So after the end of the first mini-arc this season, I got in touch with Rob Thomas and asked him if he'd like to do an updated interview. He gave me a total of over two hours. Hey, it's not like he's busy, right? Let's get to it. (Hardcore spoilerphobes are warned that there's enough upcoming stuff in here that they might want to steer clear.) Couch Baron: A lot has changed since we talked last. Not just with the show -- congratulations on your marriage and your lovely daughter. Rob Thomas: Thank you. CB: So, let's go back. You wrapped up Season 1 in pretty amazing style. You were getting great reviews, you were biting your nails, and you got renewed. I assume you had already started planning for Season 2 at that point, but once you actually got the news, what did you do? RT: I thought I called you! [Both laugh.] CB: True. But what did you have in mind for Season 2 at that time, and how did you go about executing it? RT: We knew about the bus crash, the busload of dead kids, and the fact that Beaver did it by the end of Season 1. But we didn't do much breaking [planning the plot points] of Season 2 between the two seasons. We did a bunch of that this past season because I knew I was going to be vacationing until mid-June; typically, the writers start back [at] the beginning of June. We sort of stayed two weeks longer and came back two weeks later. I actually came back with a couple of episodes written -- we had broken the first two already, so we were significantly ahead of the game. In fact, we were ahead most of the year until I left to direct. That slows everything down. CB: You're mentioning a little of the television process here. I think it would clear up a lot of misconceptions, and would also just generally be very informative, if you were to tell us, from start to finish, what happens to get an episode of your show on the air. RT: Typically, before we enter any of our big mysteries, we break the real stuff -- we break what really happened. You know, with the Beaver case, we had to plan what really happened and set that in stone, so none of the misleads and red herrings would interfere with that or make the big mystery not work. Then we map out the big clues -- we plan how Veronica is going to solve the case, and how she's going to get those big clues. Once we have those, we start with the Mystery Of The Week. We generally start with the A story, break that, writers pitch ideas for that, and we settle on one -- and it's a bitch. Breaking the mystery -- we've been on [Episode] 3-17 now for four days in the room and don't have the A story broken. Typically, we can finish breaking an entire episode in a week, but this is going a little more slowly, which is strange, because it's one of the smallest mysteries we've ever done. We're having a tough time with it. So we start with the act-outs -- if, in the middle of the fourth act, Veronica's going to reveal whodunit, what are the big moments? Typically, we end the cold open either with Veronica getting hired or with the mystery becoming apparent, and then it's what are the big discoveries. We put those at the end of acts, and I would say that 80% of our act-outs are on the Mystery Of The Week. Then we just go beat by beat -- how do we get from Point A to Point B. If we're going to act out with a certain reveal, what are the clues Veronica needs? In the room right now, we've been discussing how a hotel robe went from one bag to another, I swear to God, for two days. Because you have to have both plausibility and entertainment -- frequently, there could be an easy answer, but it would bore the hell out of whoever's watching, so you have to come up with the clever thing, the clever twist. I've said it before, but if I could have all the time in the world in which we think of a new way for Veronica to get someone's cell phone -- because we don't want to do it the same way every time, we want to think of something new, something that's fun to watch. "Fun to watch" is something of a watchword around here, because real private detectiving is talking on the phone and plugging away on the computer.
CB: I remember you mentioned that last time we talked, especially how much PIs can get done on the computer. RT: Right, it would shorten everything up, and it's so much more fun to watch Veronica pretend to be someone, or to have the fun way of drawing information out of a suspect, so it's sort of a constant battle to come up with fun ideas. There's the straight line on the case, and then there's the twisty, turny one that's more fun on screen. I mean, there are times -- we make these decisions all the time -- everyone saw an example of it in "Spit And Eggs" -- the smart thing for Veronica to do is to call the police and pull the fire alarm, but it's going to be a boring show. So we at least paid lip service to her trying to get everyone out of the dorm by calling the police, but at the end of the day, you've got to have Veronica in the thick of it. Now I'll say this about the ending of the Dean O'Dell mystery: whereas all our big mysteries so far have been detective, detective, detective, detective, THRILLER in the finale, this one's going to be more of a true parlor-game mystery. We start shooting the finale tomorrow, and it's not going to be Veronica being chased around with a knife. But I've gotten off-track here; generally, we turn in what we call a "one-pager" to the network, which is the description of the episode that fits on one page, and we give a blurb about the A, B, and C stories for the studio and the network to sign off on. But we're generally working farther than that; the good thing is that we have pretty terrific relationships with both those entities, so while they may have some questions and want us to steer in a certain direction, I don't think we've ever had an episode to which they've said "no." What's interesting -- and by the way, I think we have a terrific studio -- the one that they had a really big problem with, that they just didn't see could be entertaining, was 3-10, the one up, but I really adore it -- I think 3-10 and 3-11 are great, and I'm glad we're coming back strong. So as I said, usually it takes us a week to break an episode, and the A story is about three and a half days of that, the B story is half a day, and the C story -- which is usually how we're moving the big mystery forward -- is another day of discussions in the room. Then whoever the writer who's assigned to write that episode is, unless we're running behind, has two weeks to write it. Some of the writers write here at the office, some of them write at home -- it doesn't really make a difference to me where they work. Assuming we're on time, they turn in a draft, and I take a couple of days to give them notes on it, and then they generally have two or three days to turn around the second draft on the script. Generally, I then do a polish; sometimes Diane [Ruggiero] will do the polish, but more frequently I will. Even when Diane polishes it, it usually takes a trip through my laptop, but when Diane polishes, there's really very little left for me to do.
