The type of people who wear hoodies:

High school students, college students, people who live in places where autumn happens, people who live in places where spring happens, people who experience warm winters, people who experience cold summers, sports fans, athletes, people who never exercise, construction workers, people who work in casual offices with tricky air-conditioning, and my entire family.

How I would have written Awake

Oof. Sorry, guys. Know it's been a long time. Been writing A LOT. About halfway into a (disaster porn) feature, finished a Cougar Town spec, and have been doing a lot of reading of pilots vying for slots for this coming fall.

Right now, I'm halfway through the second episode of Awake, the new show from the beleaguered but fairly brilliant Kyle Killen. At first, I thought the problem with the show was that every week it would be the same thing, nothing new, despite how high-concept it is. And now I realize the true problem--the car accident. How very Deus ex machina an event. It would be MUCH more powerful if the accident that killed one or both or neither of his wife and son weren't an accident but a Sophie's Choice situation. Some criminal with an axe to grind against our detective forces him to choose, and this is what follows. You'd have something at stake for the entire season--find the guy who made you choose. You have a bad guy. You have an arc, possibly with a Fringe-ish sci-fi element to it. You have a purpose for the show, high-concept WITH A REASON, not a mere cop drama with a split personality.

But that's just what I would have done.

****

Just finished the episode. Never mind. Killen probably knows what he's doing. :)