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
RT: First, I'm not sure that should be labeled a Season 2 question. It's weird, the untouchable status Season 1 holds for some fans. We failed in plenty of instances in Season 1 to land on the "good" side of the reality line. The audience was simply more forgiving -- E-string strangler, anyone? As for the trial stuff: in our defense, real-life courtroom stuff is very, very boring. I think we did get it right in the amount of time it took Aaron Echolls to get to trial -- on some shows, he would have been in the courtroom the next day. But yeah, I would agree that the courtroom isn't our greatest strength. I think we were less realistic than Law & Order, but no less realistic than, say, Boston Legal. But at the end of the day, I would concede that that wasn't our finest moment. CB: Let's move on to Season 3. You did something of a restart in that the main setting of the show moved from Neptune High to Hearst College. Did you think this was a good thing for the show? What were the challenges in creating the new environment? RT: Yeah, you know...I have to say that moving to college is nothing I've second-guessed at all. I like it -- I actually think it opens up a new spectrum of cases. I've been really pleased with the new environment, and shows that stay in high school sort of bug me. In terms of challenges, we sort of lost the easy story idea of haves versus have-nots, but honestly, we milked that for two years, and there is a desire to move on to new ground and not wanting to rehash 09ers versus non-09ers. I wanted to depict college as a microcosm of the world. There are sects, and it's fun to have Veronica navigate groups, which I think over the course of the year you'll see a bunch of. CB: You mentioned that you're pleased with the mini-arc format. Whose idea was it? RT: The first person who mentioned it...well, this is actually, I don't want to say a bone of contention, because I don't really think anyone's arguing over it, but the studio first mentioned the idea to me, and I liked it, and I called Dawn Ostroff at the network. She loved it, and she immediately got on the phone with her programming person and asked if we could divide the show into blocks. So I can absolutely say that the idea to have uninterrupted blocks was Dawn's. The idea of shorter mysteries, I think, actually came from the studio. CB: So let's talk about the first arc, and a bit of the...unpleasantness. [Rob laughs.] It's fairly well-known that you've come under some heat for the rape storyline, most notably in the Entertainment Weekly review that I'll spare you from quoting from. But they gave "Lord Of The Pi's" a D. I'm on record as disagreeing with that assessment. But that must be heard to hear from a publication like EW when they've treated you pretty well in the past.Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22Next