CB: That's good. RT: Yeah. And then you turn it in to the studio, and they give you their thoughts, and you turn around the studio draft, which becomes the network draft, and the network gives you their thoughts, and that becomes the production draft, which finally gets scene numbers put on it; if everything's done correctly, that production draft is ready to go on the first day of prep. I was going to say we've never been late with a production draft, but we were on the one we were doing right before the break, because we had one day of prep that landed on the Friday before the holidays, and we needed that two weeks to finish the production draft, because coming off me directing, we were pretty behind. CB: So just to clarify, the person who gets credit for writing the episode is starting out with the act structure and everything in place -- he or she is basically just writing the dialogue. RT: Yeah. And I'm sorry, I even skipped a huge step in there. When we break it in the room, we've got all these dry-erase boards set up, and we have every scene written up on the board and color-coded according to what subplot it's tied to, so you can see the whole episode up on a board. The writer actually initially does an outline that takes a couple of days, and I would say we do remarkably detailed outlines. When I was at Dawson's Creek, our outlines would be roughly eight pages. Here, they're frequently twenty-five. At Dawson's Creek, there would be thirty-five to forty scenes, and here, we typically have sixty. Generally, WB shows, they're just very talky, but with us, there are all these little beats, like Veronica placing a camera in a cubby. That's partly a function of the genre, and partly a pace thing -- I like short scenes. I'm not crazy about three-and-a-half-page talky scenes. So we get the outline approved by the studio and network, and then the writer goes off for two weeks to write the script. As I said, the outline is an incredibly detailed document, and it's really important to me, even though it's my least favorite part of the process in that it's so taxing on my brain. It's easier for me to polish a script than to break a story any day. Any day. That would change if I were doing Freaks And Geeks or Dawson's Creek; detective shows are like great big jigsaw puzzles -- they're tough as opposed to coming-of-age stories, which can be done well or badly, but are consistently easy to break. So then it's the production stage, and you're familiar with the industry -- it's like, now we're on goldenrod pages. There are so many notes that come in. The director will have a series of notes that you'll implement in the script, and then locations won't work out, so you'll have to move scenes to different places and adjust the dialogue accordingly. It's almost a neverending process, and the script doesn't really feel done until you've shot the last day. There are always tweaks coming in.
CB: You mentioned network notes. Is that mostly Standards and Practices stuff? RT: No, in fact, Standards and Practices has been much easier. With the network switch, we moved out from under the CBS umbrella, and now we have the Standards and Practices people that used to be with The WB, and it's been easier with them. Clearly, there's always a little debate, but it felt like, last year, I was on the phone all the time arguing. It feels like now they're tougher on things like product placement and clearance issues and things that I don't really have to deal with, and less about content. It's been really great for me this year. CB: I know last time we talked, you said you sometimes found it frustrating that the network wouldn't always let you leave enough to the audience -- like they'd sometimes make you throw in a explanatory voice-over. Do you get that less with the new network? RT: Yeah. Yeah. The network notes in the old regime were more micro, whereas in the new regime they're more macro. It continues to be a good process with the new network -- they were a little tougher at the beginning, with both sides getting used to each other, but...if every creative experience I had with a network were this good, I'd be a very happy man. CB: As much as you delegate various responsibilities, as the showrunner, ultimate responsibility for getting the show on the air is yours. What sort of fires do you have to put out, and what's the biggest crisis you've had to face? RT: Well...you know, most of the fires are financial fires. It's a pretty continuous onslaught -- turning in a script that we're proud of and then finding out that we don't have enough money to shoot it. A lot of putting out fires is rewriting, and I've thankfully got really good people around me, and whatever happens -- whether it's cast members needing time off, or problems with the crew -- basically, I'm shielded from most of that. We've tried to structure things pretty well so I only have to deal with creative aspects of the show -- the scripts, the cuts, the casting. Fortunately, [executive producers] Danielle Stokdyk and Jen Gwartz take a huge load off here as far as promotions and marketing and dealing with the network about anything non-creative, even though they're both very creative producers and give feedback for all the scripts. But they take a lot of the things that I hate about the job off my plate. And [supervising producer] Dan Etheridge, who's down in San Diego, is just a fantastic right-hand man for me, because we're good friends and share similar tastes, and he's on the set all the time. I wish I could clone him, because he has to split his time between the director who's prepping and the director who's shooting. I can always tell -- if I see something in dailies I don't like, it probably means that Dan was with the prepping director at that moment.
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.
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?
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 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.
