14
Unify Storylines (Via Theme)

Theme is a central idea expressed through action. It can add dimension and resonance. In episodic television, theme is the glue that holds multiple, and sometimes divergent, storylines together.

Theme is what the story is really about. Not just a series of events, but some kind of underlying universal truth about life.

Themes are always related to power—and sometimes that’s the power of the human spirit. Such themes include the following: can good triumph over evil? Can one person make a difference? Love conquers all; no man is an island; crime doesn’t pay. The list goes on…

On a TV series, theme can be articulated by a character—through dialogue or V.O. or some other narrative device (such as Carrie Bradshaw’s magazine column). But, for me, theme works best as subtext on a subliminal level for the audience.

I’ve been an avid TV watcher since I was a kid, but most shows just sort of washed over me; I didn’t watch TV analytically. I tuned in to escape my humdrum existence. I had many favorite shows, but if you asked me why one show was better than another, I couldn’t put my finger on it. The actors were always key. Like most people, I took the writing for granted, as if the actors were making up their own dialogue as they went along.

The whole notion of a unifying theme didn’t really make sense for me until 1998, while I was watching an episode of E.R. The episode was titled “Stuck on You”—which was my clue as to how the disparate A, B, C, and D stories were going to coalesce.

In the episode, Dr. Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) rides with EMTs and treats a beating victim who turns out to be a sixteen-year-old gay male prostitute. He then helps the boy evade the police who have a warrant for his arrest; Lucy (Kellie Martin) has a crush on Dr. Carter (Noah Wylie), even though he’s harsh with her; two brothers come into the hospital glued together after a carpet cement accident and end up getting some of the E.R. staff stuck with them; and an elderly patient (played by Harvey Korman) comes in for his blood pressure appointment but doesn’t want to leave the nursing care of Nurse Carol Hathaway (Julianna Margulies) or the E.R. personnel because he’s so desperately lonely.

So how do these strands of stories weave together into a cohesive theme? The title is the first clue: stuck on you. The male prostitute is lucky to discover he’s HIV negative, but goes back to his former self-destructive behavior. He’s stuck, even though he knows he’s putting himself in danger; Lucy is “stuck” on Carter even if he is dismissive of her; Nurse Hathaway is “stuck” with a patient who doesn’t want to leave; and the brothers are literally stuck together. Expanding on this idea is the larger truth that we are all stuck with each other, so we’d better take care of each other.

In the episode “The Other Woman” from Mad Men, Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) asks Joan (Christina Hendricks) to sleep with a man in order to land an important account; Don Draper (John Hamm) doesn’t like the impact Megan’s (Jessica Paré) acting career will have on his life; and Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) is offered a job at a rival company as chief copywriter.

Don lays out the theme as he pitches for the Jaguar account: “Oh, this car. This thing, gentlemen. What price would we pay? What behavior would we forgive?” There is a price for the things we want to attain. For Joan to become partner, she has to become a sexual bargaining chip; for Peggy to move on and up, she needs to leave the safe haven of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. For Don, Megan is no Betty (January Jones). Megan has her own dreams and is willing to pursue them.

A subtheme could be the price that women pay in the workplace. Megan is stuck having to deal with success but only on Don’s terms. The final part of Don’s pitch is literally “At last: something beautiful you can truly own.” Men dominate women in this prefeminist society.

Finally, how far will you go to get what you want? Which moral boundaries will you cross in the name of success?

In the Homeland episode “Achilles’ Heel,” Brody (Damian Lewis) comes back to his wife Jessica (Morena Baccarin) after a week of having sex with Carrie (Claire Danes); Saul’s (Mandy Patinkin) relationship with his wife Mira (Sarita Choudhury) is crumbling; and Carrie looks to exploit a weakness in order to capture rogue former soldier and “turned” POW, Tom Walker (Chris Chalk).

