Using Plot as Revelation

The goal in a TV series is to gradually peel away the layers of their characters’ defenses and metaphorical masks so that the audience can participate in the ongoing discovery about each character. As a series progresses, characters evolve from season to season. Depending on the series, character evolution ranges from almost imperceptible (Dr. House) to subtle and nuanced (Don Draper on Mad Men) to tectonic (Walter White on Breaking Bad). The genre, tone, style, and pace of the series will dictate the level of character evolution over time. Procedural series, such as Law & Order and CSI, are wholly plot driven and tend to have very little character development. Serialized dramas feature gradual, incremental character growth from season to season— sometimes with an endgame in mind and sometimes opened-ended—with new plot developments swinging the pendulum according to character needs and audience expectations (every showrunner I interviewed reads their online message boards).

Sitcom characters are their own species, and usually become more rooted in who they are as each episode’s situation challenges, taunts, and tempts them. They might fall in and out of love, but almost always revert to form, back to their comfort zones—which are also our comfort zones as viewers. We laugh with them and at them because they’re so familiar and keep ending up back in the same humiliating situations.

But in drama series, as soon as the audience feels that they know everything about all of the characters, the series often becomes stale. For these reasons, whether you’re working on a series that’s been on the air for a while or writing a “spec” episode of an existing series as a writing sample, it’s advisable to seek out the unexplored aspects of those characters. What kinds of very specific emotional and physical challenges have we not seen the characters face? What kinds of dormant fears might they have that get triggered by new characters and situations? Do these new challenges feel organic to the setup of the series? Can we see a clear relationship between cause and effect? Is this new situation earned based upon what came before in the characters’ lives or is it something that’s feeling imposed by the writer as a gimmick and too contrived?

By the end of season 2 of Girls, Hannah’s (Lena Dunham) OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) seemed to emerge from out of nowhere which felt like an unnecessary embellishment to an already very quirky character—and viewer backlash soon followed.

Ideally, a character’s major flaw or weakness will be evidenced—either emphatically or obliquely—in the pilot episode. But that’s only half of what makes a memorable character.

Maximizing the Pro and Con

Each potential weakness or minus (–) needs some kind of positive strength (+), for all iconic characters enthrall us based upon their +/− contradictions. Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) has a bum leg, is addicted to pain meds, lacks empathy and sympathy for his patients, and is an incorrigible misanthrope. But we put up with him because he’s a brilliant doctor. Dr. House says things the audience wishes it could say (“You can think I’m wrong but that’s no reason to quit thinking.”) Such is the beauty of drama, in that watching becomes an act of wish fulfillment. We can’t say such things in our real lives, but we can vicariously watch as Dr. House does. Will Dr. House ever change? Nope. But it’s the precarious dance he’s able to do, week after week, pissing everyone off but managing to keep on grooving and succeeding on his own terms as a physician. He’s that good.

Meanwhile, Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) from The Sopranos is a classic example of a strong, powerful, and complex mafia boss with a major flaw: he’s clinically depressed. From moment to moment, the viewer doesn’t know if he’ll have a nervous breakdown or break someone’s kneecaps. It keeps us— and him—on edge. And while he does terrible things—repeatedly cheats on his wife, neglects his children, kills enemies and former allies—we relate to him because even in the midst of all his power and influence, he’s a lot like us. He ponders death and the meaning of life. He feels guilty for neglecting his kids and for lying to his wife. He sees himself as a devout Catholic and patriot. Sometimes he has remorse when he’s forced to honor mafia code, even when it clashes with his own personal ethics. He’s often compelled to behave like a monster, but manages to cling to his humanity via visits to his (usually) impartial shrink, Dr. Melfi(Lorraine Bracco). And Tony’s also not all bad: he loves animals, such as a prized horse and the ducks in his swimming pool, and deep down we know that he loves his wife and kids, but he’s permanently scarred by his own upbringing.

