Remember that quirky TV show in the early 90s called Doogie Howser M.D. starring a very young Neil Patrick Harris as Douglas “Dougie” Howser? Many TV shows since have had a facelift and remade for modern audiences while maintaining their original charm and intent.
Showrunner Kourtney Kang (Fresh Of The Boat, How I Met Your Mother) has done just that with Doogie, with some modifications – Doogie is now a girl called Doogie Lahela Kamealoha (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) and the show is set in Hawaii rather than Los Angeles. Lahela shares all the medical brilliance and awkward teenaged moves of her male predecessor. Kourtney Kang spoke to Creative Screenwriting Magazine about creating an “entirely new series inspired by the old one.”
Kang confessed to being a big fan of the original, so it was time for a “Doogie Do-over.” Producers Melvin Mar and Jake Kasdan (Jumanji: The Next Level) contacted her with the aim of bringing Doogie back to our screens. Fresh off the boat from Fresh Off The Boat, Mar wanted to bring another Asian American family to television. “He wanted to reboot Doogie Howser with an Asian girl at the center.” Inspired by the idea, Kang wondered how it would link back to the original. She had her work cut out for her.
Kourtney Kang. Photo by Karen Neal/ Disney
Kang was determined to create a brand new series that wasn’t a continuation or constant nod to the original. “So many reboots spend the first ten minutes filling in the last thirty years of what’s been happening in everyone’s lives since the original show went off air. You’re saddled with exposition.”
The showrunner jettisoned the Howser backstory and distilled the reference by using Doogie as Lahela Kamealoha’s nickname without explanation. Lahela cleverly referenced Doogie Howser in a single scene where she dismissed the show as something that was on air before she was even born. It had nothing to do with her and she found the original show annoying. Doogie Howser was never mentioned again, although subtle references were made to him.
Kourtney Kang was born and raised in Hawaii which informed her decision to set the series there. “I infused it with a lot of personal touches. Lahela’s parents, [Dr. Clara Hannon (Kathleen Rose Perkins) and Benny Kamealoha (Jason Scott Lee)] were based on my parents. I have two brothers and I’m a middle child just like Doogie. Steph Denisco (Emma Meisel), Lahela’s best friend was my best friend from college… It started out as a reboot and fast become about my personal experience,” she declared.
Kang has three daughter who will now look at Lahela as a positive female role model who looks like them. “This feels like the right version of Doogie for today’s world,” she proclaimed.
Doogie Howser was the brainchild of Steven Bochco who passed in 2017. However, his wife Dayna and son Jesse, who executive-produced via Steven Bochco Productions, “held the flame of Steven’s work to make sure that’s it was presented in the best way possible.” Kang reached out to them with her ideas for the Doogie Malealoha and they loved it. They trusted her and let her run with her vision.
Kourtney Kang admires Steven Bochco’s style of showrunning which she applies to her own work. “I made sure the writer’s vision was honored on set. Tone, prop and wardrobe meetings all went through the writers.”
Creating A New Show
Kourtney Kang considered the original Doogie Howser to be a drama despite it being a half-hour show. Doogie Kamealoha is a comedy, but the dramatic elements of the original remained in its DNA. “There was a gravity to it. Howser was a sixteen-year old boy and the work he was doing was tremendously important.” Lahela honored that.
Doogie Kamealoha juggles two worlds – the medical world and her teenage life world. There is also a family drama and YA element woven into the TV series. “These need to intersect emotionally to tie the show together and anchor it to Doogie for it to work.”
The show also straddles several genres ranging from medical procedural, family comedy drama and YA romance. Kourtney Kang embraced all of them to give the show its vitality.
During preproduction, she asked executive producer Matt Kuhn “to help define who the characters are and general stories in the first week in the writers’ room.” When the room convened, “I had to convey what we discussed over eight months to a team of ten writers to ensure everyone is pitching together.” There were times when Kang had to put a stop to abstract discussion about characters and decide on stories to outline. Kuhn convinced Kang of the value of these abstract discussions so they continued for another week. “As we were talking about the characters, their trajectories, emotional journeys, and stories flowed organically from them and became the arc of the season.” Once the writers knew these characters intimately, breaking the stories was a relatively fast process.
Lahela is introduced as a typical sixteen-year old girl with her dad and her surfboard in the opening scenes. There’s a boy Walter Taumata (Alex Aiono) she likes and she rescues someone on the beach and the audience finds out she’s a doctor. “The original Doogie is very much like that.” There was also a scene with Doogie taking her driving test (another reference to the original).
Walter Taumata (Alex Aiono)
Doogie Kamealoha kept a few more elements of the original such as Steph Denisco climbing in through the window (a reference to Vinnie Salvatore Delpino (Max Casella) Dougie’s girl-crazy buddy), and the reflective journal-writing in the end.
Creating a riveting pilot episode is integral for every TV show’s success. “The first thing you need to do is set the place and tone.” Kang describes the tone of the show as “hopeful with a sweetness to it that underlines everything. You feel that Aloha spirit in it.”
The show opens with Lahela and Benny surfing. “There’s minimal dialogue and you see Hawaii. The audience is settling in the first five minutes.” Kang warns writers against front-loading their scripts with too much critical information during the opening scenes. “Don’t be afraid to let the audience lean into the story. We don’t find out Doogie’s a doctor for several pages in.”
The next step is to show your characters. Show don’t tell.
A character is the sound of actions the characters take under pressure
Many novice writers try to define a character by them telling you what the character is rather than showing the audience. Then you establish the world and how the characters interact with it. The showrunner recalled several instances of the writers pitching jokes for the characters which were rejected because they didn’t fit the tone or it wasn’t organic to the characters or their world.
Dr. Clara Hannon (Katherine Rose Perkins)
The pilot episode of any TV show serves very specific functions. It introduces the audience to the show and gets them invested. The second episode poses additional challenges because it has to make the audience stay. The time frames are also vastly different. Writers might spend several months writing the pilot, but once it’s in production, they need to write subsequent episodes much faster. “The first episode is defining the starting point of the series. The second episode is determining how to move it forward.”
The second episode tests your gut of how well you know the show
Even if you love a joke or line of dialogue you can’t always keep it. “You have to go where the train is going.” Writers need to know where the train has been to understand its direction. She continued, “It’s vital that everyone on the show is invested in it. It’s such a collaboration. If a writer feels that what they write has no chance of being on TV they need to say so.”
Kang equally enjoys being a writer and a showrunner. “I love being in the room as well as managing sets and studios. I do it with the grace and elegance of Steven Bochco. I’d love to pick his brains to see how he built his empire.“
