“There’s a real different feeling to the meetings [at Amazon], there’s that kind of love of iteration… . There isn’t this adherence to whatever the first draft was or the first pitch was. I remember the feeling back in the day when we were developing at a network and we’d settle on something, but then of course the characters are alive, and the process is very much alive, and you would rewrite based on the feeling that you’re having with the characters, the souls of the characters, and then you’d get notes, like ‘We like the thing from the last draft, can you go back a draft?’ And then you think, ‘I can’t go back a draft. I can’t go back in my time machine and not know what I now know as a human being.’ ”

—JILL SOLOWAY, CREATOR/SHOWRUNNER/DIRECTOR, TRANSPARENT, I LOVE DICK

“We’re also talking a lot in the room about planting seeds that can grow over the course of the season, knowing that people might be watching them in bulk. We’d like to bury some Easter eggs and let people find them, later on.”

—JENJI KOHAN, WRITER/CREATOR/SHOWRUNNER, ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, WEEDS

Chapter 5

Story Tentacles

Making Surprising Choices That Yield More Story

When making choices as storytellers of a television series, our priority needs to be those choices that will give us more story. Sometimes a storyline we come up with feels interesting and could sustain for some episodes, but when we beat it out, it fizzles or we hit a dead end. Even if we know it might be a good story for a while, we need to choose the option that could take us on a road that can continue, perhaps indefinitely. It’s essential to make those story choices in our show that give our characters goals, arcs and someplace to expand and grow as people. One of our primary jobs as TV storytellers is to create a show that can sustain over a long period of time. The more seasons a show is able to last while also maintaining the quality, the more valuable it is as a property to a studio and network.

How do we sustain a show over multiple seasons, without repeating ourselves? This is a strategy that starts early in the process, as early as in the pilot. Even when writing on spec, most networks and studios now ask for more than just a pilot script. They often require a series “bible” for the show that explains where the show will go in future episodes, character by character, plus how the story is going to expand and grow. A lot of networks will now also want a second episode, which could be Episode 2, or sometimes they’ll ask for Episode 5. The execs want to see how the characters and show will evolve, once it’s all set up. (See Chapter 12.)

Inevitable Yet Unpredictable

There are several strong television series that illustrate this point, but let’s begin with an excellent movie example: Groundhog Day. It’s about Phil (Bill Murray), a guy who’s trapped in the same day. Every day he wakes up and is forced to repeat the same day, over and over again. The sly irony of the movie, which is a cult classic (and now a Broadway musical), is that every day Phil wakes up, he experiences the world in a different way. He learns things from each previous day, so that every time the day repeats, he has different touchstones. He may run into the same people, but he also develops ways to adjust his behavior in relation to the situations. What we end up seeing is a character who, yes, is trapped in the same day—and by virtue of the premise, it is a movie about repetition—yet it never gets dull or redundant, because he grows and evolves. Phil starts off as a misanthrope; he’s a grouchy, selfish, immature playboy, and it’s all about him. As the movie progresses, he starts to undergo an existential transformation. One of the things he realizes is that he can learn and grow; he doesn’t have to keep making the same mistakes over and over again. He can learn from them, move on and erase history—which many of us wish we could do. There are countless times I’ve wished I could rewind and rewrite history when I’ve blown a situation, failed a test or said something I wish I hadn’t.

In Phil’s case, he’s able to have multiple do-overs. He realizes that being stuck in the same day isn’t necessarily a curse; it can also be a blessing. He keeps getting another chance. It starts off feeling like a nightmare, but one of the ways it evolves is that he starts to realize that this is actually cool. It’s a blessing, because now he has the home court advantage. He uses all this information to manipulate his unrequited love interest and has fun with it. Initially, this is comedy gold for the movie. It also feeds into his narcissism, selfishness and some of the flaws he has at the beginning.

Where the movie takes off and goes deeper is the moment he realizes he’s immortal. Based on the fact that he’s stuck in the same day, he can’t die. So he can dive into a quarry but will just wake up the next morning and start the day over again. He can take countless risks in his life. As a result of taking new risks, even with relationships and going places he was unable to go before emotionally (because it was too scary), he’s transformed into a virtual prophet. He rises above day-to-day reality, and he starts to become, not just smarter, but more spiritually attuned to the universe. It’s a brilliant twist because what could have been a one-joke, on-repeat movie ends up taking us on a spiritual journey. By the end, we are in territory we never anticipated we would visit, based on that initial setup. Where the movie eventually ends up going is inevitable, though not predictable.