Mad Men’s Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is great looking and seemingly always in control. He has money and an interesting career, and yet, he is deeply unhappy. From the moment he took the alias Don Draper (the name on his birth certificate is Dick Whitman), he has lived a life of deceit, promiscuity, and hypocrisy. However, the audience follows his journey because he, like Dr. House, is brilliant at what he does: he gives advertising depth. But let’s face it, he’s not saving lives. There needs to be more. And there is: we sympathize with him because deep down he hates himself. Don Draper does not want to be the cheater that he is, and like the sinner in all of us, we relate and give him absolution. There is always a danger, however, of making a character flaw too flawed before the audience begins to not care about the character anymore. Don Draper, as the series continues, is towing the line between antihero and apathy.

Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) on Scandal is always smooth and in control, fierce and intelligent, and yet her character flaw is that she had an affair with a married man, the then-governor Fitzgerald “Fitz” Grant (Tony Gold-wyn), now president of the United States. Some would criticize her as a glorified mistress. At this point in season 2, the affair is over, but she still carries feelings for him. We relate to and accept Olivia not only because she’s good at her job as a crisis-management fixer, but also because we know what it’s like to love someone unrequitedly. Her flaws reinforce to the audience that we are greater than our biggest mistakes.

In the pilot for Breaking Bad, Walter White is a high school chemist facing inoperable lung cancer, the ultimate underdog. But soon Walter starts manufacturing methamphetamine to provide for his family after his death. While we hate what he does (make drugs), his reasons are altruistic: for his family. His character flaw is his hubris and the ability to lie to himself about his “good” intentions. It becomes clear his journey isn’t about family—it’s about him. It’s about him ascending from a previously mediocre life into a life of power. The meek shall inherit the earth, and indeed, he has. Why do we follow him? Again, wish fulfillment, as many of our lives are spent, as the saying goes, in quiet desperation.

In Homeland, Carrie Mathison’s (Claire Danes) insecurity about her hidden bipolar disorder (in season 1) causes her to be hypervigilant in her counterterrorism responsibilities for the CIA. She’s willing not only to break protocol and put herself in harm’s way, but she also throws herself into an extremely risky and inappropriate tryst with Brody (Damian Lewis) who is potentially a dangerous, “turned” terrorist operative. What makes Carrie so good at her job: trigger-fast instincts and intuition—are also her chief liabilities: too impulsive, paranoid, and renegade. Yet, we admire her doggedness and how she makes the case for what she believes in the face of severe obstacles, for example, when she threatened to pull a Saudi diplomat’s favorite daughter from Yale unless he played ball. She is the Voice of Truth in a bureaucracy more concerned with politics than performance. She’s a lone wolf, an outsider—just like Brody. We may not condone it, but we can certainly understand her connection to Brody, who is as confused and bifurcated as she is—and somehow we empathize with their taboo attraction. Maybe love can conquer all?

Identifying Weaknesses through Strengths

What’s your main character’s weakness? Does he use his strength to (over) compensate for it? For example, in The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) is an egotistical scientist who, even though he is the smartest person in the room, has no understanding of irony or sarcasm and can be very annoying. His character flaw is tempered by his complete lack of social skills, which makes him endearing. Even as brilliant as he is, he didn’t have a girlfriend (due to his fear of germs and physical contact) until his mid-twenties—something many in the audience take for granted. While he may be smarter than us, he is not better than us, and thus, relatable.

In Elementary, Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) is a deductive genius who is also terrible in social situations and like Sheldon Cooper is always the smartest person in the room. Obnoxious to a fault, he’s not someone to invite to a dinner party. His flaw is acceptable to us because he’s a broken man—a former drug addict trying to piece his life back together. He’s eaten some humble pie, and while still a difficult personality, we know he is at least trying to connect to Joan Watson (Lucy Liu), his sober companion as they solve some of the hardest cases in New York City.

