State of the #SHEA part 12: The Necessity of "Catapulting"

SHOUTOUT TO ALL MY COMMENTERS! It’s so gratifying to see my posts serving as launching pads for interesting thoughts, theories, questions. I can’t thank you all enough!

I don’t recall the name behind the Tweet, but something that went up on the TGD hashtag last Monday night after the broadcast made me laugh… which is pretty noteworthy, considering how stricken many of us felt by the end of “Fixation”.

The Tweet said something to the effect of I see all these people complaining about wanting to see more medical drama and less about (Shaun’s) love life… all I can think is that if you aren’t able to handle the eight minutes a week that the show devotes to the doctors’ personal lives, maybe you’re watching the wrong show.

Amen to that, and pardon me while I pull on my producer cap for a minute… because while the duties of a producer vary widely, depending on the type of production being done and the seniority level at hand, producers almost always have to keep an eye on the proverbial clock.

If you’ve been reading State of the #SHEA since I started it in January, you know I’ve been discussing the time breakout of certain TGD episodes as they relate to advancing Shaun’s relationships with both Lea and Carly. It’s a very delicate dance when it comes to that “eight minutes a week” (which is probably closer to 12 or 14 depending on what’s going on, but you get the idea). It’s why characters like Dr. Andrews and Dr. Lim are sometimes absent from the canvas for entire episodes despite being part of the (full time?) cast. It’s why Morgan’s R.A. issues aren’t front and center with every operation with which she’s involved (yet). It’s why we haven’t seen Glassman’s new wife Debbie since 3 x 09 “Incomplete”, and why we may not see Carly for the remainder of the season (assuming she remains a part of TGD at all). Those 12 to 14 minutes have to be metered out so that every character appearance, camera shot, and spoken word has maximum impact. The amount of minutes in an episodic, scripted TV drama are pretty finite from week to week.

I’ve been thinking about that with regards to the Shaun/Carly/Lea arc this season, and now that we’re reaching the season’s end I’m especially mindful of how ambitious this arc truly is.

Essentially, this arc breaks down into 3 parts:

1)   The development of Shaun and Carly’s relationship (Episodes 3x1 “Disaster” through 3x10 “Friends and Family”)

2)   The conflict that Shaun and Lea’s relationship creates within Shaun’s relationship with Carly (Episodes 3x11 “Fractured” through 3x15 “Unsaid”)

3)   The re-definition of Shaun and Lea’s relationship (Episodes 3x16 “Autopsy” through the forthcoming 3x20, which was announced this week to be titled “I Love You”)

So, say Shaun’s portion of the “personal stories” in an episode comes to around 6 minutes max (with “Friends and Family” being a very notable exception to that rule this season). If you do the math, that means the writers had about an hour’s worth of minutes to A) establish Shaun and Carly’s relationship, B) build it through a litany of early peaks and valleys regarding physical affection, only to C) have Lea be the one Shaun seeks, and receives, in the dark hours surrounding his final confrontations with his father.

The writers then got about half that time (30 minutes over 5 episodes) to D) deal with the fallout from Wyoming and Shaun’s renewed commitment to Carly (including the consummation of that relationship and a bit of “smooth sailing” time),  E) develop trouble-in-paradise as Carly’s jealousy of Lea grows (which also requires time for Lea to re-assert herself on the storytelling canvas), F) find a way for Carly’s jealousy to be justified, which causes her to not only break it off with Shaun, but also cue him towards Lea.

Which then leaves the writers with approximately another 30 minutes to G) have Shaun come to terms with his true feelings and confess them to Lea, H) have both Shaun and Lea deal with the fallout of their “confession” conversation, and what that does and doesn’t mean for their relationship going forward… culminating in I) whatever the end-of-season goal for #Shea happens to be. (Obviously, with three episodes still to air as I write this, there’s a hot mess of unknowns on this last bend of the arc.)

That’s an incredible amount of story to get through—mostly via scenes lasting no more than 2 or 3 minutes—in a year’s worth of medical drama. And that’s not even factoring in the need for all this to be done at a pace and style that makes sense for an autistic lead character! Seems like a first-of-its-kind situation to me… especially in a medium where diversity of any kind has been slow to come by, let alone the kind that involves disabilities.

How on earth have the TGD writers managed to keep pace? The term I’ve coined for it is The Catapult… a minute or less of dialogue and/or action that propels the plot far beyond what is typically covered in that amount of time. The Catapult has probably been utilized in all TGD story arcs at one time or another, but for our purposes—surprise!—I’m honing in on Shaun and Lea.

Catapult #1: After the first nine episodes of season 3 kept Lea’s screen presence to a minimum, “Friends and Family” stirred the pot not only with the subject matter, but Shaun’s choosing of Lea over Carly to join him and Glassman in Wyoming. The majority of the episode took moments from scenes here and there to re-introduce Shaun and Lea’s friendship—which was very welcome all by itself—but The Catapult came when Lea rushed to soothe Shaun during his meltdown. 

In that final 45 seconds of the episode we saw Shaun and Lea reach a “new level of intimacy” all their own; a very unique kind that was innocent and blameless, yet still shook Carly’s faith to a point where Lea unwittingly went from being roommate and confidante to Other Woman Who Has To Leave Her Own Apartment. Oh, and Shaun swiftly transitioned from being torn about both women to making very definitive choices (agreeing to kick Lea out, telling Carly he loved her, losing his virginity to her in the following episode). All that… as the result of 45 seconds of gripping, dialogue-free emotion.