Predictability is what we always need to avoid, particularly now, because audiences have so much choice and content at their fingertips. Viewers are so sophisticated that many plotlines seem familiar; sometimes it feels as if we’ve seen it all. A huge challenge is, how do we come up with a fresh, original idea? The truth is, we’re probably not going to, because most ideas have already been done. The challenge then becomes, how do we take an idea that perhaps we’ve seen before, but put a fresh spin on it? How do we take it to a place nobody is anticipating, yet when we get there, to a resolution at the end of the season or even at the end of the series, that feels inevitable and satisfying, while never feeling predictable? The answer lies in considering all the options available and making smart initial choices.

Keep Your Frenemies Close: Orange Is the New Black

There are a few adaptations that have taken the source material—in some cases, memoirs—and made smart story adjustments. They thereby created pathways for more and more story. In the case of the memoir Orange Is the New Black, the showrunner/creator Jenji Kohan’s key adjustment actually became the centerpiece and central relationship at the core of the first season. It added tons of conflict and created subsequent love triangles, danger, suspense, sexual chemistry and tension.

Orange Is the New Black is based on the memoir by Piper Kerman, who was incarcerated for a drug trafficking bust in her past and served time at a minimum-security women’s prison. The memoir is a tell-all diary of what Piper’s life was like in prison. She writes about being a fish out of water, about the different prisoners in the population, what she had to avoid, alliances and friends she made, then “friends” who turned out to be false friends and later betrayed her.

When reading the book, we learn that Piper’s girlfriend, the drug smuggler Alex Vause (fictionalized name), who turns out to be the reason she’s in prison, is in the background. She doesn’t play a significant part in the story. In real life, Piper only briefly crossed paths with her former lover, Nora Jansen (another fictionalized name), when they both had to testify during a trial in Chicago and were housed in the same federal jail for a short time. “Nora” also looks totally different physically than the actress Laura Prepon, who plays tough, sexy Alex in the series. What Jenji Kohan did when adapting the memoir, which in the end wasn’t so much an adaptation as an inspiration for the show, was to take the backstory, do plenty of research about what happens in women’s prisons, then make the show her own. There are plenty of aspects of the memoir she drew upon, things she tossed out and much she created from scratch to serve the dramedy of the show. The choice she made in the pilot, which ended up being such a wise move—that story tentacle—was Piper’s discovery that Alex is in the same prison.

It’s a great moment. At the very end of the pilot, Piper (Taylor Schilling) has already had one of the worst days of her life and steps outside to just get some air and regroup. In her daze, she sees somebody standing there. Sure enough, it’s Alex. That sets the love triangle in motion between Piper, ex-girlfriend Alex and fiancé Larry (Jason Biggs). As the show progresses, Larry ends up betraying Piper with her best friend, another inmate comes into the story who Piper develops feelings for, Alex ends up being transferred, Alex ends up getting out, Piper ends up betraying Alex … you get the idea. There’s an infinite number of storylines because there are many different inmates, rich backstories and nuanced characters, including the prison personnel. Yet, that centerpiece of Orange Is the New Black, certainly for the first three seasons, is Alex and Piper. Alex herself is a story tentacle. That was a story choice made in the pilot; that was the gift that kept on giving to the writers of the show. It’s a story that led to more story—and it’s smart.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want … Mozart in the Jungle

The half-hour dramedy from Amazon, Mozart in the Jungle, is also based on a memoir—this time, written by an oboist in the New York Philharmonic, Blair Tindall. It’s about the real drama behind the scenes and how this oboist functioned within the musical bureaucracy. When we sit in the audience at the Lincoln Center watching the orchestra play, we think everything is beautiful, elegant, harmonious and serene. But behind the scenes, it’s ruthlessly competitive and political. There are alliances, betrayals, sexual hook-ups—all kinds of unexpected behaviors behind the curtain are real. The way into this world for the creators, Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, Paul Weitz and Alex Timbers, is the Hailey character (Lola Kirke). Like the real-life Tindall, Hailey was initially going to become second chair in the oboe section right away. We were going to get her point of view from within the orchestra.