On Bones, Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan (Emily Deschanel) is once again akin to Sheldon Cooper: intelligent but lacking in social skills. Even her name gives a major clue to her flaw: temperance, which means restraint and control over excess. Not someone that sounds like too much fun. And even as bright as she is, she often says, “I don’t know what that means,” in reference to pop cultural references. Her flaw is that she’s so smart, she’s almost outside the realm of our culture, and for that, we accept her.

With these examples, a theme begins to emerge: the audience may not have as much patience for a character that is mediocre at their job. Human nature is such that we give more leeway to people we perceive as geniuses.

Pacing Flaw Revelation

Character flaws gradually expand and deepen over time. We know that Don Draper is a philanderer in the pilot of Mad Men, but we don’t discover that his mother was a prostitute when he was a kid until season 6.

From the first five episodes of Scandal, we presume that Olivia Pope is a home wrecker by participating in her affair with the married president, but we don’t learn until episode 6 that Fitz’s marriage was one of political convenience. We also presume that Fitz is in the driver’s seat and certainly in a more powerful political position than Olivia—but in season 2 we discover that Olivia was actually instrumental in getting Fitz into office—via a rigged election—which he was unaware of. As Olivia’s network of (well-intentioned) secrets and lies unravels, she becomes increasingly vulnerable in both her love life and professional life. Her prior strength in handling covert manipulations may now just circle around and destroy her—which raises the stakes.

Most iconic TV characters will continually battle against their flaws and inner-demons in an attempt to transcend them—while other protagonists will live in a bubble of denial. Still other series leads are actually fueled by their flaws (House, Dexter, The Shield, Breaking Bad). And some will succumb to those flaws.

By the end of a long-running series, some protagonists may overcome their main flaws and learn to believe and trust and love. At the conclusion of The X-Files, Mulder and Scully finally see the truth in Area 51 and stop denying their feelings for one another. And in Lost, they literally see the light.

NL: We’re talking about eight seasons of House, M.D. Part of the reason that the show has been so beloved and enduring is that you started with a great central character: an iconic, flawed, often maddening, fascinating, complex man. And, it seems to me, that what defines your series is that everyone evolves, except Dr. House remains the same. Can you speak to your initial story strategy?

DS: When I first started writing the pilot, it wasn’t completely clear in my mind who this character was—although it became clear fairly quickly. I feel strongly that the character is only as strong as the challenges presented to him. So a detective who solves a really obvious murder is not really a detective. It was important to me that you’d have these extremely challenging mysteries, but it was also important that the characters around him be challenging. I certainly feel that some of them have been overshadowed by him a little bit. They needed to be really smart and really interesting and really challenging because what we’re judging him on are the judgments he makes and the relationships he establishes. They all have to challenge him in a way which is worthy of him. They were all, hopefully, very specific. You try for that.

NL: So he would bring out different facets of them?

DS: I’m not sure it’s quite so calculating that this guy was assigned to bring out this asset or that, but clearly it was the fact that he had this team that was challenging him from below. How did they respond to him and how did they resist him or not resist him? His best friend—same questions—how does he resist him or not resist him, but from a different point of view. That is sort of his conscience. And who would be this guy’s friend is also something that is constantly challenging. Obviously Wilson [Robert Sean Leonard] had to have his own demons. He’s not as obviously screwed up, but he had to be basically as complicated as House on some level. In some ways, the most challenging one was his boss, Cuddy [Lisa Edelstein]. When you create a character such as House who is just such a steamroller and doing incredibly inappropriate things. What do you do with the boss? Because if the boss actually shuts him down, he’s not doing anything. And if he steamrolls over the boss, then she becomes Colonel Klink [from Hogan’s Heroes] who is just a wonderful sitcom character, but not a good, interesting character for a one-hour drama series. Very early on, we made this decision because it’s interesting, but also because it works dramatically for the long term that she should be a character who challenges him, but understands what he’s worth and is therefore much more about managing him. She doesn’t always shut him down, but she doesn’t always let him go. He gets around her when he needs to, but she surprises us when she allows him to do something. She also has to win some battles, but obviously, not all of them.