RT: Oh, they've treated us great. In fact, Gillian Flynn [the EW reviewer in question -- CB] has put us on their Top Ten list in the past. CB: Right. So that must have been very disquieting. RT: It was. It really bummed me out. CB: So, talking about the serial-rape arc: when you thought about it, I'd guess you were aware that it was a potential minefield. How did you weigh the pros and cons of doing that arc? RT: Well, I suppose there's part of me that doesn't quite understand where the line is between sending seven kids off a cliff in a bus and, you know, a serial rapist who drugs his victims and doesn't, say beat up women -- why one is okay fodder for television and one's not. You know, I don't actually think it's the serial rapes -- I think we've taken the most heat for how people perceive the Lilith House women. CB: Well, that's my question, so let's talk about that. Some people think that the depiction suggested that you see women negatively -- as shrill and humorless, among other things. RT: You know, I'm remarkably defensive about this -- it gets under my skin like no other criticism. I'm the person who created Veronica. Veronica's far from perfect, but find me a better feminist role model on television, particularly for adolescent girls. I mean, it's sort of a theory I have on writing television -- to use the audience's television expectations against them. In other words, the way I set up a surprise that works is to think about the way that television treats its viewers that we are accustomed to. If you see the person doing A here, then he can't do B later. What would be a good example... CB: Well, I can think of one, only because I remember commenting on it in my recap -- in "The Girl Door," where you have the missing girl's boyfriend, and he's seen outside smoking. On TV, smoking is evil, so you're led to think he did it when he didn't. RT: I mean...that is a great example. There are larger examples -- it's almost like whatever cliché you've seen, whether it's the limp that's going to disappear, the indicator that makes the audience say, "Aha! I know this storyline, I've seen this storyline," and then [you want] to trip them up based on expectations. It's...in that sense, the idea that Claire would fake a rape, it's something that feminists...it's a protected group, like, despite what Gillian Flynn wrote about frat boys in that review, I don't really believe anyone is really upset about our depiction of frat boys. Certainly no one was up in arms over our depiction of the 09ers. I never heard comments like, "Are we supposed to believe all rich white kids are like this?" If rich kids are depicted [in a way that's] less than savory, that's one thing, but to have someone who has a lefty political bent, that's someone who's typically protected, and it trips the audience up, and I was going for that. My politics are certainly pretty far left, but I don't have sacred cows. No one comes off clean on the other side of a noir universe. I really believed, and apparently believed wrongly for a number of people, that I had enough of a feminist cachet in my lead character and in the whole foundation of the series. And I actually don't dislike those women; certainly I think what Claire did in faking the rape is wrong -- in fact, incredibly wrong -- but it certainly gives Veronica that opportunity to say "You're wrong, and you know you're wrong." Veronica's the voice of the show. And I also really like the backstory of the Lilith House women, this girl who gets hazed in a rush and walks off the roof of the sorority house, and her friends are out for revenge. It feels like an action that Veronica might take: Veronica clearly wouldn't fake a rape, but she would go blindly in seeking justice.
CB: I mentioned in my recap that I thought it was a lot stronger and a lot more identifiable that they did what they did for the specific revenge reason rather than for just an ideology. RT: Oh, yeah! Of course! And you know, when Nish sends Veronica into that sorority house in "My Big Fat Greek Rush Week" and says there's a room she wants her to find, she's totally genuine. There's nothing duplicitous about that, and when it does fall down at the end -- Veronica doesn't find anything -- all that Nish does is print the truth. It's like the introduction of Jackie in Season 2, where, in my mind, she doesn't do anything wrong in the second episode. She goes out with Wallace, she has a date. She goes out with another guy, she has a date. People acted as though Jackie had cheated on Wallace, in a way that...in the real world, we don't judge people like this. But how hard people came down -- I mean, Jackie was immediately villainous. There was a scene where Jackie confronted Veronica in the coffee shop -- I actually thought Veronica was mostly in the wrong there. It's one of those scenes that lands so differently with the audience than I perceive it -- in my mind, Veronica's being pretty bitchy to this girl who's done nothing wrong. In the audience's mind: "Take her head off, Veronica!" CB: [laughs] Well, it's our Veronica and our Wallace, and who is this girl coming in? RT: Right, and similarly I don't think Nish did anything wrong, but clearly...because she doesn't do what Veronica wants, she is a bad guy, and similarly, again...if you look at how the boys from the Hearst Lampoon are portrayed versus the feminists, I think the women come out on top. I try to keep things in shades of gray. Very few people come out clean, and very few people are pure evil in the show. Like in "Lord Of The Pi's," I find Fern totally charming and witty throughout that episode. If it's just that I can't have feminists fake a rape, if that sends me off some cliff of thinking all women are a certain way, I don't think that's fair. I will say that the portrayal of those women...it was affected by the coverage of the Duke lacrosse scandal. Immediately, when they turned those cameras on and cut to the demonstrators, so many people, before anyone heard anything, were willing to hang those kids, or to support them fully. And I just found that remarkable and distasteful. So there was some reaction to that, watching. You don't know what happened, and yet you want those boys in prison. By the way, I look at those lacrosse boys and my own personal gut reaction is that they're a lot like Dick Casablancas, you know -- that they are probably lunkheads and male chauvinists, but I'm not willing to call them rapists before we've even heard anything. And...oh, the word I was looking for is "strident." There was certainly some notion of putting the strident people who I reacted to in the Duke lacrosse thing into the show.
