Much is made in the television industry lately about the changing face of advertising, and how in our progressively time-shifted world, companies don’t feel comfortable buying television commercials in the ways they once did. After all, <ba-doop badoop badOOP!> and those commercial breaks are over in seconds.

I recall reading about a study showing that consumers remember just as much about commercials when they fast-forward as they do when they watch them at regular speed, but studies don’t often influence the priorities of industry decision makers. For example, the Oberholzer-Gee study of 2004 suggests that file sharing has had little or more likely zero bearing on CD sales, but that certainly hasn’t stopped the music industry, then the movie industry, from raising a ruckus about piracy being the ultimate threat to their existences.

But advertisers are the ones spending the cash, so they get to call the shots. More and more that means product integration into content. For blatant examples, consider the side wall ads in soccer or racing video games. For less blatant but more unignorable examples, consider where the team from The Office holds the Dundees… (Did you say Chili’s? Because they’re banking on the fact that you did…) It’s no coincidence that Michael took a client there before the night he first hooked up with Jan. Meanwhile, who is Dunder-Mifflin’s primary competitor, and where did Dwight go to work when he quit? Ever notice the logo on Stanley’s computer? Or remember what Michael brought to the Christmas white elephant?

For the most part, these placements don’t get in the way of the story or the character, or in fact can even lend a certain authenticity. But this week NBC featured placement in Friday Night Lights that seemed to cross the line between clever producing and crass hucksterism.

(MINOR SPOILER ALERT.)

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Last month I posted a comedy monologue for women I had written on a lark. I was surprised by the immediate reaction it received. I wound up talking to several female friends with acting backgrounds who agreed wholeheartedly that it’s tough to find good comedic material for women. The screenwriterguy.com stats seem to back up what my friends said, as a steady stream of hits have come through from people searching for female monologues. This morning I was surprised to see that the monologue post had pushed to the top position of most-read posts on the site. The whole thing has left me thinking about the delicate art of writing female roles. As part of my meditation on the subject, I decided to create this list of Top Ten Strongest Female TV Characters.

The subject of strongest female characters begs definition. I’ve learned that it’s a far more complicated issue than one might think. A member of my old comedy troupe once expressed disappointment in the roles she had been playing in a show. She felt that she was constantly the mom, the girlfriend… rarely the funny person. (It’s a far deeper issue than I have time for in this explanation, and it’s a question with which I’ve heard many sketch troupes wrestle. Let me quickly invite you to think about how many female players there were on Kids in the Hall or in the Monty Python crew.) Anyway, long after this member of our troupe had forgotten the conversation, we were casting a show and I went (probably a little too far) out of my way to make sure she had nothing but strong characters to play. She was the funny person to someone else’s straight man. Her characters had authority and status. I casually asked later about how this new show felt, and I was shocked to hear her explain that her favorite moment was a number in which she was a back-up singer: “It’s the first time in the show I feel sexy,” she said. Clearly I had something to learn about what defined a good female role.

So when I list strong female characters, my goal is not entirely about feminist ideals or girl power, but to find writing that creates a distinct, defined character. She must be more than a foil to the male lead. Her femininity should not be her defining characteristic, and yet it must be intrinsic to her identity. Succinctly, what roles would the female actor just love to sink her teeth into? What roles would be really fun to play? Further, Xena the Warrior Princess doesn’t count as a strong woman just because she’s a woman who’s strong. And while Mary Tyler Moore was a masterfully written and groundbreaking show, Mary’s significance had as much to do with her situation as with any specialness to her character. Like any character in any story, our strongest female TV characters should help us understand a corner of the human condition, the only restriction being that the understanding come from a woman’s perspective. Here’s my list:

#10

Buffy and Sydney–Yes, there’s a certain originality to the female butt-kicker. Not often do we meet a woman we expect to take down all comers, mano-a-mano.However, the quality that earns these heroines a place on the chart is how little they actually want their gifts. Both Buffy and Sydney gained specialness and destiny from forces beyond their control. While each has a champion’s heart and cannot help but use her skills when called upon, each express a need to live a normal life as a normal girl. It is in this duality that the depth of their characters lies. The action scenes are fun, but if you want to see when Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jennifer Garner truly shine as actors, look for the moments when they cry over a lost love or struggle against an authority figure. That’s the part that truly makes them strong female characters.

