemed to come from genuine emotion and this is an incredibly strong ensemble cast. I'm a big fan of Greg Berlanti's work in the DC Universe but for my money, this is is masterpiece.

The entire series is available to stream for free on CWSeed. Season One is that rare beast where I'm not sure there are any duds at all. Watch the pilot - study how it efficiently introduces such a large ensemble and let that pilot force you to watch everything that follows. If this show premiered today on Netflix, we'd be holding it up as another example of "Peak TV."

For further reading, check out this Oral History of Everwood from EW.com.

Part 14: The Office

Part 15: Breaking Bad

Part 16: 13 Reasons Why

Subtle suspense

I've finally been about to get around to re-watching season 2 of Everwood, which as I've probably said before, is one of the greatest character-based series ever written. The series is the brain child of Greg Berlanti - who cut his teeth on Dawson's Creek, and has a new series called No Ordinary Family premiering this week on ABC. (He's also one of the writers of the forthcoming Green Lantern movie.)

The show is built around Andy Brown, a renowned brain surgeon who seems to be one of the most famous of his brethren. When his wife suddenly dies, Andy reevaluates his priorities and suddenly uproots his two children from their New York life and moves to a small town in Colorado called Everwood.

The folks in this sleepy hamlet are beside themselves with the arrival of this "celebrity" and the first episode uses their reactions to let us know just how big a deal Andy is. It's hard to imagine them more impressed if Stephen Hawking took up residence there. But none is more impressed than 15 year-old Amy Abbott. She's the most popular girl in her grade, and quickly latches on to Andy's son Ephram. Being a teenage boy, Ephram welcomes the attention - and then she reveals she's got an agenda.

See, Amy's boyfriend Colin was in an accident several months earlier. Now he's in a coma and Amy is convinced that "the great Andy Brown" is his last hope. Midway through the season, Andy is persuaded to try a risky operation in the hopes of saving Colin. In what seems to be a miracle, Colin wakes up. For a while he seems to be his old self, but soon mood swings and tremors reveal that there have indeed been complications. Andy is convinced to operate again, but it's clear that there is a very real chance that Colin won't survive this surgery. The final episode of the first season builds up to that surgery. We experience the agony of the wait of those in the waiting room, along with seeing Andy scrub in for surgery.

The final scene of the show features Andy emerging from surgery to face those in the waiting room. They give expectant looks, and Andy appears weary, exhausted. The season ends with Colin's fate ambiguous. Did he die? Did he survive with complications? Did he pull through?

The first scene of the next season opens at a pool luau and in a sneaky bit of suspense, each main character is reintroduced in the course of the scene. It's a great way to toy with the audience. We see everyone turn up, nothing is said of Colin's fate and we find ourselves waiting to see if Colin proves to be among the crowd. Then, one character bumps into someone from behind. They turn - and it's Colin.

So the audience likely exhales their tension, relieved that the story got a happy ending. Then the show kicks us in the gut again. He speaks to Amy, and then fades out. We find ourselves at his funeral. He didn't make it.

It's a nice series of mini-reveals. The first scene casually reintroduces the characters, knowing we'll be scrutinizing their arrivals and their behaviors for clues as to Colin's fate. I remember seeing another show where the opening scene featured the aftermath of a car crash and from the reactions of those on site, it's clear that one of the main characters was killed. Cut to a local hangout - one by one the leads of the show are featured. The audience realizes they're subconsciously taking a head-count, figuring out who's missing... until we realize who isn't there.

The Everwood example is even better because the scene avoids the trap of feeling like a dream scene. Most of the time when a show does a fake-out dream sequence, it tips its hand early on. It'll have characters clearly acting out of character, or something happen that is clearly impossible. Here, the moment is a mundane daydream - nothing truly calls attention to the scene as being out of place. Not only does it make Colin's appearance a relief, the truth becomes that much more of a gut-punch because we're truly taken off-guard.

It's moments like these that lead to the fans at Television Without Pity coining the phrase, "Damn you, Berlanti!"

The Ten Best Series Finales

It's that time of year again, that time when several long-running and beloved series take their final bows. The TV blogosphere becomes littered with articles on greatest sign-offs, challenging this year's crop to match such luminaries as M*A*S*H and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I've decided to take a slightly different approach with my list.

TV watching is a different experience than film-going. Over several seasons, the cast of a beloved TV show becomes like a group of friends we invite into our living rooms week-after-week. Thus, the pressure on that final visit is so much greater. It can't just be a good story - it has to be a fulfilling conclusion to that emotional bond. So for this reason, it's impossible for someone of my generation to have quite the same reaction to the final MTM episode as someone who spent several years of their lives living with those characters.