CB: So would you say this has made you more aware that the things you write are sometimes going to be interpreted more broadly that perhaps you intended? RT: Oh, I...you know, I think I was aware of that. I knew...I knew that when there was a fake rape story I would catch some flak. I knew that going in. CB: You know, I didn't have this question prepared, but on the topic of shades of gray, I want to tell you that "Of Vice And Men"...I don't know to what extent, if any, this was an episode where you wanted to show the audience your worldview, but everyone in that episode comes off as really gray in a moral sense. Was that what you were going for? RT: I should say that if I'm defensive about my feminist cachet, I'm even more defensive about "Veronica as nice person." But it's Veronica's internal struggle between forgiveness and vindictiveness, and what standard she holds people to. You know, she, like our audience, is fairly judgmental. It's tough for her to let things go, it's tough for her to forgive. She's very eye-for-an-eye. And certainly, that episode is largely about cutting people some slack, saying we all make mistakes, but at the end of the say, who can you count on? For better or worse, who is going to stand by you, and can you give them a love that's more unconditional? CB: Right. Now, I think the other main criticism about the rape storyline is the university's response to the rapes -- I think people thought that the university really didn't care, and they worried about what kind of message that sent. RT: Hmm. I guess I checked out...I haven't heard that one before. Is the idea that in reality the university would do more? CB: Yeah, I think so. I know we saw Take Back The Night in the last episode... RT: ...and there was the rally in the first episode as well. And the Safe Ride Home program, and we hear that dorm floors are no longer coed. But the big demand is that they shut down the fraternity houses. It feels to me like one of those arguments of, okay, we install cameras everywhere, there are security guards everywhere, and then...where's the show? What does Veronica do? CB: Part of the reason I ask is that I speculated that the reaction on a lot of college campuses would be something like we saw. I think the level of rape awareness is shockingly low on a lot of campuses, and I thought the frat boys' depiction was realistic too.
RT: Yeah, you know, when I went to the University of Texas, it was the thick of the anti-apartheid movement, and we had a shantytown built on the campus quad. The one time I've been arrested in my life was at an anti-apartheid demonstration. And if you walked through Greek Row, there was a big mocking billboard that had been put up in one of the frat houses that said "Freeze Nelson Mandela." And that sort of thing...that's what I'm interested in covering. I'm not interested in covering the nice frat boys who do their homework and treat women well. That's not story fodder in a noir universe. And just to back up, to get this out, because I don't think I said this earlier. I actually think I sort of bungled the question of why a rape storyline and why it felt like it was applicable. To me it just seems like the quintessential freshman-girl-in-college storyline; that feels very real to me. The fact that it was ongoing -- it gave it a different set of rules than we had in the first two seasons, where a murder happened, and you didn't feel the sense of peril. It wasn't like we created someone who was going to strike again. I wanted that sense of urgency: if Veronica doesn't solve it now, there could be more victims. So in addition to giving it -- I don't mean this word to sound flippant, but [the freshman girl's perfect] boogeyman or monster, a serial rapist who drugs girls -- I'm constantly searching for what is going to affect Veronica, what can Veronica dial into, what can sustain a multi-episode arc. And by the way, I want to make something clear -- I'm not backing off the story. I'm proud of these first nine episodes. I don't think there's any falloff. In any season, there are episodes I adore, and episodes that I don't adore, and episodes that I dislike, but I think our batting average is as strong or stronger than ever. I'm remarkably proud of this season. Our worst episodes are still, to me, Season 1. That season has been deified in this strange way. The thing I will give Season 1 is that the big mysteries worked better. But episode by episode, I like our batting average better than ever. CB: Yeah, I really thought these last four were awesome. RT: You know, sometimes I disagree with the fans -- "President Evil" was one of my least favorite this year, and I sort of cringed when it came out, and strangely, the audience kind of responded to it. CB: [laughs] I agreed with you on that one.
RT: But I thought we had a really good streak with [Episodes] 6 through 9. CB: So just to follow up about the serial-rapist idea: you're saying that was a way of bringing a prevalent idea, in terms of college freshman girls getting raped, and making it more urgent and accessible by having one culprit? RT: Yeah, I mean, there were a variety of reasons for it. The Duke lacrosse scandal certainly inspired the idea -- it dominated conversation around the writers' room for a while. And then it just seemed like, for a college girl, what is the scary thing, what is the real-world thing that could happen to you, and the idea that you go out and get dosed and you wake up and you've been raped, it seemed personal to Veronica, it seemed topical for a college situation. CB: So let's talk about the fan reaction on the internet in general. My sense is that, overall, while it's not as overwhelmingly positive as it was in Season 1, people are still pretty well behind the show. What are your thoughts overall on the significance of fan reaction, and how do you decide what feedback is valuable and what's to be ignored? RT: Well, I haven't really read much since a couple [of] episodes in this year. I have a vague sense that there's a vocal contingent who isn't pleased with where things have gone, but my internal barometer of how good the show is is the thing that's most important to me. I've said this before: in fact, in Season 1 and even well into Season 2, when things were sort of glowing, the joke that Dan and I had was, "Could someone set the timer on the backlash?" Because people fall in love with the show for certain elements, and once you leave those elements, they feel betrayed. While I don't read the fan boards, I still get every press clipping put on my desk, and honest to God, I've only had two bad reviews this year, including the Gillian Flynn one. And in fact, the other one was sent by a friend of mine who was just excited to see my name in the paper, and that one liked the show but listed problems in Season 3 that had to be fixed. So I think that one you'd grade out at a B-minus. So you know, I would love still to be basking in the warm pool of fan adoration, but I feel strongly that most of the fans still adore the show, and I'm very confident that I do, that I still think it's as good as ever. CB: So, on the subject of fanbases. When we talked two years ago, the relationship between Logan and Veronica was just starting to thaw, but nothing romantic had happened yet. Now, they've been all over the place -- sometimes torrid, sometimes hateful, sometimes even functional. But wherever their relationship happens to be, they have a very vocal fanbase. Does that affect anything you do?
