I Love Too Much

July 23rd, 2009Blog1 comment

That Weird Third Thing: I saw Eastbound and Down again in its entirety with some pals. I can’t get enough of that show — I love it too much.

God has proved His divinity and existence, because HBO has renewed it for another season. As a species, we don’t deserve this.

Eastbound and Down has a lot of great examples of That Weird Third Thing. This is a concept in writing that we’re always looking for. When you’re devising a story you often come to a point when you need to make a choice: A guy lives or he dies. The dog is found or he remains lost. They find the treasure or they lose it — you can choose between two easy options that are obvious to both you and the audience.

But what you are really after is That Weird Third Thing: The guy doesn’t live or die — he was already dead. Or he was a robot. Or he was a unicorn. The dog isn’t lost or found — the thing on the LOST PET poster is actually a furry. Or he was a robot. Or a unicorn. Instead of choosing the obvious, we want to find that weird third thing that no one was expecting — but makes total sense once it’s discovered. We want the surprise that fit the puzzle all along.

In 30 Rock this is touched upon in the episode where Jack is trying to find his true father (“Mama Mia”):

“Either he’ll walk away or you’ll suddenly have a father and it’ll be great — there isn’t some weird third thing that’s going to happen.”

Of course, there is a weird third thing that happens. The weird third thing always happens on 30 Rock — as it should in anything that’s written well.

There’s a great weird third thing that happens in Eastbound and Down. In the show there’s a pitch-off. And it’s set up so that either Kenny Powers is going to strike this guy out, or history is going to repeat itself and this guy will knock a homer off his pitch.

But of course neither of those things happens. That weird third thing strikes again.