Alex Berger has established his reputation as a prolific TV writer working on popular shows including Blindspot, The Mentalist, and Covert Affairs. Alex spoke with Creative Screenwriting Magazine to share his insights on writing successful television procedurals.
“The main aspect of procedural TV shows is the need for week to week action.” This underpins every episode. A crime of the week for cop shows, a case of the week for legal shows, and a medical issue of the week for hospital shows. In many ways, having these set parameters is comforting for procedural TV writers because the foundation for a hundred and fifty or so episodes is set and you can give your characters a situation to bounce off. “In other respects, it can feel like being handcuffed because you are stuck in a formula.”
Berger is fortunate in that he’s worked on TV shows which have the flexibility to write either a highly serialized or a different type of case tied into the mythology of the show. He describes the process as “having the engine to tell countless stories with the freedom to break the formula in away that feels organic.”
Alex Berger served as an executive producer on the show and also wrote six episodes. Blindspot has a heavily serialized mythology starting with a character (Jane Doe played by Jaimie Alexander) waking up naked in Times Square covered in tattoos with no idea of who she is or any recollection of how she got there. “There was a lot to unpack. Martin Gero (the show’s creator) told a compelling and complicated mystery with many pieces that unfolded over the show’s five seasons and threaded them all together.”
All the tattoo clues eventually culminated in a huge reveal of the identity of Jane Doe, how she got to Times Square and how the tattoos related to the FBI.
Alex Berger
Blindspot also contained a “crime of the week” element in each episode. Each tattoo on Jane’s body would unveil a crime. “Some tattoos related to standalone crimes while others related to the overall mythology of the TV show and Janes’s identity.” Even the standalone components of the tattoos had to tie into Jane Doe’s story somehow.
The crimes cannot be detached from the characters. “We made sure the characters had some deep emotional investment in the crime story or the crime, or the villain spoke to what was going on in their emotional journeys and what they’re going through.” Berger ideally wants the crime to illustrate who the characters are and their arcs.
Blindspot is a heavily-researched show and hungry for new stories. A large part of the research includes watching documentaries and articles which could potentially be turned into a crime story. Research might even be a magazine article about a new piece of technology that could be used in the show. “I have found kernels of stories inside other stories. It could be the coda of a documentary or aspects of an unrelated conversation. There are stories everywhere and a good writer will find them.”
At the start of each season, the writing team would examine the trajectory of each of the characters. Each of the twelve writers on the show would pitch five story ideas. Roughly a third of those ideas would show enough promise to be developed further. During the course of the season they would repeat the process to replenish the story pool. Occasionally, the writers might need a crime that covered several dramatic bases, so they would break that in the room.
“A typical episode pitch would be presenting a crime, how it related to a tattoo on Jane’s body, a few twists and escalations, and a conclusion.”
Law enforcement protocols are complex and the writers aren’t expected to have an encyclopedic knowledge of them. “On Blindspot we had one or two FBI consultants. We also spoke to experts in specific fields such as undocumented immigrants or technological advances in terrorism.” These meetings would result in tremendous authenticity in the stories.
In terms of creative license to embellish storylines, Berger advised, “Learn the ins and outs of the processes and figure out which elements you can use to tell a realistic story that helps you write good drama.”
The conceit of tattoo-covered Jane Doe appearing in Times Square is fairly heightened in Blindspot. The writers wanted to maintain as many factual elements so the story didn’t derail into a cartoon. “We always asked if something could happen.” The heightened reality of this show allowed the writers to take a few more creative liberties.
Alex Berger used his hypothetical “New York Times test” to answer. “If you saw this on the cover of the New York Times would you believe it was real? As long as the kernel was real in terms of how the police and the criminals were acting, we kept it.” The key constant of every procedural is the compression of time. Crimes are rarely solved in sixty minutes including commercials. “A lot of police paperwork and process doesn’t make it to television,” because it’s not dramatic or visual enough.
Audiences have loved solving problems since they were kids. “You may have loved solving crossword puzzles and word jumbles.” When we’re older, we’re looking for solutions to address the puzzles in our lives. “With crime procedurals, you’re along for the ride with the main character trying to piece together a puzzle. There are just enough breadcrumbs where the audience could solve the puzzle if they looked hard enough. The end reveal should feel organic.”
The lead character should be the smartest person in the room where they’re presented with a seemingly unsolvable puzzle with great courage and skill. We all wish we had someone like that in our lives. “Puzzles were built into the DNA of Blindspot.”
Planning The Next Season
The writers don’t start each new season of Blindspot cold. They discuss where the next season may go. “Blindspot is heavily serialized and the cliffhangers are set well in advance, that the final episode of a previous season sets up the big mystery in the following season. We couldn’t start the next season without these elements in place,” said the writer.
When it’s time to break story for the next season the writers reassess whether they still like the big mystery and everything still makes sense. They use a big white board to keep track. “When the new season starts, we spend two or three weeks planning the big arcs. We determine where we want to finish the final episode and where we want the characters to be emotionally and in terms to the state of their world. The season finale has to be earned. We also decide the big tentpole moments that go in between.”
Martin Gero
The stories don’t always need to be linear in the planning stage. Once the main story arcs are set, the writers loosely assemble each of the twenty-two episodes in the season.
The next step is to add a crime to each episode. “Because we’ve figured out where the big tentpoles are, we can start matching the serialized stories to the crime stories.” These elements may be shuffled around if the writers change their minds, certain character relationships don’t work as well as anticipated, or there are production issues such as losing an actor or location. “The board is in a state of flux.” This tight planning process ensures that they don’t fall behind in the production schedule.
Martin Gero came into the writers’ room with an overall map of where the season was headed. He and the writers planned the season together and they filled in the twists and turns along the way.
In conclusion, Alex Berger said that the most important quality of the TV writers on the show is appreciating the spirit of collaboration. “You don’t want people always agreeing with you. They should have their own ideas they should defend while supporting the showrunner’s vision.”
The magic of television is that you can create a show where the quality of the finished product is greater than the sum of the parts of the individual writers. He loves “the idea building on another idea, then building on another idea, to come up with an idea that nobody thought of in the beginning.”
Blindspot was the first television show Alex Berger has worked on throughout its entirety. “It’s taught me how to build a story from the ground up and land a plane. I don’t just think about the pilot. I think about what the entire show will look like over one hundred episodes.“