RT: Not a thing. I have no idea what the fans think of the Logan/Veronica journey this season. I mean, I kind of have it vaguely mapped out in my head. The thing that I've said is that it's going to be a rocky ride -- I want it to feel like the real world. I want it to feel like...[with] somebody you're incredibly drawn to, there are ups and downs and peaks and valleys, particularly with two characters that are so tough on themselves and tough on each other, they're kindred in so many ways, but are also volatile. I mean, I'm enjoying it. It will continue to be bumpy -- I think it would be a boring show and hard to believe if we played a fairy-tale romance, and yet I think it would cheat people who see the attraction, the chemistry between the two, if we didn't pay it off at times. So that's kind of my theory going into it, at least. CB: Sure, but going at that question from a slightly different angle, just knowing how popular they are, are there certain dramatic lines you wouldn't cross? I mean, obviously, just from a character standpoint, Logan wouldn't turn around and rape Veronica -- it wouldn't be believable. RT: Right. Are there lines I wouldn't cross? I suppose. The problem, and I think I have this problem a lot, is that I'm willing to not protect characters in the way that other shows are so careful to do. I feel like it lands in predictable drama -- as an example, [in] one of the episodes I wrote for Dawson's Creek, the story is that a football player at the high school is telling people that he nailed Joey. And when it was first conceived, the story I was arguing for was to have Joey rip him to shreds, and my bosses at that point said, "Oh, no no no, that's so unlikable. You can't do that -- people won't forgive Joey." And I remember I hated that at the time, because the idea felt real to me, it felt honest, it felt possible, and yet...what I'm suggesting is that maybe these people are right -- that heroes on television have to be less flawed than the rest of us. But it's a depressing thought if that's the case, and it's not the sort of television that I gravitate to. I suppose, at the end of the day, I feel like I'm more forgiving of the characters' flaws and errors than the fanbase. They hold them up to a higher ideal. Now Veronica, in my mind, can't win; every week, she pours herself into helping someone out, devotes all of her energy, and people complain about her meanness. CB: Well, let's talk about that a little more, since that was my question anyway. You said earlier that that's one of the most bothersome things you hear -- that Veronica is too mean and nasty. Why do you feel that way?
RT: Why does it bother me? Because I think it's a fictional snowball rolled down a hill and has no merit to it. Because I think that Veronica hasn't changed from Season 1, and certainly hasn't grown any meaner. It's like she keeps all the things that I think make her interesting. I think there are forty other network shows if you want a female lead who's a sweet nice choice, but people fell in love with Veronica when she was flawed and made bad choices and was vindictive and snarky and tough and unforgiving, and she continues to have problems with all those issues -- no greater, no less. So I'm saying I haven't changed -- the audience has. You know, a critic from New Jersey who is very kind to the show actually called me and said, "What are you doing with Veronica? Is there a reason you're writing her so mean? I just watched this scene, and this pizza boy who has so much admiration for her, she treated him like something she scraped off her shoe!" And I'm like, "Really? Are we watching the same show?" CB: I have to admit that I wrote almost that exact line in my recap. RT: I...I don't get it. I'll watch that scene, and if anything, she's deflecting praise. She's getting down to business. That doesn't feel like Veronica different from Season 1. CB: That's interesting. I have given that whole idea some thought. I think maybe the difference is that, in Season 1, we saw so much more on-screen evidence of why Veronica was so raw. The 09ers were such a constant reminder that it was her against the world. Now the world seems less cruel to her, at least on the surface, so maybe her attitude seems a little less justified. RT: I wouldn't agree that that math works out, though. I don't think that the things that are ingrained in us change. I would love to sit and watch that scene with you, because I think she's maybe brusque and in a hurry at worst, but something she scraped off her shoe? That's what I mean when I say it's a snowball -- it's people looking, searching out an example of meanness. I'm actually dealing with a cut right now where Veronica's in a vulnerable position, and a little girl asks her a question, and [Veronica's] a hair sharp with her. And I like that line reading, I think it's the right note to play, I think it's what Veronica Mars is. I will hear about how she was mean to the little girl, and it drives me fucking nuts that that's even entering my mind now. Because for me, it's a slow evolution -- [in] Scene 1 of the pilot [the originally shot pilot, not the aired pilot -- CB], Veronica says she's never getting married and now people are having trouble with her having trust issues with Logan? She spends her formative years taking pictures through motel windows of people philandering -- it's hard for her to get into a monogamous relationship.