Once again, the theme of the show is hinted at in the title: everyone has an Achilles’ heel, a weakness, and it’s only a matter of figuring out what it is. For Saul, it’s his dedication to work. In the throes of losing his marriage, he still goes to the Agency when called. For Carrie, she realizes she may be lonely her whole life and her job will probably consume her. For Tom Walker, it’s his love of family that puts him at risk for getting caught; he phones his wife, not realizing the CIA is listening in and tracing the call. A minor theme is the theme of marriage, and how marriages last, or don’t based upon the weak spots in the relationship: failing to communicate, holding grudges, taking one another for granted, and having unrealistic expectations.

In the penultimate episode of season 1 of The Americans entitled “The Oath,” duplicitous D.C. Russian Embassy worker Nina (Annet Mahendru) pledges her oath to the Motherland, but then has a crisis of faith and confesses her double-dealings to her Russian boss. Nina admits her affair with FBI agent Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich)—ready to accept the harshest punishment for treason. She broke her oath and is prepared to accept the consequences. But she’s also smart and resourceful and offers her boss an enticing compromise: he can either kill her or allow her to continue her illicit relationship with Stan—but now she’ll be working against Stan to atone for her sins.

Meanwhile, at FBI counterterrorism headquarters, executive assistant Martha (Alison Wright) agrees to plant a recording device (bug) in her boss Gaad’s (Richard Thomas) office, but only after her lover “Clark” [alias of Phillip (Matthew Rhys)] agrees to tie the knot. Sure, Martha is suspicious of “Clark’s” motives, but she’s willing to do anything for the man she loves—as long as he’s willing to stand up in front of her parents and God and marry her. To make his side of the aisle look convincing, “Clark” invites his “mother” (actually his U.S. KGB contact playing the part) and “sister” (played by Philip’s current fake wife, Elizabeth [Keri Russell] to attend the small ceremony.

Elizabeth has to watch her fake husband get into another fake marriage with a woman who thinks it’s real in order to forward the KGB espionage mission. It’s a funny, layered sequence of subtext because Martha has no idea what’s really happening, while Elizabeth realizes that she and Philip never had a wedding, real or otherwise—which leaves her feeling melancholy. And Martha marries “Clark” without knowing very much about him or his top-secret government work. Of course she assumes that “Clark” is working for the U.S. government and agrees to keep their marriage a secret indefinitely. Ironically, KGB spies Philip and Elizabeth were never officially married, but their effectiveness as sleeper agents is dependent upon everyone believing that they are married.

But though Elizabeth suggests to Philip, in a conciliatory tone, that things might have gone very differently for them if they had said their wedding vows, “The Oath” reinforces the thematic that commitment without follow-through is meaningless, as actions speak louder than words.

In the same episode, Viola (Tonye Patano), the Weinberger’s God-fearing maid, comes clean to the FBI that she planted a bug in the clock of their office.

Sure enough, the title of “The Oath” played a large part in the theme, as the episode was bookended by characters literally reciting oaths. The theme is clearly about loyalty—about how loyalties to country, religion and marriage play out over time, especially when they intersect and conflict with each other—and, in those cases, which loyalty is more important?

Sitcoms are not exempt from using theme. In the episode “The Kiss” of mockumentary/sitcom Modern Family, we follow three storylines that, you guessed it, deal with kisses and showing affection. Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) is upset that Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) isn’t into public displays of affection; Claire (Julie Bowen) becomes overbearing when she finds out her daughter Alex (Ariel Winter) likes a boy. Haley (Sarah Hyland) pressures Alex to get her first kiss. While the Gloria (Sofia Vergara) and Jay (Ed O’Neill) storyline is more about Gloria’s Colombian heritage, and ends with Jay, known for withholding affection, bestowing a kiss on his son, Mitchell. Also, akin to Sex in the City, the voice-over at the end, in this case from Gloria, reinforces the theme.

However, just as there are shows that use theme, there are shows that do not work according to one unifying theme. Breaking Bad doesn’t. Parenthood and Friday Night Lights have themes and motifs, but they don’t all line up symmetrically because not all the story lines match up so neatly.

Revenge uses season-long themes identified by a subheading at the beginning of the season. The first season was from Confucius: “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” The series follows Emily Thorne (Emily VanCamp) in her quest for revenge against the Grayson clan, headed by Victoria (Madeleine Stowe) and Conrad (Henry Czerny). The theme is quite clear that while you may get revenge, you will harm yourself, too. And sure enough, throughout the series’ first season we watched as Emily whittled away her sense of morality—not caring about the collateral damage around her.

