Chuck Klosterman may be more to blame for this blog than any other single person.
In his what-I-consider essential collection of essays Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs I discovered, “Being Zach Morris” which, if Klosterman is the single most influential force on my current writing, is the single most influential-to-my-writing piece of writing. A scary thought.
The Tori Paradox became a meme taking up space in my brain, an ear-worm of an idea, that – if you can’t guess by now – has stuck with me to this day more clearly than most others. Not just for the idea that is the Tori Paradox, but for the way the idea of the Tori Paradox shaped the way I thought about…ideas.
Writing on the careers of the Saved By The Bell cast, and specifically, the participation of some of the original cast in 2 Saved by the Bell spin-offs (The College Years and The New Class), Klosterman relates his relationship with those actors/characters to his relationships with actual friends:
Those latter two shows – neither of which I watched consistently – made for a comfortable transition of loss: I saw the Saved by the Bell characters constantly, then periodically, and then not at all. It was actually a lot like my relationship with the friends from college who used to watch the show (Saved by the Bell) with me; I once saw guys like Joel constantly, then periodically, and then never.
Klosterman then goes on to explain the Tori Paradox, which, to try and sum up briefly, proposes that by trying to replace two of the most popular characters Kelly and Jesse (played by Tiffani Amber-Thieseen and Elizabeth Berkley) with one character, Tori (played by Leanna Creel), Saved by the Bell created a situation that inadvertently “became the the program’s most realistic avenue”.
The essay was life-changing for me in how I thought about the things I watched, and, at a fundamental level, what I thought was possible to write about.
One of the key insights of the Tori Paradox is Klosterman’s realization that, “the Tori Paradox might be the only part of Saved by the Bell that actually happened to me”.
He goes on to explain, in one of a few examples,
“I knew a girl in college who partied with me and my posse constantly, except for one semester in 1993 – she had a waitressing job at Applebee’s during that stretch and could never make it to any parties. And even though we all loved her, I can’t recall anyone mentioning her absence until she came back.”
While the Tori Paradox highlights the way life imitates the meta, real-life careers behind the (cough) art of a Saturday morning live-action teen serial, I want to take a look at how one meta-contextualization of our dramas reflect a very different aspect of our lives.
The Cutaway Episode
IfThe Sopranos was the start of television as-we-now-know-it, then “Pine Barrens” was the episode that 1) every writer writing about television is mandated to reference at some point in their careers, and 2) defined one aspect of the New Television more clearly than any other episode up to that point: unresolved conflict.
“Pine Barrens” was a loose thread.
Basically, at the end of the episode the bad guy gets away.
A loose thread wasn’t new to television but what happened next, was. Nothing, nothing happened next.
The bad guy wasn’t mentioned in the next episode, or the episode after that, or the episode after that. For the last few seasons of The Sopranos the Russian baddie last seen running through a snow-filled Jersey forest remained a constant subject of conversation, a presence that lurked over every scene, that colored all the violence that The Sopranos did so well. Certainly there were moments where violence on The Sopranos was a main plot-driver, as characters made plans to use it against each other, but often the violence inThe Sopranos was sudden, ugly (read: not over-choreographed) and unexpected. For that reason, it felt like the Russian could return at any moment.
But looking back, “Pine Barrens” may have been influential for more than its unresolved nature.
“Pine Barrens” is unique in that it may be the start of the modern Cutaway Episode: a stand-alone episode where we cutaway from the main plots and subplots of the overall season, and follow a character or two down a singular, rabbit hole of a story.
And in the kind of 21st century dramas that The Sopranos pioneered, the cutaway episode is even more important in that it is an entire episode of 10, or of 12, or of 13, in a season, rather than 1 of 22+ episodes: the length of seasons common on network television up to that point.
It’s not like the clip show episodes popular in the later seasons of uber-popular sitcoms: to take an hour away from a story that’s only 10 hours is a big decision, and, a very modern phenomenon.
Since “Pine Barrens” we have seen many variations of the cutaway episode.
Atlanta, in what may be the best television episode of all-time led us down a terrifying rabbit hole, into the haunted mansion, and psyche, of one Teddy Perkins, as seen through the lens of the not-main-character-of-Atlanta Darius Epps.
What does Epps learn from the experience? Unclear. What are we, the audience, supposed to feel? Many things, nothing, probably pants-staining fear. But sometimes a rabbit hole is just a rabbit hole.
Watchmen, in its 6th episode, gives “Teddy Perkins” a run for its money, when we see Angela (Regina King) down a full bottle of her grandfather’s memories (in the form of pills) causing her to mentally travel back in time, revealing the origin story of the most mysterious-to-that-point superhero in Watchmen, Hooded Justice, and the inextricable link between White racist violence and American history.