Catapult #2: Five episodes later, the time had come for Carly to break up with Shaun because of Lea. But how could that come about when a) Shaun appeared unaware of his feelings, b) Lea appeared unaware of her feelings, and c) Carly appeared to be feeling more certain that all was well? 

Maybe we should just call this Catapult The Magic of Karaoke. For it took just over 30 seconds of Shaun and Lea laughing, dancing, and slo-mo mic-sharing together to get the message across to a crestfallen Carly that the two of them were in love and needed to be together—even if they didn’t fully realize it themselves.

The more I think about it, the more I’m utterly impressed with the way Sal Calleros and Thomas L. Moran (the writers of “Unsaid”) pulled that off. They found a plausible situation where Shaun and Lea could run into each other with their respective dates (Shaun might not normally end up in a large, crowded bar, but he was there to celebrate the mute child’s surgical breakthrough.) They ramped up the tension a hair when Lea crashed Shaun and Carly’s PDA attempt. They added an element to the sequence which hearkens back to Shaun and Lea’s unforgettable road trip (the karaoke). And through it, the created a space where Shaun and Lea could again, innocently and blamelessly (like with Catapult #1), shake poor Carly to the core with the realization that Shaun was with the wrong woman. And that SHE’D have to be the one to tell him. They did all that in just over 30 seconds.

Catapult #3 was, in some ways, maybe the most challenging yet—and the first one to engage dialogue over action. I may pull it out of Catapult contention by season’s end, depending on what happens from here… but to me, for now, “Shaun, you’re autistic… you can’t ‘fix’ that!” qualifies. Not because it sounded cruel (to the point of uncharacteristic) coming out of Lea’s mouth, but because that sentence instantly propelled the twosome to a point of estrangement. When Lea found herself walking wordlessly out of the apartment at the conclusion of “Autopsy,” there was still quite a bit of oh-God-where-do-they-go-from-here in the air. Shaun took that uncertainty and fueled it into the duration of the “Fixation” episode. Lea took that uncertainty, and tried to roll with whatever came next—remember that during the apartment scene in “Fixation”, she described their confession conversation as “having left things in a weird place”. But when Shaun kept pressing forward without listening, kept insisting without awareness, Lea knew exactly where “things” needed to go, and she took them there—with just seven words. 

Now, was this the right thing to do from a scripting standpoint? That’s what I ask myself every time I’ve seen the character of Lea further vilified this week on social media. Is it possible that, in the show’s interest/need to get these two to the rock-bottom “Heartbreak” of Monday’s episode… they might have taken things too far? Which is to say that IF something were to happen before season’s end that, yes, “catapulted” Shaun and Lea in some other (daresay, positive) fashion… can viewers still be enticed to jump aboard the good ‘ship #SHEA and put the closing scenes of “Fixation” into perspective?

I certainly hope so, but as I said earlier, much of this storyline is uncharted territory in prime-time TV. Catapult moments have been deeply effective for #Shea, but the risk for such a moment over-shooting its mark is always there. Conventional wisdom with this show is to trust the writers, and trust the process. Heading into these final three episodes of the season—the latter two apparently punctuated by a MAJOR event (see Freddie Highmore’s recent interview)—I plan to keep my trust intact.

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WISH LIST FOR “HEARTBREAK”

I’ll be honest—I kind of want this episode over with already because the impatience demons are doing tap dances in my brain with a collective eagerness to jump to the 2-part season finale. Plus, I think three weeks in a row of Shaun on the low end of love is wearing ALL of us down. But if you read what I wrote up there about The Catapult, you know every moment of this show counts… especially this late in the season! So here are some things that I’m hoping to see, in some capacity, in “Heartbreak”:

*      Lea in reactionary mode. Assuming she’s in this episode at all, which is by no means guaranteed… I want to see how Lea’s doing in the aftermath of “Fixation”. We’ve talked a lot on this blog (and in the comments) about the need for Lea’s side of things to be better represented; while I don’t expect that to happen overnight, I’d appreciate a scene. Any scene. By herself, or in conversation with someone that isn’t Shaun, or in a music montage at the end of the episode with the lyrics doing a lot of the work… seriously, I’m not picky.

*      Claire in counsel mode. We know she’s visiting Shaun at the apartment; what I’m hoping is that she’s got more to say than another spin on what she said last week about accepting things and moving on. (Offering some insight to Lea’s potential POV would be a nice alternative.) While I’d obviously enjoy her paying Lea a work-break visit as well, she apparently has more going on with Dash this week… so I think her personal time on this episode is already maxed out.

*      Glassman and Lea. They’re overdue for another scene together. I don’t know that they’ll get the kind I’m hoping for until the two-part finale, but one possible reaction Lea could deliver this week—based on her track record—is an attempt to give two-weeks notice at St. B. I say attempt because if she does this, I presume we’d see her doing so in Glassman’s presence. I also presume she wouldn’t actually go through with it. But a minute or so of preliminary conversation between them could be enough to tip Glassman (and us) off as to her state of mind.

        *      One thing I admittedly DON’T wish for this week, for once, is Shaun and Lea trying to talk to each other. It would appear that Shaun is done “fixing” (for lack of a better word) and is just trying to get through the day in “Heartbreak”… if Lea’s feeling remorseful, I hope she’s able to keep it to herself for now.

If you’ve got your own wish list for “Heartbreak”, or any other thoughts to share… jump into the comments, or tag me on Twitter @KLBSt8ofSk8).