The second season’s theme revolves around destiny, as shown by the sub-heading from Henri-Frédéric Amiel: “Destiny has two ways of crushing us … by refusing our wishes … and by fulfilling them.” It teases the question of whether Emily will be destroyed by the very knowledge she wants to gain.

Great TV pilots tend to support a strong central theme—either explicitly or tacitly, articulated or inferred. Sometimes theme is deliberate on the part of the scriptwriter. And sometimes it’s not. Or maybe there are several themes at play within the same episode and it’s open to interpretation by the audience.

Mad Men, in particular, is a series that often requires more than one viewing to fully extrapolate its rich subtext and complex themes. For me, the first viewing is to see where the characters and evolving plotlines are heading; the second viewing is a much closer reading of details and nuance, leading toward deeper meaning and discussion.

NL: How do you approach constructing story? Do you start with plot, character, theme … how do you come at it?

CJ: It depends a lot on the series. I came out of the Chris Carter [The X-Files] camp. That’s where I learned how to write and produce. And where I really learned the discipline of putting stories together. We did something there that a lot of shows say they do, but no one really does: which is that we made little movies every week. In that case, what we needed was an idea that was enough to sustain forty-four minutes of television. But the really good episodes had ideas big enough to sustain a feature-length film. They obviously tended to be sci-fi kinds of stories, which meant that they were already a little writerly. They were pushing an idea.

In terms of having thematic structures, those stories were a lot more open to it. For example, I did a story with Millennium that had to do with gifts. There was this sort of karmic cycling, and it had a theme of gifts in it. There’s this book by Marcel Mauss about gifts, and how gifts flow through society … and that theme showed up in a lot of the construction of the story. But those episodes were all stand-alone.

And since then, with Homeland and Dexter, we’ve been doing stuff that’s serialized, so it’s a whole different ballgame the way you construct stories. One thing we’re trying to do on Homeland—which is different than what we did on 24—is to construct stories that, even though they’re serialized, have a slight stand-alone component. Each episode looks and feels different, so you really don’t know what you’re going to get week to week. We’re doing that in a way to distance ourselves from 24 a little, which became a pretty homogenous wash of stuff. In both of these shows, what we’re looking for is some kind of character-driven story that also fits the flow of the whole season. At Homeland, we’re trying to do all this while also maintaining a high degree of verisimilitude, a general feeling that it’s actually real. One way to do this, and this comes out of 24, is to embrace a lack of writerly devices. A lack, for example, of putting themes into things. If you want something that looks and feels real, throw out the writerly devices.

NL: And yet, in one of your excellent episodes of Homeland, titled “Achilles’ Heel,” theme is so prevalent. Was that subconscious or the exception to the rule for you?

CJ: Actually, I struggled with that when writing that episode because we do not ascribe to themes in episodes. In 24, we had a mantra about that: “We don’t do themes.” We just don’t do the kind of stuff that is the writer injecting his opinion into things. That’s not to say that we don’t have ideas that we push, but we try very much to have things feel real, especially on Homeland. So we shoot it that way, we write it that way, and we think about dialogue like that. We just don’t put these writerly constructions in.

NL: Although I have to say in that “Achilles’ Heel” episode, each character was struggling with a specific weakness, which seemed to track through the whole episode thematically—and beautifully, in my humble opinion.

CJ: Thanks. And you’re right. And that theme even made it into text. Saul [Mandy Patinkin] actually says in dialogue that his work, his willingness to sacrifice everything else for it, that that’s his Achilles’ heel. But I really don’t tend to like to do that sort of thing. It’s too writerly. It feels phony to me. On these serialized shows it’s like “what is the story?” It’s all about that.

NL: So for you, it’s first and foremost about figuring out the basic arcs of the stories and the relationships?

CJ: Yes. There was a big thing in Chris Carter Land about the science of storytelling, and endlessly just looking at all your cards and talking it through with everybody, and making sure it really hung together. Much more than an artsy exploration of human behavior and you alone in a room. It’s really not like that. I’m more interested in human behavior set against a bigger event.