It's all about closure. Does the audience get the closure they deserve on these characters and stories. Does the finale honor what worked best about the series while providing a satisfying coda?

So when it came time to compile my list, I decided to limit the shows to those that concluded within my lifetime. You can complain that's arbitrary, but hey, it's MY list!

10) Mad About You: "The Final Frontier" - I'm sure I'll get flack that this is on the list while other sitcoms like Frasier and Friends aren't. For my money, this finale was simply better - a time-hopping trip that traces Paul and Jamie's future over the next thirty years. It's a well-constructed, bittersweet episode.

9) Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: "What You Leave Behind" - The first Trek series to take a more serialized approach to story-telling had a lot to resolve by its final two hours. There are some flaws (namely that while both the resolution of the Dominion War and the conflict with the Bajoran deities are resolved, the two stories have little to do with each other.) There's a sense that this could have benefited from one more draft but the final fifteen minutes hit the right notes, with Captain Sisko's "death" and promise to one day return home, the departures of Odo, Worf and O'Brien, and most effectively, the final shot of the show. The series' final image begins with Jake Sisko staring at the wormhole, waiting for his father and then pulls back from the window into space until Deep Space Nine is just another light in the heavens.

8) Cheers: "One for the Road" - The return of Shelly Long's Diane Chambers is the perfect catalyst for Sam Malone to finally get serious about what he really wants out of life. In the end, he realizes his one true love is his bar. Every character gets their moment, and the series leaves with a sense that life will go on as normal, even though a few changes have happened.

7) The Wonder Years: "Summer/Independence Day" - Focusing almost exclusively on Kevin and Winnie during a summer where they both work at a resort, the episode takes their relationship to the next level before returning home. With the theme from The Natural playing in the background as the Arnold clan attends a Fourth of July parade, adult Kevin's narration provides a moving coda for all the characters' fates. Saddest of all, Kevin's dad Jack passes away two years after the parade.

6) Star Trek: The Next Generation: "All Good Things..." - Despite wallowing in some technobabble, this finale is one of the series best episodes. Quantum Leap-like time-travel is the conceit that has Captain Picard moving back and forth through time in three key periods: the first day he took command of the Enterprise, his present day, and 25 years in the future, when he must reunite his crew to help solve a time-spanning mystery with the fate of humanity in the balance. It's a nice reflection on how far the characters have come, and where they might end up.

5) Dawson's Creek: "All Good Things.../...Must Come to an End" - Kevin Williamson returned to pen this finale, which serves as its own reunion movie. Set five years in the future, Dawson and his friends come together for the first time in years to celebrate his mother's wedding. The Dawson/Joey/Pacey triangle is resolved in the only way it could have, but the two-hours really belongs to Michelle Williams' wrenching performance as the dying Jen Lindley. If the scene of her recording a message for her infant daughter to view one day doesn't get you, the quiet moment when Grams realizes Jen has passed will. Still fighting cancer, Grams whispers to her departed granddaughter, "I'll see you soon, child. Soon."

4) Arrested Development: "Development Arrested" - There's no way I can do this justice in even a capsule review, and this probably isn't the kind of episode that a casual viewer can appreciate because so much of it comes out of the callbacks and resolutions of long-running gags. If you're a fan, you get it. If not, go back and watch all three seasons. It's worth it. I promise.

3) Everwood: "Foreverwood" - If all had gone according to plan, this episode - which sees widower Andy Brown finally let go of the memory of his dead wife - would have launched several storylines for season five and sent the show in a new direction. Alas, 7th Heaven's finale ratings convinced the network that that withering corpse still had life in it, and this became Everwood's swan song. It works as a conclusion, though. The end of one chapter in Andy Brown's life, with the promise of more to follow.

2) ER: "And In The End..." - Like TNG's finale, this episode serves as a perfect bookend to the series' pilot episode. From the details like the opening scene - a direct homage to the opening of the pilot - to Dr. Carter taking Rachel Greene, the daughter of his late mentor, under his wing, this episode brings a lot of things full-circle. Old characters return for one last hurrah, but for me in particular, the greatest return is that of the opening credits music and the Benton kung-fu punch. This is how you end a long running series with class.

1) Angel: "Not Fade Away..." - Angel and his team make one desperate effort to derail their enemies plans. Knowing full well that they can't stop the apocalypse entirely, they instead aim to disrupt Wolfram & Hart's plans to bring it about themselves. Aware that they can't possibly walk away from this alive, the team spends one last day doing what they love, then executes their plan to awesome effect. The ending is a great non-cliffhanger, as Angel and his survivors meet in an alley, only to see thousands of demon soldiers and a dragon closing in on them. Though they're clearly as doomed as General Custer, Angel and his men draw up for one last fight, as Angel confidently tells his friends "Let's get to work!"