Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT "The Word 'Coma' Bugs The Hell Out Of Me"
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 10 | Aired on 01.17.2007
CB: Let's talk about the coma baby arc for a moment. I seem to remember reading that your original idea was to kill everyone on the bus. RT: That's right. CB: I like that idea better than what happened. But the network insisted on keeping someone? RT: Right. In fact, they wanted to keep several people. CB: So how would the season arc have unfolded if you'd been able to execute your original plan? RT: Hmm. Yeah, it's hard to remember. The timing gets so fuzzy. But you were talking about plausibility earlier -- certainly that's an example of one where it felt like we pushed it too far. It's the cliché -- you kind of snicker at comas. There were elements of it that I liked; I liked playing Duncan's confusion between the two, I liked the conflict it created between Veronica and Duncan...yeah, I'm not crazy about how it reads on paper. "There's one survivor! And she's in a coma!" Honest to God, the word "coma" bugs the hell out of me. It feels like you should cue the laugh track at that moment. I may have convinced myself that after, in my mind, having done a successful "switched-at-birth" episode, we could make "coma baby" land. I was wrong. But I also don't want to blame everything on the network; they said I had to keep someone, they said there had to be survivors, but they didn't say it had to be Meg. Part of the reason I kept Meg is that I feared if I killed her, the big mystery would feel too much like Season 1 -- "Veronica's friend dies, Veronica seeks justice." You know -- Meg plus six other dead kids equals Lilly. So I made a different choice. But it was hard to keep Veronica involved. CB: Yeah. I thought "I Am God" was a really brilliant idea for an episode, but by the time it came around to pull Veronica in, I felt like it was a little late. RT: I agree. I mean, we couldn't have done that episode as it was much earlier in the season, because there were clues revealed that it wouldn't have made sense to reveal earlier in the season. But yeah, I agree. CB: Last thing about Season 2, in the context of the realism vs. entertainment debate: there was a lot of criticism of the depiction of courtroom proceedings. I think that's partially because if there are any liberties taken in a mystery about, say, REITs, the story can still have verisimilitude if not truth. But the courtroom is an area of greater collective familiarity. What are your thoughts on the courtroom stuff?Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22Next