NL: Did you know from the beginning that you would get a slow burn relationship going?

DS: It was written in the pilot. I think Wilson makes some smart-ass remark about there being a thin line between love and hate. However, even if I hadn’t written that in, when I saw Hugh Laurie and Lisa Edelstein working together, it was pretty obvious that there was going to be sexual tension in a big way that we were going to have to deal with. That was fun.

NL: What is your process for constructing story in general? Do you start with character? Do you start with a thematic within an episode? Do you start with the medical mystery?

DS: There was no hard-and-fast rule, but I tried to have a hard-and-fast rule. The hard-and-fast rule was that I needed both: character, but theme basically got subsumed into the patient of the week. Who is this patient of the week? Going back to the whole point of having an interesting team, what’s interesting about House was how he reacted to people. What he reads in people. Is he right? Is he wrong? What does that say about that person? What does it say about him? That applies to the patient of the week as well. Somebody comes in who claims to never lie. What is House’s opinion on that? What is his opinion on lying? Obviously, he says everybody lies. Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Does he think the person is lying in saying that? Why are they lying? Is it a pathological thing? Is it a medical thing? It was that notion of character that I needed right up front. I also needed a good medical story. I needed both. Every now and then, a writer would come in with just a really interesting medical story. And I would say, “That’s great, but you need to find some character thing too.” Likewise, they’d sometimes come in with a really great character with some medicine to go with that. Then you would also try to match it up with where you were in the story arc. I wanted both in a way that was thematic, but not obvious.

NL: So your A stories would generally be the medical cases. What would make a worthy A story? When you came up with a medical condition that had to be rare and mysterious, I would imagine what would make it worthy is that there would have to be twists and turns to it.

DS: In that regard, it was like a cop show. You needed twists and turns. You need to be going down a road and have that road be wrong. That was the formula for the show, and I don’t apologize for that at all, which we did depart from on occasion.

NL: If it was too obvious of a medical solution, then it was not a worthy story?

DS: The type of conditions that we were attracted to were the ones that were serious enough that they could cause life-threatening symptoms, but vague enough that they could mask as a whole bunch of things which is why it became a running gag that Lupus kept getting mentioned. Unfortunately for those Lupus sufferers, it can be very serious, but it is also very difficult to diagnose. If there’s one crazy condition in the world that causes your left ear to fall off, on the face of it, that’s fascinating and very visually dramatic, but if there’s one condition that does that, that’s not going to work for us.

NL: Did you take dramatic license, or did you try to stay true to science and medicine?

DS: We tried very hard to stay true to science. We tried to make it as much about the character and as little about the medicine, but you needed that medical core and that medical spine. That was an excuse to do the story that we wanted. You do have a responsibility. You have millions of viewers. Even if it’s a disease that afflicts 0.1 percent of the population, then that’s still thousands of people watching your show. You don’t want to give false hope or false fear. There are also all sorts of studies now that indicate that people are getting a shocking amount of their medical knowledge from watching TV.

NL: Did you know a full season arc for each character when you would start?

DS: We would usually arc half a season—more or less. We would meet as a group for a couple weeks and figure out where we wanted to take the characters in the first half of the season. Hopefully, as far as we could take it, but it usually ended up being a half a season. Then, as we were getting closer to the end of that arc, we would discuss what we wanted to do next. So, if it’s after House and Cuddy breaking up, what is the follow from that breakup and where do we take them next?

NL: Because this chapter is called “Who Changes?—what’s interesting when you look at all the seasons from Dr. House that “nobody changes.” In your mind, did your characters change or was it just temporary challenges that got them to adjust behavior?

