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 a little about Season 2. I would think in some ways you found it more challenging than Season 1. As many people know, the first season was based on your treatment idea for a novel. Was breaking the season arc in Season 2 more difficult than in Season 1, since you were starting from scratch? RT: Well, it's not like I had that much written for Season 1's mystery -- I never did sit down and write that novel. Essentially, everything I had for the pitch of the novel was gone in the pilot. Again, I knew who did it going in, but it would be incorrect to say I had it planned out. In some senses, it was very much like the other two seasons. The only difference was that, in Season 1, the whole cast was built around that mystery: everyone was integral to the plot. Subsequently, it's been tougher to involve people in the mystery. For one thing, we know these characters better -- for example, I could play Logan as a red herring in Season 1, but not now. Same thing with Weevil: it's tough now for people to believe that he could be the killer, at the end of the day, so how do we weave them in? How do we again make it personal for Veronica when [in Season 1] you've got a dead best friend built into the premise of the show, and everyone save Wallace knows her? That's been the tough thing -- finding something that will hold a personal connection for Veronica. And also, the great thing about Season 1 is that Amanda Seyfried was so frickin' great, that you cared for her -- she just popped on screen whenever she was on, which made the mission more important. CB: The way Season 1 was received must have been something of a double-edged sword, in that expectations for Season 2 were very high. Did you feel that pressure? Is there anything you wish you had done differently? RT: Yeah, I think I've said this before, but I think Season 2 was too convoluted. I probably wouldn't have done the mystery of what happened to Logan on the bridge. I thought that I needed to do it, because I had to give Kristen Bell time off. She was just worked to the bone, and I promised her time off in Season 2 -- she was in 95, 98% of the scenes in Season 1, and I have to say, there's no tougher job for an actor than being the single lead of a drama. The half-hour people get to work a few hours a day. Kristen really works hard, so that was the quest. I knew going in that Logan was such a breakout character, to give him his own mystery seemed like a good idea, and to give Kristen time off seemed like a good idea, and that felt like a way we could do it. At the end of the day, I would agree with the criticism that there were too many red herrings, too many balls in the air, too much to keep track of, especially when they'd take us off the air for five or six weeks. That's one of the reasons I was excited about the mystery format in Season 3, because I felt like, with nine episodes here, we'll have just a handful of people involved with the case, and not having time off, we'll have the momentum we need, and people won't get lost. And in that sense, I feel like we were successful.Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22Next