What the writers discovered when they started to develop the show was that, if Hailey immediately gets into the orchestra, there wouldn’t be enough conflict nor room for her to grow. It’s her aspiration to play in this great orchestra, but the creators felt rightly that if they put her in that chair from the beginning, the heat of the dramatic situation, which would in turn fuel the comedy, would die. Desperation fuels comedy more than harmony and the show would run out of gas too soon. Instead, they chose to actualize Hailey’s worst nightmare. She gets her chance to play for the new, eccentric, charismatic conductor, Rodrigo (Gael García Bernal). But she pushes herself too hard, akin to the drummer in Whiplash, who literally bleeds from rehearsing constantly. Hailey is so nervous on the day of her audition that her hands are sweating, and the oboe slips and flies out of her hands. She blows her big shot in front of the whole orchestra and is not given another chance. She feels humiliated.

But Rodrigo feels that Hailey has potential and plays “with the blood,” so he offers her a job as his personal assistant. What this does is put her on the inside of the world, but she’s not yet a part of it. Hailey still has something to aspire to: one day, second chair and then first chair. In the whole first season, that challenges her and her confidence. Hailey gets to learn about the realities of what it would have been like had she been accepted to the orchestra. This was another smart choice by the creators, because her self-esteem takes a beating and she’s constantly reminded how close, yet how far, she is from where she wants to be. Hailey feels that she blew it, plus she’s such a Type A person that, for her, the worst thing that could have ever happened to her actually happened. How does she pick up the pieces and continue to move forward? How does she keep her ego in check?

As Rodrigo’s personal assistant, Hailey is in a subservient position. She has to do menial things for him because he’s her boss. He’s beyond eccentric, which can be frustrating when that person is managing you. However, on the plus side, Rodrigo constantly sees the world in an auditory manner, which is fascinating. The sounds around him and everything he hears, whether he’s riding in a taxi on the Brooklyn Bridge or just walking across the street, create a personal musical landscape. It’s as if he sees with his ears. Hailey has the unparalleled chance to learn directly from Rodrigo, even though she doesn’t yet play in the orchestra, and she realizes the value of this unique access. She absorbs, first-hand, his perspective of the world, plus her senses are being heightened. It’s ultimately going to make her a better musician, but at the same time, she has to put up with the eccentric Rodrigo as well as his crazy ex-wife, Anna Maria (Nora Arnezeder), when she returns. In this job, Hailey gets caught up in all the behind-the-scenes drama of the orchestra that she’s desperately hoping to get another shot at playing with. Hailey’s arc continues to progress in subsequent seasons, but it was a smart choice not to give her what she wants in the pilot.

A Window Onto a New World: Switched at Birth

Another example of story that generates more story is in Switched at Birth, which ran on Freeform (formerly ABC Family) for five seasons. Switched at Birth was created by Lizzy Weiss, the screenwriter of the surfer-girl movie Blue Crush. In her 2012 article, “Seen But Not Heard,” Emily Nussbaum, television critic for The New Yorker, wrote:

Daphne and Emmett have those silent exchanges because they are deaf; it was layering in this characteristic that proved to be the story tentacle—and centerpiece—of the show.

Nussbaum writes about The Deuce, Breaking Bad, Scandal—the highest-quality television shows—so I took what she said seriously and ended up checking out all the episodes. Lizzy Weiss is a super-talented writer I worked with years ago on another show. When she came to speak with my class at UCLA, she explained that the deafness was not part of her original conception but instead came from a network note, which she instinctively knew was a fascinating element to explore. The smart showrunner/creator knows not only how to take a smart note, but how to transcend it.

In the show, Bay (Vanessa Marano) is a high school girl from a privileged family who lives in a wealthy, Kansas City suburb. In the pilot—via an economical teaser, in which everything happens quickly—Bay’s science classmates are doing a blood test to determine blood type. She comes home and tells her parents and brother what her blood type is, but her parents are confused, because that doesn’t fit. It’s not their blood type, and this starts to make Bay wonder why she doesn’t look like her parents. In fact, she’s always felt as if maybe something was wrong. She does a little research and convinces her parents they should do a DNA test. Sure enough—again, it’s all in the teaser—it’s confirmed: Bay is not their daughter. They must have taken the wrong baby girl home. They go through the hospital records and contact the mother of Daphne (Katie Leclerc), the other girl. When Bay meets Daphne, Daphne’s with her mother Regina (Constance Marie), Bay’s with her parents and we discover that Daphne is deaf. And she’s been deaf from a young age, because of spinal meningitis. End of teaser.