CB: Yeah. I've actually liked the Logan/Veronica relationship this season. I knew it was unlikely to last, but they've had some nice functional moments. RT: Yeah, and I could easily see...the winds could change, if we go five seasons. In my mind, is there a epic journey for these two characters? Do I feel, personally, that they have a future in store? Yes, unless something comes along...that isn't set in stone, but I recognize, watching the two of them on screen, that they're good together, and they are certainly written in a way in which, if they could ever solve their dilemmas and their hang-ups, you could see them being an amazing couple. But dramatically, it's not interesting for me for it to be an easy road, or for there to be easy problems to overcome. I'm interested in the dilemmas and problems. At this point, Rob and I discuss the gray morality and the ins and outs of certain upcoming plotlines. I'm not at liberty to reveal them until they've aired, but it's really good stuff, so I will make that part of the interview available in a future recap. RT: The thing is, though, we're not losing audience. As I said, I'm pleased with the quality of the show. I know that people have so much invested in the characters, that the decisions I make, whether it's to keep Logan and Veronica together or break them up, affect people. They will react either pro or con. But you gotta keep following your own gut about what is interesting, what you enjoy seeing on screen. And absolutely, there have been mistakes and things I regret, but I would say I regret [most] in Season 1, although I chalk a lot of that up to learning the show, myself. I know when we're at our best, and it's not when people are pulling guns. I mean, clearly the Dean O'Dell murder is a gun murder, and from time to time, the guns are necessary. But smart and edgy is one thing, and campy is another. When I feel we're campy, I feel we're failing...like with the E-string strangler. When we have a B-story serial killer, with girls in peril, tackling the killer...I think those should be special occasions. I don't think we can do that in our standard B stories; at least with our A stories we've built to it. I don't regret the action-thriller sequences in "Spit And Eggs" because I think we earned them. The E-string strangler gives me douche chills when I think about it. And you know, we didn't know what the show was, what can our show handle, what do we do well.
CB: So let's talk about the ratings. You had a big spike in the last episode. What are you doing to try to parlay that into continued higher ratings? RT: Well, I'll tell you honestly -- it's a battle. The CW -- they've told their other shows, the way they're promoting the network is to promote Gilmore Girls, Top Model, Beauty And The Geek, and the network as a whole. So our show isn't alone in this, but we don't really get marketing dollars, so what are we doing? We're negotiating to pay for some promotion out of our own show budget, which is a drag, because it's taking money off the screen. We're negotiating with websites, putting ads up on things we think are very targeted. Some good news about losing the two episodes is that, originally, we were scheduled to premiere [the second arc] on the night of the two-hour American Idol launch. If there's any silver lining, it's that that would have killed us, you know? So now we're actually a week later, and I think there's even a bonus....this is not a good episode, so I regret it's our highest-rated ever, but "Return Of The Kane" came on Election Night, which was being covered on every network except ours, and we got this incredible spike. And on the 23rd, there's a State Of The Union Address, so I'll bet we do a good number again. At least that's the hope. So what are we doing to promote our show? We're scheduling ourselves against the State of the Union. We're counterprogramming. No, I'm really excited about the two episodes, but...I was really excited about "My Big Fat Greek Rush Week" this year and I felt like it kind of got a lukewarm reaction, so...what I think is great about the show is not necessarily what other people think. But honestly, there's not a lot of promotion -- we're doing our best to cobble some stuff together. Our executive producers kind of handle that stuff for us -- they do their best to beat up the network, and they try to find targeted areas where we can get the most bang for our buck. And there were very different rules for product placement when we were on UPN, and we need that money. You've seen a few of them -- the Saturn this year, the Chili's booth that was put up...Oh! I've got a cool spoiler for you! CB: Go ahead! RT: A friend of Dan's and John Enbom's and mine, Paul Rudd, has signed on to do Episode 17.
CB: No way! RT: Yeah, and it's going to be such a perfect role for him. He's gonna do it in a British accent, and play the singer/co-songwriter of a band that was big in the mid-'90s, and now he's out on the road solo, and sort of self-loathing. Here, Rob tells me more about the plot, but asks me not to reveal it. RT: It's not written yet, but John Enbom is a really funny writer and Paul is great, so I'm really excited about that. It'll be the second of our stand-alone episodes. CB: Awesome. Love Paul Rudd. So let's talk about the cast changes. You've got Chris Lowell and Julie Gonzalo this year. What were your goals and thinking behind creating Piz and Parker? RT: You know, with Piz, I wanted the anti-Logan, and with Parker, I wanted the anti-Mac. That was sort of the thinking going into it. And it's more than an anti-Logan; it's not another moody rich boy in Veronica's life. I wanted sort of a fun, too-many-words-in-his-mouth character that doesn't have down energy, but has fun energy. Rather than a dour countenance, a sweet countenance. I've really been happy with the cast this year. CB: So, the opening credits. Did you revamp them in the spirit of making a fresh start? RT: Yeah, a fresh start, but also, it's closer to what I always wanted the credits to be. It's a little tricky, because I always wanted moody, noir main titles...it always felt like, in the first two seasons, the main titles were too peppy for the show. And so, with Veronica going to college, clearly we had to change the main titles, because they were so high-school, with the notebook and all of that, and I'm not a big fan of the cut-together clips main titles. That's always been a little bit of a sore spot for me, and Entertainment Weekly did a thing a long time ago that rated shows' main titles that gave us an A for the song and a C-minus for the actual titles, which I will tell you that I agreed with absolutely. And everyone on the show is so married to that song, we think of it as our song. So we thought, it's not a particularly moody song, can we try to get it closer to what we want...in my mind, it's not a home run, but I like it better. I don't know that we will ever be successful in marrying noir and that song. However, the other thing is, you go on a big network, you get maybe a hundred thousand dollars to do a main title, and we're doing one for twenty-five thousand. I watch those HBO main titles and it's like a wet dream, like the Six Feet Under titles. It's like, how much money did you spend on that? We don't spend that much on an episode. So certainly, I'm still not entirely satisfied, but I like the shift, and thinking that we're going to have a new audience, I wanted to feel a little more adult.
