Been extra busy with my screenwriting classes now that all the student script pages are coming in and haven’t had a chance to cruise OS as much as I would like.

But a writing gaffe jumped out at me while watching last Monday’s 24 on TIVO yesterday and I had to comment on it.  Also, what better place to talk about writing than to other writers!? 

While the gaffe was small, a mini “jumping the shark” you might say, it nevertheless represents a larger writing issue:  When does the writer’s work reach a credibility breakage point ?   In short, when has the writer written something that causes a viewer to throw up his hands and just say,  “Awwwww, gimme a fucking break.” Or, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

 I’m a fan of 24.  Forget the politics of it, the rights and wrongs of its message or whether Obama should sign an executive order to rein in Jack Bauer.  Let’s just talk about the story telling and the breakage point.

Breakage points come in two types, IMO.   The first has to do with any series' ground rules, which the writers establishe from the get-go.   You accept them or you don’t.  Either they turn you off from the top or you buy into them and enjoy the ride. It's all subjective, of course, and everyone's mileage may vary.

Like the rule that Jack Bauer’s cell phone never dies or, to uphold each episode’s one hour reality time frame, Jack can drive from Van Nuys to Santa Monica in six minutes, during rush hour.  

A CSI ground rule, for instance, is that all CSI labs have every piece of scientific equipment ever invented, foreign and domestic.  And on a city budget yet!  I don’t think NASA has as much stuff.  Imagine what Madame Curie or Jonas Salk  could have accomplished with all that crap.  Also, every CSI female team member is beautiful and all CSI members can use each piece of equipment flawlessly should all but one be abducted by aliens. 

The second type of  breaking point is when the writer stretches his ground rules to, well, the breaking point.   It’s the straw that breaks the viewer's back.  It’s like asking someone for another fifty dollars after he mortgaged his house to lend you money to start your business.  Insult to injury and all that.  A ground rule too far.  That’s the one I’m going to bring up. 

In the last episode, Jack Bauer helped his formerly dead friend Tony, whom Jack saw buried last year (Don’t ask!) escape FBI custody because he learned through a call on his limitless battery powered cell phone that even though former good guy Tony is persona-non-grata, he’s really been in deep cover on a mission to root out highly placed government corruption.  Whew! Great story development, though.

To make the escape believable to the FBI, but mostly to Tony’s evil mastermind boss, Jack has to pretend he’s gone rogue.  The charade works.  (Of course!  It’s a ground rule).  He and Tony then help the evil mastermind kidnap from their DC home, Mr. Mutobo, the honest, president-in-waiting of a genocidically oppressive African country, Sengala, whose monstrous leader the US wishes to overthrow.  Jack helps Tony's evil mastermind in the kidnappng hoping he can be led the higher- up evil mastermind -- il mastermindo di tutti mastermindi.

Meanwhile, every FBI and law enforcement agent in the world has been alerted and is looking for the escaped Jack and Tony.  Everybody!  FBI, Metro Police, school crossing guards, scout leaders, all checking cars, boats, planes, trains, buses, helicopters, computers, yellow pages – everywhere.  All stops are out.   Specifically on the search is FBI Agent Renee Walker.  

As Jack, Tony, Tony’s evil mastermind and some henchmen shove Mutobo and his wife into an escape van, our beautiful (Ground rule) FBI agent Walker spots them from a hiding place near the driveway.   Gun drawn, she calls her boss on her own limitless battery powered cell phone (Ground rules again) and says, “I’ve got a visual. They’re loading Mutobo and his wife into a truck/van.  Where’s SWAT?”   “Five minutes,” answers the boss, but then an evil henchman sneaks up behind Walker and puts a gun to her head.

Whoops!  Now she can’t tell her boss the details of what she was seeing, which a van that looked like this:

A bright YELLOW van, the size of an ambulance.  Bright YELLOW. Yellow like Big Bird yellow.  Blindingly deep YELLOW.  She was looking at a HUGE, YELLOW van.

Now, even within stretchable ground rules, how could the writer NOT have had Agent Walker say "...loading Muboto and his wife into a huge fucking bright YELLOW van?”   Okay, maybe not “fucking,” but you get what I'm saying.

I mean, what would be your first thought if you saw a bright yellow vehicle of any size on the road?  Lookit that YELLOW car, right?  Triple the size of the vehicle, and you’d have to be color-blind not to immediately think yellow.

And if you’re an FBI agent, on 24, trying to catch really bad people, you’d be salivating to say "YELLOW van," "YELLOW van" because a helicopter can spot a van that large and YELLOW from Asia.  This is a lottery winning lead.  The mother lode of clues.   Instead, all Walker said was..."they’re loading Mutobo and his wife into a truck/van….”

And that’s when I said, “Awwww, gimme a fucking break.” 

And to rub it in, they later have the gall  to show us this HUGE YELLOW van cruising through DC on an open highway, totally unnoticed and undetected, leaving it only to ordinary bystanders like us to say, “Hey, lookit how yellow that thing is.”

Now, I understand how difficult it is to be artful when grinding out these episodes.  I’ve done it for close to thirty years with sitcoms, hour long dramas and soaps.  All writers know that reality is always compromised and adjusted in the service of form and story.  We accept all those dramatic devices and switcheroos.  They’re part of the ground rules.

But  sometimes, one of them crosses the line. 

What’s your  breakage point?