Post by Lauryn on Feb 11, 2012 12:17:46 GMT -5
The show is about two people who are very attracted to each other but who won't give an inch in what they want," he says. "If they give that inch, we'll be doing a different series. We'll be doing Mr. and Mrs. North, or Nick and Nora, or 'Hart to Hart'--which is what we set out not to do."
What they set out to do was a romance, he says, noting that in the 1940s movies that they were emulating, the principals never got together until the end. So even though the series has been on the air for three years, "Remington Steele" is still technically in the middle of its story.
"It's a fade-out once they get together," Gleason insists. "Otherwise it becomes very mundane as they get up in the morning and say, 'How would you like your toast?' If you lose sight of what show you're doing, I think the audience will get confused and say, 'They don't know what they're doing' and go somewhere else.
What they set out to do was a romance, he says, noting that in the 1940s movies that they were emulating, the principals never got together until the end. So even though the series has been on the air for three years, "Remington Steele" is still technically in the middle of its story.
"It's a fade-out once they get together," Gleason insists. "Otherwise it becomes very mundane as they get up in the morning and say, 'How would you like your toast?' If you lose sight of what show you're doing, I think the audience will get confused and say, 'They don't know what they're doing' and go somewhere else.
It’s rather dispiriting to think that the outcome of giving that “inch,” in his mind, is that you merely exchange one formula with another. As if, post-consummation / marriage or other like arrangement you’re only putting Laura and Steele in another box in which they become magically like other couples to whom they bear only broad similarity. (And he’s off by a mile with part of his argument; marrieds Nick and Nora, for example, weren’t boring and mundane.)
Steele-wise, is there no new territory to be explored in commingling two very complex individuals, with enduring power and control issues? To pull them apart and then back together, week by week, in that new context? How could that fail to be interesting? I realize that some of the audience might not have come along but that was only part of it. I think sometimes it’s hard, even for people who know a lot about television and writing, to be able to move on from their original conception. At the start you’ve placed the characters in a certain frame. You think it’s a sturdy one, but you have no notion at the outset how many seasons it may have to last, and how far, if you must, to expand it. That was more of a quandary then than now, where it’s become the norm for shows to plan and spin out extended story and character arcs.
To Gleason’s point about revamping the 40's I still feel the need to shout: the endless circling around the fade-out isn’t saving them, it’s diminishing them. Keep with the spirit of the classics, the dynamics, the spark. (And yes, that can continue after marriage or sex; good, imaginative writing can overcome a lot.) You can only extend the rest of the 40's template so far and so long. They’re contemporary characters, modern counterparts with their own social and sexual realm. Treat them as such.