So the revelation about the DNA test is what brings Daphne, Bay and the families together and is the catalyst that jumpstarts the show. But, as soon as the story reveals Daphne is deaf, it opens up the world to further story possibilities. It’s a story that we as audience have not seen before on TV and it’s fascinating. Switched at Birth isn’t just a show about a deaf girl who’s comfortable being deaf and has adapted well to the world; it’s also a show about socioeconomic status and entitlement. Daphne’s single mom Regina is a recovering alcoholic and addict; Daphne’s Italian dad left them because he thought Regina had cheated, as baby Daphne looked so different to them. She grew up without her father and essentially learned to do without. She goes to an all-deaf high school. Her mother works hard just to put food on the table, just scraping by. Daphne’s grandmother also lives with them. On the other hand, Bay’s family, who are well off, live a privileged lifestyle and send her to an elite private school.

The show also thematically brings up the idea of normalcy. When Bay’s parents discover Daphne is actually their biological daughter, they have the money and could provide her with cochlear implants, so that she could hear. Daphne’s mother is resistant. She says she loves her daughter the way she is and doesn’t need to fix her. She also resents that the “perfect family,” the mom and dad with all their money and privilege, are going to disrupt their lives and try to “rescue” her. Daphne’s mom is Puerto Rican, and her Latina grandmother has always felt as if they were outsiders, that they had to work harder and prove themselves. We also have the legal issue of who will get custody of the girls, when the DNA test proves that Daphne is Bay’s parents’ biological daughter (and Bay is Regina’s). Bay’s father gets into an argument with Daphne’s mother, because she’s so resistant to him providing Daphne with every advantage he would like to be able to grant her. He gets pushback from Regina. In later seasons, we see how this all plays out, but early on, we wonder: Will Bay’s parents push for custody of their biological daughter?

At its core, the show is about nature vs. nurture. Biologically, the kids were switched. How much of who we are comes from genetics? How much from how we were raised and nurtured? The central question of the show is around this blended, unexpected family that is brought together by the switch. By the end of the pilot, Daphne, her mother and grandmother move into the guesthouse of Bay’s family. (If you’re thinking a little cottage, you’d be wrong. Their guesthouse is more palatial than most people’s main houses.) So they all live, although not quite under the same roof, on the same property. We also have the war between past and present. There is friction between the two moms, over what’s right for each kid. Bay is a rebellious artist—we discover in the pilot that she puts up graffiti images around the community and pretends she doesn’t know who’s doing it. But we know she’s the one and start to see that she’s rebelling against her parents and the pressures of her privilege. She wants to be freer, more artistic and bohemian and finds this with her biological mother, whom she didn’t even know she had. Again, this creates more story around Bay, as she explores that side of herself which she feels is her true nature. Now it explains to her why she felt she didn’t fit in all that time.

In subsequent seasons, what ends up happening, ironically, is that Daphne is interested in going to Bay’s fancy, private school. There’s tension around her wish because her mother is against it. She doesn’t want her daughter to be the “deaf girl” in class, who always has to have an interpreter. She wants her daughter to be in a high school where all her fellow students are deaf, because she doesn’t want her daughter to feel stigmatized in a general population, even if it’s an elite private school that will provide her with the extra accommodation to be able to keep up. Then, in an act of rebellion, Bay says she wants to go to the deaf school. This creates a whole other scandal, which is a cool story. In real life, there’s a university for the deaf and hard of hearing called Gallaudet, where a controversy arose when hearing students wanted to attend. The school president wanted to admit them, but the deaf students staged a protest. Switched at Birth paid homage to this story in one episode.