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OK, a bit of a bait-and-switch with the headline. This is a post about where IDEAS come from. Hey, if you’re a writer, ideas ARE babies.

Earlier this week a friend asked about the process in my head when I create humor. I wasn’t sure how to answer. I spend very little time thinking about the source of funny.

On her most-excellent blog, Jane Espenson recently posted about two kinds of comedy writers, people who say funny things naturally and then write them down, and people who analyze the shapes and patterns that make jokes and recreate them as they write.

I don’t think I’m an either-or. My brain works enough like an engineer’s that analyzing humor is very appealing. But I also have sufficient experience with improvisational acting to know that the magic of the moment can create humor that an outline and some graph paper simply will not produce.

I had two different experiences with housemates this week that very much demonstrated there is value in being able to think both ways:

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Death may be the one aspect of life that shows up LESS on television than in reality (excluding, of course, those shows that start every episode with one, where it is featured far MORE than statistically plausible.) Death can be a taboo subject, perhaps harkening to more superstitious times when to name was to invite it. I thought I’d reflect for a post on how television shows through history have handled the ultimate facet of life. When TV is at its best, reverent or not, death is handled artfully. Of course, we know that when TV is at its worst… Here are my selections of notable storytelling surrounding the death of a main or recurring character. Because they really do fall into extremes, and to save me from sorting through which Sopranos character really had it coming, I feel like I have to break this Top Ten into five best and five worst:

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This weekend Mystery Man is hosting a blog-athon of people’s favorite screenplays. As he suggests, favorite screenplay turns out to be a tougher question than you might assume on first consideration. One’s favorite film isn’t necessarily one’s favorite screenplay. It took a while for me to settle on the right choice.

At first, my thoughts turned to my go-to “favorite” movie, The Princess Bride. That film’s tone remains unmatched, in my opinion. I’ve only seen shooting script copies, however, and there are so many “CUT TO:” directives riddling the pages that you can barely get through it. (Isn’t Goldman generally given credit for ending the practice of writers calling transitions?) Overall, Goldman has a very definite voice that gets in the way of the story he’s telling. Loved it in the novel, don’t love it in the screenplay.

My next thought was Blade Runner. If you are a writer and haven’t read this script on paper, do so. The visual descriptions are poetry. It’s a fluid read, more like a novel, and yet mostly staying this side of too many words. In the end, though, it collapses under it’s own weight a bit, and makes a better movie than a read. (That’s a compliment of course, and what a screenplay is supposed to do, but if I’m picking a FAVORITE…)

I considered Alien. See my thoughts on Blade Runner. There’s magic to be found in The Muppet Movie, but there’s also a whole lot of groan-inspiring puns, so it’s out. Good Will Hunting was a contender, but then I’d have to credit Ben Affleck with writing my favorite screenplay.

In the end, I had to choose the first screenplay ever to enter my collection: “Rita Hayworth & Shawshank Redemption, screenplay by Frank Darabont, based on the novella by Stephen King, third draft, 2/22/93.”

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Part of why television is the medium in which I aspire to work is the length and breadth of character development afforded to its writers. To me at least, part of where television becomes a vital art form is when a show dares to draw characters that grow, learn, and/or change.

Over the last week, several shows have offered fabulous character and relationship reversals. People who think and feel a certain way suddenly have found themselves behaving in quite an opposite manner. While such behavior might feel like inconsistency if done poorly, these latest examples have featured very reasonable, logical circumstances that lead to minds changing.

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