CB: Now, I think it's pretty well known that because of budget and, at least in Tina Majorino's case, scheduling considerations, you don't get to use the regulars as much as you'd like. How much of the old recurring characters are we going to see through the rest of the season? RT: Actually...the original last mystery was supposed to be Mac-centric. And so we saved a lot of her episodes. And we had a gap where Piz wasn't seen for a while, so we have a lot of them for the final episodes -- in fact, Tina's in all of the last five episodes. Parker is somebody we've used more, so she's only in two, but I think we've got Piz and Wallace in all of our final ones. So we did a pretty good job of spacing those out -- I think we've got Dick for all of them as well. CB: Let's talk about Keith for a minute. It feels like his plotlines haven't really been integrated into what everyone else is doing. However, since he and the Dean had become friends, are we going to see him pulled in? RT: Yeah, I'll say that Keith, in this middle mystery, is going to feel much more involved. The rape mystery was a Veronica mystery, and Keith didn't have a part in that. Who killed Dean O'Dell is intentionally a Veronica/Keith mystery -- in every episode, you see both of them working on that case. CB: Speaking of Keith's earlier storylines, I have to ask -- is Kendall supposed to be dead? RT: She's dead until she's not dead. I mean yes, in my mind, she's dead, but if a writer came in and pitched an amazing reason she might be alive, I'd consider it. The other thing I will say is that the final mystery was going to have a bit more of a tie-back to that initial mystery, but I won't be able to execute that now, with dropping the big mystery and losing an episode. But yeah, in my mind, she's in a shallow grave in the desert. But until you see the body on this show...who knows. CB: So let's talk about the fact that the last five episodes are going to be stand-alones. RT: Yes. But I will say this -- we didn't find out about [the episode order being only twenty as opposed to twenty-two] until we had only three episodes left in the Dean O'Dell mystery, and it forced us to do all that storytelling in two. We had to drop some Dean O'Dell beats that I wanted to play. There's this one scene that, certainly, I can explain away, but I try to be good about paying off things that are brought up. Well, I should rephrase that -- I don't pay off red herrings, but I try to pay off the things that actually do lead to the end result. We'll shine a spotlight on a character's situation and raise the possibility that he did it, but if he didn't, I don't go back and tell the rest of his story. We did set up this one thing in the middle mystery that I wasn't able to pay off, because I lost an episode. So I'm a little bummed about that, and I think fans will notice. At the end of the day, I can explain it, but I feel bad about doing a setup with no payoff.
CB: I've heard that, should you come back for a fourth season, you're considering going to the stand-alone episodes permanently. RT: It really is, for the network and for us, a trial balloon. It's going to be dictated by ratings and response. I mean, I'll write the show either way. We just want to survive and get to make more. So if the fans respond to this...the thing we always have to remember is that the posters on Television Without Pity are not the majority of our audience. They're the great part of our audience -- I mean, they may represent 5% of our audience, but we spend 30% of our time thinking about them. But -- and I'm now just talking about television in general, most people aren't hardcore -- they watch, they flip channels and find what's on, and if it's appealing to them, they stay and watch it. And we see that our numbers are going up, or they chart out better than they have in the past in terms of retention or growth, and if the diehards don't revolt, then I think there would be a chance that we would go to all stand-alones. And when I say all stand-alones, it's not like the Veronica Mars universe begins and ends with each episode. All the interpersonal storylines would continue, there would be bits and pieces of things that carry over from episode to episode, but it wouldn't arc out over either a ten-episode mystery or a twenty-two episode mystery. We would try to say, okay, if you come to Veronica Mars, you get the whole show -- if you're a random viewer, you don't have to have watched the six episodes -- you can tune in this week and know what's going on. Like Rockford Files or something, you know? CB: What bothers me about stand-alones on other shows is that they can be formulaic in what seems like a very lazy way. RT: Right, and the show will never be just about the mystery we solve this week. That will never happen. I'm as or more interested in Veronica's personal growth and social journey than I am in who stole the suitcase this week. CB: Yeah. Okay -- we've talked about your writing and showrunning roles, but you've also put on the director's hat a couple of times now. How does directing enhance the storytelling you want to do as a writer, and what do you do personally, as a director, to improve the audience's experience? Also, what have you learned about directing? RT: You know, I've learned some things that I would have predicted going in. The nice thing when I direct and I go into the editing room afterward is that there aren't moments or performance that I'm missing. If the director's directing and I'm not on set, I can't say, "Okay, let's get one more take, I need this line to be delivered dry." When I get back to the editing room, I have all the performances I want. But certainly, I'll watch Michael Fields or Harry Winer, I'll watch the way they make shots, and the way the camera moves and the reveals and the way people land on marks, and I'll think, "Oh shit, Rob! You don't think like that." So I sort of tell myself, "Well, Cameron Crowe doesn't either, but he hires people who do." And...there are a lot of upsides to my directing. I get to hang out with the crew for two or three weeks, which is a really good thing because I'm so disconnected from them otherwise -- I'm down there a few days a season. I get to relearn everybody's names, and I like getting to know them better, and I think they like having a face to put to me -- that part of it's valuable to me. It's interesting -- this particular time...I don't know whether I would say I preferred "Donut Run" or "Spit And Eggs" -- I don't know which one I would say is the better episode, but I think I directed the first one better, in the sense...I'm proud of directorial moments in that one. We had a series of things that took my attention away from the prep of "Spit And Eggs" -- scripts coming in, cuts coming in, crisis crisis crisis, and I feel like my shotmaking was better the first time out.