The show also cleverly plays around with forms of communication, which is another reason I recommend you check it out. There is an episode in which the characters use only sign language, as some of them start to learn how to sign. There are scenes where there’s no dialogue; it’s all American Sign Language with subtitles. It gives us a glimpse into a world that most of us don’t know—as all great shows do—and enthralls us as viewers. We have an endless fascination with shows that “let us in” behind the scenes at the Philharmonic, or to daily life in a women’s prison, or the deaf and hard-of-hearing culture. What it means to be “normal,” vs. stigmatized, what it means to feel judgment from people who assume that if someone is deaf, they’re “less than,” when maybe they’re just different. It’s a captivating show that gives us insight into and empathy with a whole other culture that lives and walks among us all. It presents a different perspective on deaf subculture than we would have had otherwise. When Lizzy Weiss pitched the story about the two girls who were switched at birth, she did have the economic differences and there was a little ethnic tension, but it was the choice to add the deaf culture that affected the show beautifully and profoundly. It’s become its signature and the whole centerpiece, in a positive and interesting way.

Taboo Relationships in Comedies

Often in comedies, there are two characters who are in love but can’t be together, because of various forms of neuroses that keep them apart. The trick is always to keep them apart for as long as possible. On Cheers, the writers managed to keep Sam and Diane, and later Sam and Rebecca, apart for as long as possible. They knew that as soon as they got together, the show would be over. In New Girl, we thought it was going to be a slow-burn between the two characters of Jess and Nick, but the writers got them together before the audience is ready. In real life, there was a lot of backlash from the audience. When we write a taboo relationship, in terms of story tentacles, we need to keep the two characters apart for as long as we can. Unless bringing them together is going to add tension and conflict, most likely the conflict is going to dissipate as soon as their secret comes out and they admit they’re in love. So, sustaining the taboo relationship is key.

In Groundhog Day, Phil’s situation (which is a secret to everyone around him) is on repeat, but we get different perspectives, based on what the other characters learn. Similarly in TV shows, even if the characters don’t have some deep, dark secret or scandalous, taboo relationship, they can learn from what’s happening in their relationships. They can take their insights, epiphanies and how events influence them, then apply that knowledge to their own relationships. It all depends on what feels organic for the story. No writers should force secrets, lies or life lessons onto our characters, but if these feel true and consistent with the tone and basic idea we started with, we can marry multiple elements and open up whole new veins of gold for our stories.

Points of View: The Affair

Showtime’s The Affair is an example of how points of view create story tentacles—in this case, because the show uses a Rashomon style. In Season 1, we see the affair between Alison (Ruth Wilson) and Noah (Dominic West) from their two points of view. They’re different: We have a classic “he said, she said.” The way Noah sees Alison, from the moment he lays eyes on her when she’s waiting on the family at the restaurant, the way he remembers their first encounter, is very unlike how she remembers it. There’s his version of reality, her version of reality and then there’s the truth. And it keeps us invested, as we wonder what’s really happening.

In Season 2, the perspective expands, so we don’t just get Alison and Noah’s point of view, we also experience that of Alison’s husband Cole (Joshua Jackson) and Noah’s wife Helen (Maura Tierney). And as we enlarge the perspective, we continue to generate richer story, because we see the same situation, much as in Groundhog Day, from a different point of view and agenda. The Rashomon style of seeing the same event—this affair that takes place during a summer in Montauk—from multiple different perspectives, lends itself to more story as it unfolds.

Ensembles and Backstories

When we conceive an ensemble, we can look at what characters do for a living as well as what they do outside the workplace. Even if it doesn’t enter into the storylines, it informs who they are, what their priorities are, how they think about life both in and outside the office. We can then make those story choices that bring in more choices. The Office, Parks and Recreation, Modern Family and Community are all solid examples of story-rich ensembles. In Community, each character comes into the college with a backstory that’s nuanced, so even though we spend our time in the study room at the college, we have places to go when we need to expand the story.

When we conceive a series, early in the process, we need to create such options as much as possible. We have to consider what’s going to be a dead end, versus what’s going to give us more story, then always choose the second option. That may require digging into the premise of the show, plus it may mean combining characters or tossing a character out who’s not going to generate enough story. When we’re in the writers’ room, in the 4th or 5th season of our show, after already having created numerous episodes, we’ll still be looking for more story. It’s beyond helpful to start the show on the strongest possible footing, from where we have as many exciting places as possible to go.