DS: The tricky thing in TV, particularly if you’re doing a show that’s 100 percent procedural, it’s very easy in that regard, you don’t have to worry about that. If you’re even a hybrid, then you run into this difficult territory of “Well, how did that affect him? How does he change?” Hugh used to say that the difference between TV and movies was that with movies the main character changes while everybody around him stays the same and with TV it’s the exact opposite. There’s some truth to that. My characters didn’t change that much and I have multiple excuses for that and I’m not sure excuse is the right word, maybe explanations: (1) it was the theme of the show that “nobody changes,” I believe that, I believe that people don’t really change that much. (2) I didn’t want them to change. The show was about him and I didn’t want him to change because I liked him. So people think they want him to change, but they don’t really. They want to see him find love and happiness, but they don’t really.

But we are who we are in how we react to the challenges in that moment. I don’t think that writers should quote themselves, but there was a line that I liked from one of the earlier seasons after Foreman [Omar Epps] almost died where House says something along the lines of, “Almost dying changes everything forever for two months.” How do people react to not changing and the disappointment with themselves? It’s about treading water and not falling back. Not being miserable and staying just above miserable.

NL: In terms of addiction and AA, they say, “Hitting rock bottom is that you change or you die.” That was always a tightrope he was walking as well.

DS: You can change your actions, but even that’s so difficult to do. With AA, it’s not that you’re no longer an alcoholic, you’re just an alcoholic who doesn’t drink. Changing who you fundamentally are is possibly impossible.

NL: In terms of vulnerability of characters and finding new places to take them, there was a season when House fired virtually his entire staff, and when he hired new people, it gave him new opportunities for him to abuse them.

DS: That was exactly it. Having House explore new people and new situations and analyzing them and making them learn something about themselves in the process.

NL: House could always find someone’s Achilles’ heel and then exploit that weakness. Did he ever do things that just shocked and surprised you— like when he drives into Cuddy’s house?

DS: That was the most controversial thing we did—more than I expected it to be. I knew it was shocking. People seemed to react that he was trying to kill her. I never thought of it that way which maybe was stupid on my part, but I never thought of it that way. It was scripted and shot that way: that he looks through the window and sees her leave the room and then he does it. It was intended to be an act of violence, but not an attempt at murder. It was also an irrational act by a very, very rational man. The other thing that I think said quite clearly that he was not trying to kill her is that he walks away with a smile on his face feeling better which tells me that he accomplished what he wanted to accomplish. So clearly injury was not part of what he wanted to accomplish. Stuff that he did that shocked me … there were moments where you go, “Yeah, I think he would do that,” and the whole idea was that it would surprise the audience and yet make sense. That’s fundamental with all the twists and turns you do on a show like this. It gets tricky as you’re going along. It’s about trying to find that third way. When you have House do exactly what everybody expects anybody to do, you could have him just do the exact opposite, but for the sake of doing the exact opposite, it doesn’t make any sense at all. Or you find something that is a different take on it, but that makes sense. Surprising an audience that expects to be surprised is a bit of a challenge. I’m proud of that. It was very satisfying. I wish I could give you a specific example, but let’s say you had a patient who felt one way and House had a certain attitude that you would not have expected, but then he’s got this defense of it. And then you go, “Oh, yeah.”

NL: One that comes to mind was the death row episode where there was a guy who was going to be executed, but House wanted to treat him and yet he’s going to die. That patient was more of his priority than another patient who is terminal. That was a controversial episode because of the surprising position that he took. He had this interesting bond with the guy because it was somebody who had been so condemned by society and he related to that on some level—which provided more insight into House’s character than I’d seen before. It was a great moral gray area and reinforced House’s one-man-against-the-Establishment sensibilities.

Regarding the Establishment and dealing with network or studio guidance and interference, did they leave you alone as you got more successful or did they continue to give you notes?

