It's pilot season! Or it was, about a month ago. Sorry, I'm not on the ball. Anyway, this doesn't mean it's the season for flying people. Or the yoga-like exercise. Or the guy who killed Jesus. Just so you know. Also, as a fair warning, most of what I'm about to say comes from Wikipedia, TVTropes, and my own conjecture of how the world should run. So it'll be mostly wrong. As a sidenote, I probably should have put that warning up when I first started this blog, because I make a lot of assumptions based on how I'd do things or common sense, most of which gets thrown out in Hollywood.
Pilot season actually starts way back nearer to the beginning of the year, but then it's only for TV executives. Basically, someone has a meeting with the executive and pitches a show. "I have this great idea about ..." and the executive will say "that's terrible!" In which case the pitcher will either give up or go find a different executive to bug. Sometimes the executive will make some changes and it'll go from there, and sometimes no changes will need to happen. Then what happens is the pitcher gets some money to shoot an episode, called the Pilot. It's an opportunity to see how actor fit into the show, how characters fit into the show, but mainly it's a chance to see if the concept of the show actually works. And typically, they only have 20 minutes (for a half hour show), 40 minutes (for an hour long show), or twice those lengths if the network is generous and lets them double the time.
After the pilot is shot, the executive, pitcher, and what I can only assume are a room full of other people all watch it to see how it went. Generally it'll only be a rough cut. Special effects might not be filled in, or the sound might not be redubbed in studio. The room full of people want to see how the concept works.
If it doesn't, the pitcher might give up entirely, and try to come up with a different show. They might take it around to other networks (although I'm not sure if they can actually take the film around, since it was paid for by the one network). If the show does work, they might reshoot the pilot with a different cast, or with one or two added (or subtracted characters), or they may simply polish up what they already have. For instance, Castle's original pilot didn't have Detective Ryan in it. He was only added when the pilot was reshot, because they show ran short. And frankly, he's a great addition, providing a foil for Esposito.
Anyway, once the pilot is reshot, it's ready to air, and that's what happens around September or so, in what TV people call Pilot Season. It's because the reshot pilots are aired as the first episode of the TV show, and used to draw viewers into the series. So a whole bunch of them air around September and October, when TV networks are trying to get an audience for all the new shows they've agreed to finance.
Since pilots are (usually) the first show in the series (Star Trek didn't use its pilot for the first episode, but did reused the plot of it later), they come in one of two varieties. Either the Welcome to the Neighbourhood, or A Day in the Life. Both of these are my titles, and I'm going to change them as often as I want to.
In Welcome of the Neighbourhood, all the main cast are brought together by something (or someone) new. A good example for this is the show Leverage. All the leads are hired to steal something. They all meet up for the theft, then backstabbing and more thefts occur, and the show concept is explained.
In A Day in the Life, the show plops down in the middle of the action, with nothing or no one new. The concept of the show is generally shown (not explained), and the viewer might have to be a bit smarter to pick up on some subtleties. Good examples of this are The West Wing, Human Target, or Better Off Ted (if you look carefully, you'll notice none of these shows are on the air).
Most pilots take a combination of the two. Some cast members are already in place, but the main, or one of the main characters, is introduced to the rest, kicking off the series. It's good because things can be explained to the new guy(s) while also to the audience. Here's a rundown of a bunch of examples.
In Firefly, Mal,
In Friends, almost everyone is in place, but Rachel shows up and starts off a romantic plot arc with Ross that lasts the whole series.
In White Collar, the FBI team is in place, but Neal gets out of jail (and into a swanky apartment), letting them solve nifty crimes together.
In Burn Notice, everyone but Michael's in place, but they don't have a relationship with each other. Mike arriving in
The same idea happens in Royal Pains. Jill and Divya are in The Hamptons but don't know each other. Hank and Evan show up and the medical practice is on.
In
In Warehouse 13, Artie and Leena are in place, but Myka and Pete are ordered to the eponymous location and things get going.
In Castle, no one moves anywhere (all the previous examples have someone moving, usually to a different city. Sometimes to a different planet) but a crime links up Castle and Beckett, and suddenly Beckett is unable to solve crimes without Castle's input (and she's supposed to be one of the best. Um, right).
Chuck had Chuck and Morgan in place, but Chuck got a computer in his head, and then Sarah and Casey showed up to either beat it out of him or look after him (after the first episode, it wasn't so clear).
This year, I have no idea about the new shows, since I usually don't watch them until they get rave reviews, or show up on
There are advantages to either option. In Welcome to the Neighborhood, the concept of the show is easily explained to the new character(s) and through them, the audience. For instance, in the pilot of
A Day in the Life doesn't have to spend the time expositing the concept, and can therefore spend the time doing cool things (See: Human Target). It might be confusing for the audience, but networks are starting to have a bit more faith in the intelligence of their viewers (See: Lost). Better Off Ted broke with that by having its main character explain the concept directly to the camera. But it was short, and mostly funny.
The other advantage of A Day in the Life is flashbacks. Dropping the audience into the middle of the story allows the creators to show the beginning of it later. So we can get stories of how each member joined the crew. Firefly did this halfway through season 1, Human Target had this as the season 1 finale, and The West Wing had this to open season 2. A lot of shows have flashbacks, but you can't show characters together in flashbacks unless they have some sort of history (Friend skirts this by having Rachel as a part of Monica's - and thus Ross and Chandler's - life, then exiting it when she moves to a different social circle). Leverage can show quick flashbacks to each character's lives, but we don't get them together because they didn't know each other until the pilot (Although they did play with it in an episode titled The Roshamon Job).
The other thing I noticed about pilots is they try to have some romantic tension in the first episode, as if audiences will not tune in to the rest of the series unless it gets all Ross and Rachel for at least two characters right off the bat (and yes, Friends totally had this. In the first episode, Ross asked Rachel if it would be alright to ask her out). Firefly didn't really do this, but it developed it quickly in later episodes between Simon and Kaylee. Burn Notice had it (Besides, Mike and Fiona are ex's), Royal Pains had it (one of the reasons Hank stays in The Hamptons is because of Jill), Eureka hinted but didn't go overboard until later, Castle had it (but mainly in one direction. Which was hilarious). Warehouse 13 has bucked tradition and through 3 seasons has done its best to avoid any romance between the leads. To which I say "Kudos!" I'm always once to applaud non-comformity. Human Target waited until season 2 (when they finally introduced a female cast member), The West Wing hinted but waited (SPOILER ALERT - Josh and Donna - END SPOILER ALERT), and Better Off Ted had it in spades. But played it nicely.
So yeah, that's pilot season. New shows, with new people in new locations, and the start of enough new will-they-won't-they relationships to drive us all up the wall. Here's a hint,
Mostly accurate, except now a lot of the time, the studio that shoots the show isn't the network that airs it, which leads to complicated negotiations around things like DVD revenue and whether the studio can shop the show to different networks if the original network passes (or even, in the case of Buffy, Stargate and Scrubs, switching horses mid-stream).
ReplyDelete