When a Flaw Becomes an Asset: Girls

HBO’s controversial, love-to-hate-it, hate-to-love-it show Girls introduces numerous character quirks and flaws as story tentacles in its first season. These run right through to the end of the series, six seasons on. They include:

Career Insecurity

(Hannah/Jessa/Marnie/Shoshanna/Adam/Elijah/Ray)

• Will Hannah (Lena Dunham, also the show’s writer, director and producer) ever be a successful writer?
• Will Jessa (Jemima Kirke) get her shit together for long enough to stick with any career?
• Will Marnie (Allison Williams) get beyond the “I’m an artist who doesn’t know what my art is” phase and make it as an arts professional—or later on, as a singer?
• Will Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) find a job she loves that she’s also good at?
• Will Adam (Adam Driver) and Elijah (Andrew Rannells) make it as successful actors?
• Will Ray (Alex Karpovsky) get beyond his “failure to launch” and figure out how to apply his talents to paid work?

Planting these seeds of goals, doubts and limitations in the first season continues to bear fruit throughout the entire series.

Relationship Insecurity

(Hannah/Jessa/Marnie/Shoshanna/Adam/Elijah)

• Will Hannah/Jessa/Marnie/Shoshanna/Adam/Elijah find lasting love, without screwing it up?

For all the characters’ self-destructive behavior around love, sex and relationships—at times conscious, sometimes unconscious—it is their norm. Their poor choices (and sometimes karmic ill treatment by their other halves in relationships) lead to awkward, painful story tentacle after story tentacle. They crescendo to the show’s pinnacle of heartache for Hannah, when Jessa gets together with Hannah’s ex, Adam. Instantly, narcissistic Hannah sees it as both the loss of her best friend and any chance of future happiness with her one true love. It’s all about her—forget the happiness of two people who didn’t plan to fall in love.

Selfishness and Narcissism

(Hannah/Marnie; to a lesser extent, Jessa/Adam/Elijah; to a lesser extent still, Shoshanna/Ray)

In life, people don’t change, right? That’s certainly true of the four girls, plus the three guys, but some eventually grow up and self-actualize more than others, namely Shoshanna and Ray. In the penultimate episode of the series, Shoshanna calls out the three other girls on their narcissism; they realize, caught in inertia and unable to change, that she’s right.

Anxiety

(Hannah/Shoshanna)

From more serious episodes such as Hannah’s OCD to Shosh’s lost-in-translation episode in Tokyo, anxious feelings run throughout the series. Hannah also has regular bouts of anxiety and doubt and feels out of her depth when she gets pregnant—and, in the series finale, when she has a small, hungry baby who refuses to breastfeed.

Hypersensitivity to Parental and Societal Expectations

(Hannah/Marnie/Shoshanna/Ray)

The story tentacle of Hannah’s baby boomer parents cutting her off financially in the pilot is the gift that keeps on giving, as she struggles to find her way as a writer. The show comes full circle in the final season, when her mom Loreen (Becky Ann Baker) flies high on edibles and eventually throws up on the table at a busy Chinese restaurant—bucking all societal expectations of the mom of an adult child. Growing up is hard to do, and we all reach adulthood and self-acceptance in our own way (or sometimes, never).

Naturally, Girls serves up all this angst with a good sense of humor. There are also characters who become story tentacles, especially Elijah, who is first introduced as Hannah’s gay ex-boyfriend but ends up being her roommate and one of her closest and most trusted friends. He becomes a regular cast member with numerous storylines of his own, from rejection in love to career doubts. Then there are Hannah’s parents, Loreen and Tad (Peter Scolari), who end up creating the ultimate plot twist that rocks Hannah’s world (again, it’s all about her) when he comes out as gay. Loreen’s difficulty in coming to terms with how her life changes is heartbreaking, but it all ends on a hopeful note when she too self-actualizes and imparts her wisdom about finding happiness to Marnie, who has put her life on hold to help out Hannah for a while. “I don’t need to be happy. It’s just not my time. This is important. Hannah’s my best friend,” Marnie recites to Loreen. “Has it ever occurred to you that the best thing for you and your friendship would be if you were happy too?” Loreen counters.

Love it or hate it, the show has secured a place in television history, as a microcosm of New York life for post-college twenty-somethings of a certain social milieu in the early 21st century.