“This Extraordinary Being”, as Vox writers wax, “find(s) our main character confronting her family history head-on” which will inevitably give her greater strength, spurring “Angela to take action where it’s needed today, in 2019”.
And so one of the tropes of the cutaway episode is revealed: the cutaway as character builder.
If one trope of the cutaway episode is a lack of reverberating consequences through a series (see, arguably, “Pine Barrens” and “Teddy Perkins”) than another, seemingly contradictory trope of the cutaway episode, is necessity. The series, or season, needs to take a break from its main storylines in order for its main character to gain experience critical to their next immediate challenge.
In this sub-type of the cutaway episode, we pause the story in order for the main character to gain needed tools: be they insight, history, self-discovery, literal superpowers, all of the above.
This also has the narrative effect of, as Emily VanDerWerff, again for Vox, writes, “flashbacks filling in a big chunk of backstory”.
In Stranger Things season 2, episode 7, “The Lost Sister”, main character Eleven breaks away from her crew to discover other super-powered teens, help them do something important, and, more importantly, learn how to harness her powers at a higher level. It’s her training montage.
Critics seemed to hate it. I thought it was fun. Honestly, I don’t know why they wouldn’t bring some of those other teens back to make the ending of season 3 more plausible (I mean, really? the 3-story mutant-spider in the mall can’t kill like 4 kids hiding behind a car?)
Oh yea, I know why. Because it’s a cutaway episode. The things that happen in cutaway episodes, especially the new people we meet in them, often don’t return to the series’ they cutaway from.
In Barry‘s 2nd season Barry spends an entire episode (“ronny/lily”) fighting a feral karate child who bites an ear off and runs into the night, never to be seen again…at least for now.
While there are aspects of “ronny/lily” that effect the series (spoiler alert: the detective who had figured out Barry’s whole gig, being shot and killed), there is something of a nothingness to it.
As Hader told the New York Times the thought behind the episode wasn’t all that prophetic: Hader knew a little girl who could fight.
“While we were shooting Season 1 last year, Wade Allen, our stunt coordinator, told me: “Hey, if you ever need a little girl to do stunts, I know this girl Jessie. Her parents are both stunt people, and she’s amazing. I just worked with her on a commercial, and she can do fights, and she’s a gymnast.” I was like, “That’s cool.” It stuck in my head, and I have a little notebook that I write things down in. I wrote out that idea — Barry fighting a little girl, and her running up a tree on top of a house. I just had these little images.
So what does any of this have to do with Saved by the Bell, or, for that matter, real life?
It reminds me of only one experience I can think of, rehab.
Rehab
At what other point in our lives are we actually able to pause, take time away, and, like the “Strangers” episode of This Is Us meet a whole cast of characters we may never see again?
Many might say college is like hitting pause on real-life, but college, for most anyways, is a lot longer than an episode. It’s like a 4 (or, in my case 5.5) season arc. There are years of rising and falling storylines, there are side characters that weave in and out, there are drugs.
There’s none of that in rehab.
Rehab, like “The Fly” episode of Breaking Bad, is critically acclaimed as of 2010.
Rehab is (now) largely regarded as an important turning point in someone’s life, as an act of bravery.
And in rehab, just like episode 8 of WandaVision you are trapped in the mind-control of the witch who first cast her spell within the ruin. Oh, no, I mean, you are forced to examine your past.
But at the same time, if you are not ready for rehab, your time in rehab will be largely inconsequential.
As a member of a family with a historical knowledge of rehab (all families have their inherited challenges), I learned probably an inordinate amount about rehab and addiction growing up.
I learned about sponsors, steps, missteps. About relapses and coins, about shame and forgiveness.
And one thing I’ve seen with my own eyes is that if you are not ready for rehab, but you go to rehab, the results you sought (or were sought by others, on your behalf) will run off into the woods like so many coatless Russians.
Like “Teddy Perkins”, you will see some scary shit in rehab, and like “Teddy Perkins” it is very possible that what you see in rehab will prove of no apparent consequence to your decisions once outside the mansion of the most terrifying musician ever put on film.
Rehab can be the cutaway episode that elevates your television series to legend status, or it can be the “Andre and Sarah” of the ironically one-seasoned Forever starring Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph: an unearned side-step with no broader impact other than stopping your life for 30 of a thing (days in the case of rehab, minutes in Forever’s).
Do we need more versions of the same metaphor?
I could go on and on…like the Russian that ran on and on through the woods of Jersey…but I’ll stop there.
I’m just glad Chuck Klosterman taught me a different way to look at life, and, in the meantime, inspired me to write about it. It may very well be one reason I haven’t had to go to rehab.