Writing about writing – English 1102: Television and Feminism

The writing in Wynonna Earp is mediocre at best, specifically the character writing. Not only are the characters all tropes, but they are also written in an incredibly boring manner. I will focus in on Episode 2 to give a closer look at how sucky the writing truly is.

I’d like to start first with Agent Dolls, a character so one-dimensional every conversation he has is the same. To be fair, it does not help he only interacts with one character, Wynonna, but he still fails at having any character traits other than serious. Dolls is ALWAYS talking about work and he ALWAYS sounds threatening. Most of the time he is talking to Wynonna, who is never serious, but even when he has a chance to talk to another character, he fails. When Officer Haught comes in to his makeshift office, he threatens her with death if she ever barges in again. Dolls is a simple character whose only motivation appears to be destroying the demons. Even when Dolls has a redeeming moment, saying he argued against the destruction of the town in New Mexico, the show does not explore it in any depth. Unfortunately for the show, Dolls is a totally weak character with no unique qualities.

Wynonna, the title character, is not written much better than Dolls. Admittedly, she does have more than one side. She has two sides. Wynonna’s first side is when she is speaking to Dolls. Here the show writes her as the exact opposite of him. When he is strict, she takes events with levity. Wynonna’s responses almost always consist of some wise-crack that usually fails to include any semblance of humor. I think the show is trying to portray her as a bad-ass that doesn’t take orders from authority, but instead she seems like an asshole. Dolls is usually trying to help, but Wynonna just makes a stupid joke. Wynonna’s second side is used when she is talking to her sister, Waverly. In these interactions Wynonna actually seems like a real human being. She speaks like a normal older sister would to her little sister, except she can’t resist cracking jokes. For some reason, the writers have Wynonna make wise-cracks while she is comforting her sister. Overall, Wynonna is a failure as the main character of the show. She has a flat personality and she fails to be even a little funny.

An example of Wynonna’s terrible one-liners

Only The Real Ones Will Know

By Faisal Chaudry

On September 25, 2018

In Review Topic 2

One special episode of Broad City that represents its uniqueness in comedic writing is the fifth episode of season two, titled “Hashtag: FOMO.” The writers of this episode are the stars Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, who co-create and write the show as well as having co-created and written the web-series of the same name.

Abbi and Ilana

Having the main stars write this episode is ideal because much of “Hashtag: FOMO” is Abbi and Ilana scrambling around the city from party to party trying to spend the best time, all while progressively getting more drunk as the night goes on. In this episode, the dialogue is structured mainly around Abbi’s and Ilana’s funny conversations and interactions with others. While there is a writer’s crew and a set script that the Broad City creators follow, the dialogue in this episode is structured in a way that reveals how unstructured the entire show really is. Abbi’s and Ilana’s conversations exude a feeling of familiarity where their perfect chemistry on screen makes the writing flow more naturally. The audience can take it as them improvising their dialogue, but Abbi and Ilana wrote this episode to truly show the natural conversations between two close friends, which makes it all the more relatable to the show’s demographic of millennial viewers. The unstructured feeling of the dialogue within this episode matters because the viewers get to see the true bond of friendship between Abbi and Ilana, which allows the concept of female friendships to be aimed at more than one specific demographic of viewers.

What real friends ask each other

While Broad City strays away from the tropes of typical comedy shows, Abbi and Ilana utilize “easter eggs” throughout the series to appeal to the observant, frequent viewers of the show. “Hashtag: FOMO” has a great example where towards the end of the episode, blackout-drunk Abbi drags Ilana to a underground speakeasy where the patrons receive Abbi warmly. Ilana is bamboozled, and Abbi assumes a persona unlike her named Val, a daring performer with a mid-Atlantic jazz voice who the audience loves. This easter egg refers back to the season two premiere where an old lady shouts “Val!” to Abbi on the subway, much to Abbi’s confusion. The audience does not know the context of Val until later, which shows how Abbi and Ilana write the show as if they are living in the moment alongside the viewers. There is not any dramatic irony between Abbi and Ilana and the viewers, but rather with Abbi, Ilana, the viewers, and the surroundings of the show. As the writers of the show, Abbi and Ilana use these easter eggs to create a more satisfying world where past actions influence future events, almost like real life. That is why “Hashtag: FOMO” is a standout episode of Broad City. The unstructured dialogue and the witty easter eggs create a hilarious episode where Abbi and Ilana find out more about each other than they ever knew.

Ilana shocked at Val

Writing About “A Small Orange Blur”

By Jadah Peters

On September 24, 2018

In Review Topic 2

I researched Lynn Sternberg who wrote episode 9 of The Bold Type. By research I mean that I did a light Google search, clicked on her Twitter profile, and skimmed through her posts. For a writer, she doesn’t write many of her own tweets; the majority of her posts are retweets, and many of her retweets are political in nature which is unsurprising in light of episode 9’s content. Excluding episode 1, The Bold Type always begins with a voiceover that briefly highlights past events of previous episodes and introduces the main characters, Sutton, Kat and Jane. The voiceover is done by a female whose accent is hard to place. It doesn’t add anything to the story, but I have a feeling it was meant to sound powerful and refined. The voiceover’s only purpose is the introduction in the beginning, so its only value is in setting the tone for the episode, but it’s hardly memorable. What is memorable is the dialogue of The Bold Type; it feels so real and organic. I can see my friends and I having the same conversations, well maybe not the exact same conversations, but the feeling is the same. There is such an authenticity to the dialogue in every episode, and this episode is no different. Where this episode does stand out though is in its external references to the current political climate. With witty comments slipped in such as describing a glimpse of Trump as “a small orange blur” and Jacqueline referring to Trump as “Number 45”, Sternberg sure had her fun expressing her political beliefs.

I thought I might put a picture of Trump here, but I though I’d spare us all that pain, and just add a picture of an orange cat to represent “a small orange blur”.

In addition to subtle and not so subtle jokes, the episode explicitly showcased protests against President Trump. As another angle, this episode also took a softer more personal tone with Adena’s deportation. Of course, I do not know what it feels like to be deported, but the episode did its best in detailing certain aspects of deportation: the uncertainty, the powerlessness, the loss.

This is from when Adena calls Kat to tell her she’s being deported. It’s so sad when people who have nothing to apologize for feel like they need to apologize.

Balancing both the joking element along with seriousness is really a smart way to go about an issue such as this. Even in the midst of Adena’s hardship, a bit of humor surfaced when Kat called the Immigrants’ Rights Hotline and it put her on hold saying “our current volume is extremely high” which is just a humorous way to allude to the massive mistreatment of immigrants in the United States. Another bit of writing with a deeper meaning is when one of the characters says “the president has things totally screwed up out here” in reference to New York City traffic being completely gridlocked due to the president’s visit to the city. I have a deep suspicion that this statement was not only a reaction to some extra traffic in New York City but also to the president’s actions in the United States in general because “the president has things totally screwed up out here” too.

English 1102: Television and Feminism

Dr. Casey Alane Wilson • Georgia Institute of Technology

Tag: Writing about writing

Wynonna Earp? More like Wynonna Sucks.

Only The Real Ones Will Know

Writing About “A Small Orange Blur”

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