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

16 Great TV Shows, Part 12: Gilmore Girls

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

It's fall of 2000 and I happen to leave the TV running after whatever I had just watched, resulting in my catching the opening of a new show I'd heard nothing about. I immediately recognize one of the stars as a woman who seemed to be popping up on EVERY show a couple years earlier: Newsradio, Law & Order, Caroline in the City, a couple failed sitcoms. I mostly remember finding her annoying (which in most cases, was her function on those shows), so my first thought was "Ah, another soon-to-be-dead series." She's having coffee with what I assume to be a friend of hers, a younger woman.

For a reason that I'm sure had NOTHING to do with her coffee companions stunning blue eyes, I leave the TV on while lazily surfing the web and then as a guy makes a pass at each of the ladies in turn, the twist of the show is revealed: This 32 year-old woman and 16 year-old girl are actually mother and daughter. "Okay, show, you had my curiosity... NOW you have my attention," I think. I think there was probably also a cynical musing on how The WB had finally found an organic solution to the problem that all their parent figures were too old to be interesting to their young audience.

My point is - what got my attention was the realization: "I haven't seen these characters before. No one's explored this dynamic - a former teen mom with a daughter who's now like a friend than a daughter, right when the mom is going to really have to step up and be in authority." You could see the potential from the first few scenes and as the rest of the pilot played out more and more unusual wrinkles emerged. So the mom was raised in privilege and ran away after giving birth? And she's been totally self-sufficient since, only is now forced to beg her parents for a loan to afford school for her daughter? We're adding class issues to this, along with the culture clash of small town people with high society?

Written by Amy Sherman-Palladino, the Gilmore Girls pilot does many things right, and it's probably one that's worth breaking down scene by scene at some point because you can learn a lot about character building and world-building. Pilots are written to sell a series. Sometimes that means you get a show with a lot of flash and eye candy. Other times you end up with a show that "lays a lot of pipe" (writer jargon for "puts out a lot of exposition"), but presents a fascinating situation despite itself. In the case of Gilmore Girls, while it has a lot of foundation to pour, it's done in such an entertaining and seamless way that it doesn't feel terribly pilot-y.

The secret sauce? Character. Every conflict is character driven. Every world we meet is rooted in character, and we're fortunate because they're generally characters we haven't met before. It doesn't feel like we're meeting people in terms of their functions so much as these players seem to pop onto the screen fully-formed and lived in. Remember, before I knew anything about the world or the eventual conflict between Lorelei and her daughter Rory about Rory being accepted into private school, I was hooked by the mother/daughter set-up.

Writing lessons:

Have a strong core relationship to your series. Bonus points for ones we haven't seen before. - I've beaten most of this lesson to death, so I'll just add that in the first scene with Rory and Lorelei, part of what stood out was how easily Rory slid into giving Mr. Pick-Up Artist some shit. (She teases, "Are you my new daddy?" after his pass at Lorelei reveals the mother/daughter relationship.)

The more formed your world is, the more comfortably you can explore your characters in it - The town of Stars Hollow is introduced with a number of regular residents who are depicted exactly as they would be for the remainder of the first season and beyond. True, it's not the familiar town EXACTLY (owing to shooting on location rather than on the WB lot where the rest of the series is filmed) but the spirit of the show is there. The same can be said for Lorelei's parents' home.

Show us there's a story there - All of the relationships are immediately fertile ground for years of stories. Lorelei and Rory butt heads in what seems to be their first major fight EVER. (And to Lorelei's horror, it's over a GUY of all things, when Rory doesn't want to leave public school after having just met the new boy in town.) Just from that moment it's evident that Rory's growing independence from her mother is going to be a running theme of the series. It also doesn't take too many leaps to see the parallels between that and Lorelei's own strained relationship with her mother. Generational tension is always good for a story, and between what's spoken and unspoken in this pilot, it's clear that all three generations have a lot of growing to do.

Characters we haven't seen before on TV - We've covered Lorelei being a former teen mom, but it bears mentioning that Rory was a pretty unique beast at the time. She was a smart girl who was neither a nerd, nor a popular queen bee. She also wasn't insecure about her brains making her an outcast. (Yes, she's looked down on when she starts at Chilton, but it's pretty evident from context that she's never been bullied or shunned for her brains or her love of reading.) The lead girl of a WB show is a book nerd who loves reading well above her age level - can you name ANY time that's happened before? I think my Rory crush was cemented right there!