DS: Very, very few notes. We would get a note on every single script. Well, that’s not even true—there were some scripts where we wouldn’t get a single note. But there would be a call set up after every script went out, and they would give us notes. They were invariably very small which actually started to worry me because you want notes, you don’t want notes on some emotional level, but you want an outside source to look at it and be objective. And, hopefully, you have executives who can do that and have an honest reaction to the script.

NL: I was asking Veena Sud about The Killing and Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos), who was very unlikeable. She has some dark traits which she shares with House, and yet she is also very good at her job. Any interference early on about House or on any of your past or future shows about character like-ability?

DS: I think every writer in the world has an attitude about that. I got surprisingly little interference on that. I think there were some internal battles that went on at FOX, but I was protected somehow there. Maybe on some unconscious level I made him nastier than I needed to, so I’d have some place to fall back on. He is nastier than what you’d typically see on network TV. They do say they want likeable characters. Every writer in the world wants to write complex characters. We want to write characters who we want to watch. We’re not idiots. You have to have a commercial sensibility, but you have to write it in a way that people want to come back to. That’s the job we’re in. We want to tell stories that people want to hear. Unfortunately, the networks interpret likeable too often as nice. Nice is just boring. I had very little resistance. I think I would have had more resistance on another network. FOX was still in the glow of Simon Cowell.

NL: But you also paved the way because after House and its success, all of these cable shows sprung up with these dark, heavily complex characters.

DS: If I can take credit for that, I’m happy to do it. If I somehow made it easier, then I am thrilled. Because that’s what every writer wants to write and audiences want to watch if it’s done well. He’s good at his job. He’s not simply lining his pockets. He’s miserable. And he’s saving lives. Whatever the reason—which is something we discussed a lot was, what matters, intentions or actions? And his intention, for example with that death row guy, was that he found that more interesting and therefore he did it.

NL: I’m sure I read this somewhere in my research, but would you say that he cares more about solving the puzzle than the patient?

DS: I think he absolutely cares more about the puzzle. Having said that, it is a good thing for the show that the audience wanted to believe that it was more than that. And the audience may have been right to a certain extent. Because they liked him, the audience wanted to impose a positive viewpoint on him. Had he just been going around saying, “Damn it, I’m saving lives,” it’s not as interesting. A guy who says, “I could give a crap about saving lives,” is too fundamentally horrible and boring. But this is an interesting case and maybe he learns something about the person. And maybe … maybe on some level grows to respect that person and save their life. That’s much more interesting and compelling.

NL: Was it your perspective that he wasn’t capable of empathy—maybe even borderline autistic?

DS: That was speculated out. I never wanted to pigeonhole him quite that much—probably there was something of that nature going on. His reasoning was that it didn’t help. There’s no reason to do that. It doesn’t make the case easier to solve. If anything, it makes it more difficult. Objectivity is your friend in trying to find truth. Truth is truth. So he just wanted to take a very clean look at everything. I always hated when people would ask why this happens. It starts with the writers being interviewed. Just don’t answer those questions. Number one, I don’t want to take that away from the audience. Number two, I don’t think any simple answer is true. I think I can have a reason House did something and the writer of that episode could have a reason that House did something and Hugh Laurie could have a reason why the character did something. By the way, the three of us should be basically in agreement, but Wilson could have an attitude about why House did something and the team can have an attitude why House did something and Cuddy can have an attitude why House did something and so can the audience. And every one of those should be true. It should never be as simple as he did it for X. House says he did it for X. Wilson says he did it for Y. His team says he did it for Z. And all three of them are part of why he did it.

NL: It sounds like part of what sustained the show itself for so long is that House was so mysterious. You didn’t answer some of those questions. If you show the wizard behind the curtain, it’s not as interesting.

DS: It’s not as interesting, but it’s also not true. The answer is never going to be true. The expression “everybody lies,” which is used all the time on the show. I never meant it as people say black when the answer is white. The answer is always gray and people see it as dark gray or light gray. People see the truth they want to see. We all have biases. That’s what it really meant to me and House is trying to rise above that.