ALPHAS: Writing For An Austistic Character & Building Mythology

Alphas co-creator Zak Penn talks about Gary and the show’s mythology.

I have to say, I’m a Gary fan. While Alphas han’t quite lived up to my hopes so far, it has delivered several positives and Gary is among them. You can tell that the writers enjoy writing for him and Ryan Cartwright has done a tremendous job bringing the character to life.

Here’s what Zak Penn had to say recently about the character and the show’s approach to mythology:

On Gary and writing for an autistic character:

“With Gary [..] it was inherent that one of these characters was going to have Asperger’s or autism. If you read enough Oliver Sacks books, you’re going to come across a lot of people like that, so we realized we just had to do that. Once we decided that, we had to ask: How do we keep this as real as possible? How do we make sure we avoid the trap of him being the ‘magical autistic kid who always says the right thing and never does anything wrong.’ I know a lot of kids with autism and I know a lot of people with autism, and they’re just like the rest of us. They have great sides, but they have flaws and they have faults.”
“With the Anna character … we said, ‘OK, how do we violate your expectations?’ Just because she seems to have tremendous infirmity, that doesn’t mean she’s a wonderful person, which is the way things usually work in TV and the movies.”

On the importance of planning ahead and expanding the mythology going forward:

“You as a writer want to know where you’re going. You need to balance two things: You need to be able to be fluid enough that you can see what’s actually working – part of that is seeing what the audience likes but a lot of it is what works. For example, I thought that ["Blind Spot"] was a really good one that really worked for me in a lot of ways. Yes, it has an ‘Alpha of the week’ but it doesn’t feel like your typical ‘let’s go chase someone down’ like in any old procedural. Things like that when you want to be flexible enough I learned from guys like Ira and (Executive Producer) Robert (Hewitt Wolfe) – the more experienced guys who came in on the show – is to use that first season to figure out what works, what lends itself to your characters and your premise. …
“On the other hand, Michael Karnow and I – who created this show – have been talking about it for five years, because we were going to do it before the writers’ strike in 2006 and 2007, so we have more idea you can shake a stick at. It’s not one of those things where we created it and never thought anyone would want to see any more of it so never came up with any mythology. It’s kind of the opposite.”

On keeping the Alphas mythology grounded:

“You feel like your Scout leader has taken you off the path, and it’s very frustrating. You develop this almost unhealthy attachment – ‘No, no, this is my world! Where are you going with it?’ We definitely entered this thinking we’re not going to do that. I think we have one advantage: We set out to make a show that is taking place on a much more mundane human level, and we don’t have the necessity of being on a deserted island and something crazy has to happen. Because of that, it allows us to much more slowly expand our world, which to me is more appealing.
“To take another example, ‘FlashForward’ was such a big idea that you’ve got to keep coming up with big ideas every week that neither violate the mythology but push it forward. To me, it seems like a better thing to do in a movie than over the course of a television show, because you just get boxed in. I don’t think our show will ever do that.”
“I feel if you keep a level of reality to a show – if you keep it toned down and day-to-day – you don’t have quite the same pressure from the audience saying, ‘When are we going to find out what the Smoke Monster is?’ You can parcel out something like Binghamton as it really would be. If we were cops investigating this thing, we wouldn’t find it out all in one week – it would take us a while.”

You can read the entire interview at Star Gazette.

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Several good points. It’s useful to get his views on the show’s mythology:

“If we were cops investigating this thing, we wouldn’t find it out all in one week – it would take us a while.”

I also agree with the above. Story that takes shape and expands/deepens over time is one of the primary attributes of true serialized TV. That being said, I still believe there should to be a level of build-up, of momentum. I think it’s difficult to suddenly turn “on” the mythology switch after 4-5 episodes of standalone duty.

Alphas doesn’t necessarily have to be a full-on serialized affair like a Breaking Bad or Torchwood, but a ‘mythalone’ (mythology/standalone) approach in place of those pure standalone episodes would do my investment in the story the world of good.

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Tagged as: alphas, interviews, zak penn