The Macro/Micro Approach:The Young Pope

The Vatican is a paradox: It’s a tiny, isolated, particular place that also has far-reaching international impact. By exploring this dichotomy, The Young Pope expands the initial premise set up in its first few episodes into various and fascinating nooks and crannies of the Catholic Church. The setup for HBO’s stylish series finds a young and rebellious new Pope at the church’s helm. At first, viewers watch as this new, stricter Pope Pius XIII (Jude Law) sends waves through the Vatican. The reverberations are felt by every member of the institution. Almost immediately, Cardinal Voiello (Silvio Orlando), Cardinal Michael Spencer (James Cromwell) and others start making power moves to unseat the king.

But as the season moves on, creator Paolo Sorrentino expands the impact of the new Pope globally. Sorrentino is able to examine the history of molestation in the Catholic Church, by dispatching Cardinal Gutierrez (Javier Cámara) to investigate suspicious behavior by Archbishop Kurtwell in New York. Gutierrez speaks with victims, all the while haunted by his own abuse as a child. At the same time, The Young Pope turns inward to analyze Pope Pius’ own crisis of faith. We see Pius alone, praying for God to reveal himself. The series also does an excellent job of painting a vivid image of the world inside Pius’ head through flashbacks and hallucinations. This micro/macro approach allows the series to tell both personal tales, while also commenting on a centuries-old institution—allowing for countless story possibilities in the future.

The Unreliable Narrator: Mr. Robot

Mr. Robot, on the USA Network, started as an anomaly: a subversive, dangerous and edgy show on the Blue Sky network. It was USA’s first foray into riskier programming. When we start watching the show, we think it’s about a cyber hacker named Elliot Anderson (Rami Malek). On the surface, we would think he’s an incredible tech genius, who happens to be obsessive compulsive; he is also a loner and misanthrope with a drug habit. He hates corporate power; we know his father died, and he blames the evil “E Corp” for it. He always strives to bring down people who are duplicitous, corrupt and greedy; he has a major axe to grind. What’s fun about the first episodes is that we get to see how one guy, with pervasive cyber knowledge, can potentially have a huge, global impact on the world economy, much like Edward Snowden.

What we discover is that Elliot suffers from mental illness. He’s a little bit of a sociopath, a little schizophrenic. Sam Esmail, who created Mr. Robot, has described Elliot’s condition as a dissociative personality disorder. What that essentially means is that Elliot, for all his brilliance, is disconnected from reality. He hallucinates, there’s a presence in his life he imagines, he doesn’t remember things he’s done, he isn’t sure what’s true and what’s not. He’s an unreliable narrator, who talks to us in voice-over throughout the show.

If we were pitching Mr. Robot to someone who’s yet to see the show, we could say: It’s about an aggressive, morphine-addicted cyber hacker who joins a rogue group of cyber bandits, and together they plan to bring down the largest, most unscrupulous corporation in the world. It’s almost a reverse heist/Robin Hood story. What we will learn is that a great deal of what we see unfold, outcomes that Elliot causes, may not have happened. We are then thrust into an existential crisis as an audience, because we discover that our protagonist/narrator/antihero, who we’ve been rooting for and feel connected to, may have imagined the whole thing. And we don’t know what to think about him at the end—we’re completely confused, but in a good way. This leaves us wide open for Season 2 and beyond in terms of Elliot’s disorder, what’s real, what’s not and what the impact will be, going forward.

It’s a major story challenge for Sam Esmail and his team, because they write themselves into a corner by the end of Season 1. Fortunately he’s a brilliant storyteller and they figure their way out. When Esmail first pitched the story, he explained that he wanted to write a show about a character with dissociative personality disorder. He described a show that’s designed around a character we think we know in the beginning, but by the end of the season realize we didn’t know at all. Season 1 of Mr. Robot ends on an exciting note: Everything has been wiped, and it’s all set up to be a reboot of the whole show in Season 2.

Story tentacles give us lots more places to go with story in terms of our perception and reality, such as in Homeland, which had a whole reboot in its 5th season. If we create a show that feels like it might be a limited series, but we plant enough seeds that we’re able to give the show new life each season—so it’s the same show but different—we will have done our job. Our shows will emulate Groundhog Day, where it’s the same day and yet different, and as the story grows, it deepens and expands in an unexpected manner. We can look at story tentacles as strands of longevity that we can draw upon and pull and braid with other story tentacles. Then we’ll be able to continue to tell great stories for hopefully 80–100 episodes—or for as long as we desire.