With apologies to
people who prefer baseball to sitcoms. And
retroactive apologies to people who prefer sitcoms to baseball. It seems impossible to please everyone at the
same time, though Lord knows I try.
Wait. What about people who
dislike both of them? Oh my. What an impossible undertaking this is.
Yesterday I discussed baseball executives – their eyes
focused exclusively on “sabermetrically” derived efficiency standards, and, giving
no thought to the consequences, unintended and otherwise – changing the way
baseball had been played since its venerable inception.
Everyone knowing exactly what their role is; everyone
playing their predictable part in the process – gone. This was definitely different, though the
jury remains out about “better.” All I
know is – and I don’t even know this,
I am merely speculating – nobody ever went into baseball dreaming, “I want to
be the best dang left fielder, right fielder, shortstop, second and first baseman
the game of baseball has ever seen!” Yet
that’s the job – one example among many – that Dodgers Kike (pronounced, thankfully, “Keekay”) Rodriguez has been designated
to perform.
Forget iconic John Fogerty’s
“Look at me, gotta be,
centerfield.”
Baseball teams are no longer a collection of well-practiced
specialists. They are not even a
team. They are instead a 40-man roster
of interchangeable components – a radical reworking of the inherent nature of
the enterprise.
As is the following.
But before “the following”, some illuminating background.
Before my time – during the fifties and much of the sixties
– half-hour comedy scripts were written primarily by freelance, or what were
called, “outside writers.” Why so? Because the network “season order” was then thirty-nine
episodes. Miniscule writing staffs (of
maybe two writers) could not possibly crank out that much material. As a result, accomplished outside writers
were brought in and, after story meetings to develop the ideas – frequently suggested
by the outside writers themselves – the writer went home and they fashioned the
script. A week or so later, they handed
it in, and the staff took over from there, polishing the episode before
imminent production.
That’s how it worked back then. A writer – or an established team of two
writers – would write the script, the staff then making minor adjustments to
get it in shape. Frequently, because the
original effort was capably executed, or because there was minimal time to do
otherwise, the script was broadcast almost exactly as it was delivered. What we saw is what they wrote. As they say in the Bible,
“And it was good.”
… for the outside writer seeing their work broadcast almost
exactly, “As written.”
Then, sometime in the late 60’s, or so – to protect myself
from inaccuracy – series episode orders shrunk from 39 to 26, and then, to
22. With 13 or 17, respectively, less
episodes to produce, “outside writers” found a reduced “opportunity terrain”,
partly because there were 13 or 17, respectively, less episodes to produce, but
also because the show’s staff – with specialized outside assistance – could now
handle the depleted workload themselves.
“Specialized outside assistance” included myself. (And, to a greater degree, a wonderful writer
named David Lloyd.)
There was always a potential liability with “outside
writers.” They might miss the specific
tone and patois of the series, and
have Gilligan quote Kierkegaard. Maybe,
being “outside writers”, they did not know any better. Or maybe, because they were writers, they felt compelled to inject
“something different” into the proceedings, a “something different” the show’s staff
writers were then required to take out, and replace with something appropriate,
like having Gilligan quote Popeye.
To mitigate their still onerous burden of 20+ episodes,
writers like me – who, being around the show, were more familiar with what
worked – were contracted to write “multiples” of scripts, in the belief –
hopefully realized – that the finished product would arrive “closer”, leaving the
show’s writing staff substantially less to rewrite. As a “multiples” writer, I wrote nine Taxis and numerous Phyllises. Whatever I did,
the prodigious and talented David Lloyd did double.
David and I were like hybrids (who were unwilling to work on
staff) – outside writers with reliable job security.
It was evident, however, that “consolidation” was inexorably
on the march. By the time I stopped
working, scripts were almost entirely written “in-house”, by progressively
larger writing staffs, a platoon of writers, on the job full-time, who knew the
show even better than “multiples” writers.
And besides, who needs outside “multiples” writers with a lavishly paid,
platoon-sized writing staff?
And then, thankfully after my time, the inevitable occurred.
In the name of still heightened
efficiency, the scripts became “room written”, meaning writers gathered around
a table and wrote the entire script together, the writing credits assigned
randomly in a round-robin arrangement.
Can anyone say, “Pride of Authorship”?
No, actually. They can’t.
One can, however,
see the “efficiency” advantage. Back in
the fifties, a producer had to wait more than a week before being able to say,
“That’s terrible!” With everyone all in
the same room together, producers can now go “That’s terrible!” immediately, greatly
reducing the interval between “That’s terrible” and the on-the-spot replacing,
“That’s funnier.”
Yeah, but…
A “room written” script does not “Speak with one voice”; it
speaks with a dozen. Imagine a cow with
twelve individualized brands on it, triggering not just the parochial grumbling
of “Whose cow is it, anyway?” but also “It sounds, ‘Written by a
committee’.”
Hey, yeah, because it is.
I know things change.
I know things have to change. But the fun of bringing your specialized attributes
to a ball club? The joy of making a uniquely
distinct contribution to the writing?
People feel good doing that. And
they come up with magic.
Efficiency?
Always.
But in the service of what?
And at the loss of what else?
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