NL: Okay, but that’s more on an episode-by-episode basis, what about over the course of a whole season? Isn’t there always some sort of thematic question to be explored over the course of a given season? For example, in Dexter, there’s the big umbrella or macro theme of, Is he a human being or a monster?

CJ: Right.

NL: And then more micro themes within in each season, such as, Can he be a husband? Can he be a father? And in Homeland, has Brody (Damian Lewis) been turned, and if so, is he going to commit a large-scale terrorist act in the United States? And then the central theme of sanity versus paranoia— for Carrie (Claire Danes)—and will she be vindicated or crushed…

CJ: … as she was at the end of season 1.

NL: Maybe those aren’t exactly thematic questions, but they were central questions that sustained the whole season. Is that something that you’re thinking about when you talk about the science of story—more than theme?

CJ: Yeah. I don’t think you need any thematic stuff at all. You have a very operational question there. You have an attack on the United States and then you have these two extremely unreliable narrators; one is Brody and he’s sort of a mystery, you don’t really know which side he’s on. And then you have Carrie—who’s a little crazy. And that’s an interesting situation. You can just kind of lay it out. We don’t just play it forward the way we did in 24. We try to construct slightly stand-alone episodes, and in that sense they’re about something. We chose where to direct our focus for a particular week. But we don’t put these writerly devices onto it and say, “Oh, this one will be about the theme of giftgiving in the world.” We just don’t do that.

NL: I suppose there are different ways of thinking about theme. At its most basic, theme is a universal truth about life. But another way, I think, to look at theme is this: there’s the story, and then there’s what the story is really about. So when you said that each episode is stand-alone and about something, to me, that means theme. So, for example, in the season finale of Homeland, that you co-wrote (titled “Marine One”), there seems to be the theme of loyalty. Brody is caught between his allegiance to Abu Nazir (David Negahban) and his loyalty and responsibility to his family at home, and particularly to his daughter, Dana (Morgan Saylor), with whom he shares a special bond. And, ultimately, Dana talks Brody down and prevents him from detonating the suicide vest when he’s in the bunker with the Vice President and other top government officials. Or, is this something I’m imposing on your storytelling as a viewer and not something that you ever fully intended?

CJ: I did write a lot of that episode, and there was never the veneer of a thematic in it for me. What we go for though—and I think this is important—is that we go for a kind of recognizable emotional life. We try to construct that. We’re not just playing out some CIA operation, we’re very character based in terms of how that affects the people, the characters, the relationships. But we’re never trying to push our ideas. We just don’t do it.

In fact, I had a problem with the staff that I inherited when I took over as showrunner in season 5 of Dexter because to them it was all about the ideas, and I kept saying, “You know what? Your ideas are not that interesting to me. They’re just not that fucking interesting.” I would hear a lot about themes, and at one point I got so frustrated that I actually instituted a no metaphors rule in the writers’ room. Because everyone came up with metaphors and nobody came up with an actual story.

And that’s an issue. I’ve come to the place where I really value verisimilitude, a kind of naturalism. I picked up a lot of this from Josh Pate who created a series called Surface. It was a weird, sprawling sci-fi thing, but we tried to root everything in reality. It was a good lesson in this naturalistic thing. We did naturalistic dialogue, shot it pretty naturalistically, and tried to have naturalistic situations. There was always this tension because it looked like real life but it wasn’t because, in that case, there were these sea monsters. And we try to do the same thing on Homeland.

NL: It sounds like it kind of freed you up as a writer, not to be shackled to the “rules” of a unifying theme and these higher story ideals—well, maybe not ideals but—

CJ: It’s not an ideal. To me, imposing theme is just a bunch of bullshit.

NL: (Laughs) You’re actually perfect for this chapter because you go against convention—and your impressive body of work demonstrates that it’s working extremely well for you.