The beauty of how I'm doing this 16-show list is that I'm not held hostage by later dips in quality. Yes, season 7 is a severe drop from what came before, and you can't be objective and argue that missteps in season 6 didn't make that possible either. My appreciation of the show's early days doesn't mean I'm not critical of where the show eventually took Rory's development. Believe me - I am.

But the first three seasons are consistently strong throughout. If you want to get a good flavor of the show in Season 1 beyond the pilot, I'd look at "Rory's Birthday Parties" and the two-parter "Rory's Dance." All of those make good use of the Lorelei/Rory/Emily dynamic, playing off the tensions that have either been long-simmering or newly-built.

It's in the second season that the show's rapid-fire dialogue really takes flight. The pace is amped up, and I'm still waiting someone to do a deconstruction of Palladino's dialogue and how it ONLY sounds right when delivered double-time. If you try performing some GG scenes at the speed of mere mortals, something assuredly feels off. I almost want to say there are dialogue lessons there, but Palladino dialogue works because they're the only ones who write that way. Imitate at your own risk. Be a first-rate you, not a second-rate Palladino.

The recent Netflix revival is a worthy conclusion to the show, and in almost every way, is a better note to depart the series on than the series itself. You can find my review of it here.

Part 13: Everwood

Part 14: The Office

Part 15: Breaking Bad

Part 16: 13 Reasons Why

Film School Rejects: The Flash and Supergirl as my wife's gateway drug to geekdom. Plus MORE articles!

I know my posting has been sporadic the last few months. There are reasons for that and I'm hoping to redress that as we head into 2017. If time permits I'll do a couple belated reviews for some recent films, and with luck, I'll have seen enough of the major 2016 releases to do a Top 10 or Top 20 post. One factor in my absence here is that I've been writing a bit more for Film School Rejects. This has been going on for a few months, and I've neglected to cross-post those over here.

Yesterday, FSR published my most recent essay: How The Flash and Supergirl became my wife's gateway drug to superhero fandom. It's a reflection on how the Greg Berlanti shows are making an incredibly complex mythology accessible to people who never would have considered reading a comic book. You can also learn how the most intense fight of my marriage was over the time travel logic of The Flash.

My other recent articles are:

Gilmore Girls "Final Four Words" Leave the Most Important Conversation Unsaid - An exploration of the abrupt conclusion of the recent series revival by contrasting it with one of the best-received series finales: Angel.

Reclaiming the Fun Side of Batman - I take a look at the recent animated film Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, starring Adam West and Burt Ward, to push back against the idea that Batman always has to be serious and gritty.

An Appreciation of That Thing You Do on its 20th Anniversary - A loving tribute to one of my favorite films, and a deep-dive into how the Extended Cut of the movie can show how critical the right edits can be in taking an okay film to the next level. The longer cut of the film has so many unnecessary moments that were (rightly) removed for pace and repetition. It's a wonderful opportunity to extrapolate how Tom Hanks learned from and corrected his mistakes.

6 Films That Are Still Waiting for Their Legacy Sequels - In a film culture that's brought us the re-quels like Creed and The Force Awakens, what other library titles might be ripe for a reboot with new protagonists treading familiar paths while being mentored by their predecessors?

A Look Ahead to What the Next 15 Years Holds for the Lights Out Franchise - Using other horror franchises as a template, how much the other slots in the inevitable Lights Out box set be filled?


As FSR publishes through Medium, you can follow me on Medium here.  I'm going to try to be better about flagging these over here, but that's a good way to see articles as soon as they post.

Also, with the holiday season approaching, I'd like to again remind everyone that my book Michael F-ing Bay: The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay's Films is a great stocking stuffer for the film geek in your life. It's only $5 on Kindle!

I always feel like a self-promoting whore when I do this, but any time I plug the book on Twitter, I get replies from people who say they had no idea it existed. The extra cash would definitely come in handy this holiday season, so if you've enjoyed my posts and would like to leave me a tip for the holidays, please consider buying the book.

You can find all my Michael F-ing Bay posts here. This one in particular is a good all-purpose primer on it.