CB: I would agree with you there. The directorial choices added a lot to "Donut Run." RT: I really love the final moments of Duncan driving away with Vinnie Vanlowe, and I felt like those touches were better. One of the reasons I directed "Spit And Eggs" is that I wanted to experience directing action. I wanted to learn it by doing it. And there are moments that I'm proud of -- Mercer's monologue in the room, I like how it's performed and I like how it's shot. So there were moments in that episode that I thought were nice touches, but I didn't think it had as much visual flair. CB: I loved that monologue, because you basically convincingly sold his entire motivation in one speech. RT: Yeah. And the tricky thing about our show [is that] there are lots of detective cases where you get to meet the bad guy, see him wringing his hands -- it's cat and mouse, and you know who the bad guy is, and it's the cop catching him -- you get those moments of understanding the bad guy's motivation. In a show like ours, where it's a whodunit, the only time you get to do that is after the fact. So you're forced into those scenes that you don't know how to get around -- and I liked the finale of Beaver on the rooftop -- but you are forced into those moments of explaining the case while the killer is holding the weapon. The reason you end up with that is that, in a whodunit, there's no other place to put it. So you try to find the least cheesy way of getting that out, you try to find the one that you think is palatable or interesting, in a way that doesn't make you think, "Wow! The rapist is talking out loud to an unconscious body!" So yeah, I liked that moment because I thought it was the right length. It didn't drag on and on, and he didn't explain all the cases; he summarized it in a way that I thought was cool, and really devilishly performed. CB: Yeah. I thought Ryan Devlin was really great. RT: By the way, here's a fun fact I don't think I've told anyone. The Moe character, before scheduling conflicts made it impossible, was supposed to be Michael Cera. CB: Ah! A lot of posters wondered about that. RT: I don't believe I've ever come out and confirmed it. CB: That would have been great. Even in the one episode he did, his character seemed just a little off. RT: But that kid is really amazing. I can't really say enough about him. CB: So as I understand it, before the decision was made to bring back Veronica Mars for a third season, you were offered the showrunning position on Friday Night Lights. That must have been very gratifying. Were you tempted to take it?
RT: Very. I really liked the pilot, and it was set in my hometown of Austin. NBC told me that if I accepted, they would definitely pick it up. I was very torn, and I went to the network and asked if they could guarantee that Veronica Mars was going to be renewed. They said they couldn't, but that they could tell me that if I left, it definitely wouldn't come back. Renewal felt to me about a 70% shot, so Friday Night Lights was the bird in hand, and if it had been some show I was only moderately interested in or I didn't think was cool...I really loved the way it looked. I haven't watched it all year, kinda because it's a little painful, but I've been TiVoing it, and I finally watched a couple of episodes. I think it's interesting the way it's shot and the way it's acted, so that's a regret, but Jason Katims is doing a great job with it. CB: Speaking of life beyond Veronica Mars, what do you want to do when the show's over, whenever that may be? RT: You know, I love television. I love the rhythm of it, I love writing something and seeing it on the air, I love going to work each day; four years and a development deal, it was miserable. In a way, sometimes a month of that sounds really good, just sitting at home doodling on your pilot script would be nice, as opposed to having scripts in production, scripts in post-production, breaking episodes -- it's a crazy job, but there's no better job in show business. I get pretty much final say on script and cut and cast and music, and I really dig what I do. I often get really frustrated, and there are good days and bad days, but overall, there isn't anything I would want to trade it for. Certainly even if you offered me the same amount of money to be a feature writer and work a fifth or a tenth of the hours that I work now, I wouldn't trade it. Twenty-two hours of produced material on air as opposed to working all year and hoping -- I mean, you can make a good living as a feature writer without ever getting anything made. So I certainly dig movies and would love to have my name on a movie that I thought was great, but I think I'm more naturally a television writer. CB: And as far as TV goes, is there any type of story or a particular genre you'd like to explore ? RT: I have a pilot out right now; I wrote it for Fox, and they seem kind of lukewarm on it right now. It's kind of a return to Cupid: it's a romantic comedy. Think Love, Actually in a hotel. I'm doing the second pass for Fox this weekend. I'll turn it in on Monday and probably hear something very soon after that. I don't know whether it will go or not. This is the position I was in last year: I want a show on the air. It's like, writing a pilot is hedging my bets. I don't know if Veronica Mars will be back. There were times in the first nine episodes when I felt certain it wouldn't, but the uptick and the reaction to the finale -- I think we finished strong, and I think it's looking back up. In comparative terms -- looking at the ratings for the other shows on the CW -- I think we have a strong shot at returning. But for me personally, I have to have a show on the air. I don't ever want to have to go back to being that writer at home trying to get a show on the air. It's a drag. There tend to be showrunning positions available every May, and the good news for me is that if Veronica Mars didn't come back, I'm sure I would be offered things. However, they wouldn't be my things, and that would really bum me out. But I would certainly go run someone else's show before I would stay at home.
CB: That's all I've got for you, Rob. Thanks a lot for talking to me. RT: Thanks, John. And that's it. Hopefully we'll talk in another two years, huh?