NL: Okay, so in telling a great story, can we talk about what makes a worthy, effective A story? It seems to me, a good story will have what I like to call “story tentacles” meaning it leads to more story. For example, in the season 5 opener of Dexter that you wrote (titled “My Bad”), Dexter (Michael C. Hall) discovered that his wife, Rita (Julie Benz), was murdered and he felt responsible, which led to a whole lot more story because he didn’t know how to grieve. He lacked empathy. And we got to see how Dexter dispassionately studied how the people around him—Rita’s family—all grieved for her, but Dexter just had this bemused void.

CJ: You know what. I have to take back everything I said. (Laughs.) In breaking season 5 of Dexter, we were going around and around and everyone was getting frustrated and I finally realized I was the new showrunner, I had to come up with something, and I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote down the word “Atonement.” I realized I had the arc for the entire season. Dexter would cross a line that he’d never crossed before. He’d actively decide to help someone as a means to atone for not being able to save his wife. He wouldn’t do it consciously; he’d kind of stumble into it. But eventually it would become clear that that was what the season was about.

NL: And that’s what led to the Lumen (Julia Stiles) story? That entire season 5 arc?

CJ: Exactly. There was a, I hate to say it, a kind of theme that emerged. And in atoning for Rita’s death, Dexter found a kindred spirit, Lumen, who’d been sexually abused and victimized and wanted to get back at the people who did that to her, and Dexter could align and help her carry out her cause. And he could fall in love with her because they shared the same passion— but then he’d lose her as a result of it.

NL: Yes, because once they’re able to kill the serial abusers, Lumen is ready to let the past go, to move on … and Dexter isn’t going to be part of her future?

CJ: Right.

NL: Your episodes are always so nuanced. There’s a degree of detail and subtext that lets you mine the emotions of each character. I’m reminded of those Mickey Mouse hats in the “My Bad” episode of “Dexter.” Rita’s parents had taken her kids to Disneyworld, and Dexter discovers Rita’s dead body in the bathtub while her kids are on vacation. He’s freaking out, and then they call from Disneyworld … and he just can’t bring himself to tell them what’s happened.

CJ: Right, which is so real. How do you tell a kid something like that over the phone?

NL: And then they return from Disneyworld with these funny Mickey Mouse hats that have their names stitched on them. They give one to Dexter.

CJ: Yeah, my wife, Virginia, came up with those Mickey Mouse hats. Actually she comes up with a lot of stuff.

NL: Props to your wife. Such an ironic detail.

CJ: Yeah, Dexter puts it on, he’s actually wearing it when he breaks the bad news to the kids … and he just looks ridiculous … until his stepdaughter knocks the thing off his head and runs out. Then Dexter follows her out to the car and they have a more genuine exchange.

NL: She accuses him of not caring about her mom because he’s not crying, and she wishes it had been Dexter who’d been killed.

CJ: And he doesn’t react.

NL: You know, it just occurs to me now that Dexter’s lack of being able to feel any empathy allows the audience to empathize with him in a significant way. We know he’s hurting but unable to express it. We feel his emotional pain and grief even more than if he’d just been able to bawl his eyes out.

CJ: But he is able to grieve for Rita in his sort of random, unpremeditated murder of the stranger.

NL: Yes, in the bathroom at that dilapidated marina store when he beats the crap of out some redneck asshole?

CJ: Right. Dexter goes ballistic, just rails on him, and then just leaves him there, all the blood, all the mess—not really his M.O. He just loses it. He crosses a line.

NL: “My Bad” was such a memorable episode for me because Dexter is pushed so far to the edge that he feels his only alternative is to escape. So he gets on his boat and takes off, but then he decides to return for Rita’s funeral after he beats and kills the redneck stranger in the bathroom. It’s as if he’s now ready to start grieving for Rita in a more conventional way.

CJ: Yeah, he’s had his release.

NL: When I hear “release,” I think about Aristotle and catharsis—which I know is very artsy, but still…

CJ: He has his release and then wants to be around people who loved Rita. The final moment of the episode is when he also realizes that maybe he wasn’t as able to grieve for her, but he did love her. He is capable of love.

NL: So instead of theme, would it be fair to say that your approach to storytelling is to push your characters to the edge? To make them as vulnerable as possible in each episode?

CJ: Maybe not in every episode, but I am interested in how people cross lines they haven’t crossed before and what motivates them to do it. That’s what draws me in.