Category: By Guests

Kathy sees CRIMINAL MINDS: “The Silencer” (8.1)

Check your rainbows and puppies at the door. Synopsis at IMDB. 

Admittedly showrunner/episode writer Erica Messer had her work cut out for her in the Season 8 opener.  In 43 minutes she had to: introduce a new character, give the character some “character,” tie her into two existing characters, write a solvable crime, show what the existing characters did on summer vacay, plant the seed for a series-long criminal arc keep existing viewers happy/interested while intriguing new viewers so the suits upstairs would be, like, WTG Criminal Minds. Yes, that was a ridiculous run-on sentence, which is kinda what this episode felt like–the run-on sentence from hell that would make your high school English teacher break out in hives.

I would love to coherently recap the actual crime our intrepid profilers “solved”, however I’d have to watch it three more times, and this ep doesn’t warrant a repeat viewing. As usual the actors were great–they always are on this show–but from a writing perspective, I found “The Silencer” difficult to follow, full of exposition, way too much dialogue for normal people (unless they have Red Bull intravenously fed through them every half hour) and an ending that was supposed to be creepy, but just wasn’t.

Maybe I’m jaded. Maybe after seven seasons I can’t help but see the formula seeping through the show. Maybe Messer was trying to cram too much into one episode, which ended up dulling the impact of this week’s criminal mind. I don’t know. I’m not ready to give up on this show…but I’m not lowering my expectations, either. And–this is important–neither should you. read article

What’s Up With Inequality?

Hey! It’s that time of the year again!

You know what time I’m talking about! The week to two weeks that every major organization tracking gender diversity in theatre/television/film creation releases their terrible statistics on how few women and people of color are making their way to the top of their profession so we can write angry blog posts about it for a week and then go back to business as usual!

read article

The Dresden Files – Another Show I Missed

by Robin Reed

I keep hearing about the book series The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. I haven’t gotten around to reading the books, but they’re on my list. Recently I stumbled on a Dresden Files TV series, that ran for one season on Sci-Fi – when it was Sci-Fi – in 2007. Set in Chicago, my home town, it is a Canadian production. I assume Toronto or  some such place is the background in most of the episodes, but they insert enough Chicago shots, the El and the skyline mostly, that it gives a flavor of the real thing. read article

SMASH V. REALITY

There is theatre, and then there are cliches and assumptions about theatre.

Certianly the single biggest achievement of Smash’s first season (and perhaps the thing we should applaud it for) has been cataloguing an astonishingly thorough collection of the latter.

As a New Yorker and a theatre artist, I thought it might be fun to debunk a few of the bigger myths Smash throws our way about theatre and it’s business: read article

Peggy Bechko: Writing Tips From One of TVWriter™’s Favorite Writers

My good friend Larry Brody, head honcho here at TVWriter™ seems to think my input on writing might be a welcome thing – so I’m happy to oblige.

I think as writers we all hear a lot of ‘tips’. How to do this, that and the other. You know, kind of nuts and bolts sort of thing. I also believe writers get a lot of that basic advice everywhere, so I think I’ll take a different direction and use broader strokes. We’re going to skip the grammar, punctuation, spelling thing and hit on other topics. I mean, English is the basic tool of communication. I hope you’ve learned it. If you haven’t, then do it. Lots of classes and information online and at local community colleges. Enough said on that subject.

So what am I going to talk about here in the way of tips? read article