By E. Charlton Fuhrmann

Alan Smithee first approached me through my agent about writing for the Abruptly Amy series. At first I thought he'd come across one of the many screenplays I've had circulating around Tinseltown, but I later found out it was because he just went through a list of writers he could get cheap and pointed out my name at random. My agent set up an interview between the two of us, and instructed me to bring along beer.

At the studio I watched the Abruptly Amy pilot and immediately knew I needed to get a different agent. Still, Smithee offerred me a job without asking any questions, and you don't get that every day. So I figured I'd write for a bad show and do my darnedest to make it good. Well, less bad, anyway.

For my first script, Smithee gave me a set of very specific mandates:

1. Have at least one very emotionally-charged Amy outburst.
2. Include a scene showing a female character in her underwear.
3. Be sure the script has a fight between two women.
4. One really big explosion with lots of fire.
5. And for God's sake include the Daria cast, we need to sell this spinoff to them.

I pressed Smithee for details on what type of character development I should be doing, and he answered, "Char'cter-what now?" I explained the concept of fleshing out a show's characters to make them feel more real, and he responded, "Yeah, sure, kid, do wh'ever ya want."

"Okay," I agreed. "And maybe we should create a central antagonist for Amy, someone who could return every few episodes with a new nefarious scheme."

"Oh yeah, 'n' mebbe onea them things... starts with a 'P'..."

"Plot?" I asked.

"Yeah, thassit!" replied Smithee enthusiastically. "Speakin' o' pot, y'got any on ya?"

From this brief session, the seeds of "Corona, Corona" took root. The villain Corona Coronada was created, her backstory developed, the overall direction of the series honed and sculpted. In a few weeks' time, I met with Smithee again, presenting him with the final polished draft, and proceeded to explain to him how this individual episode would serve to set the tone and contextual framework for the series.

To which Smithee replied, "Shuddup, 'n' gemme s'more beer!"

Ah well. One small step closer to that Pulitzer.

Okay, now for the...

Yes, you read right. The author of the first follow-up episode to Abruptly Amy: A New Beginning is none other than C.E. Forman!

By the time I'd read Kara's original work, I was on more-or-less permanent hiatus from Daria fan-fiction, but I loved the script and immediately saw how it could make it as a series. I was happy to collaborate on a pair of episodes.

Kara and I discussed some general outlines for the direction of the series, and I decided having a recurring villain was a good idea. I wanted someone who would be superior to Amy (audiences love to root for the underdog, even if she is an oversexed, over-emotional, and practically bipolar basket-case). The idea for Corona was to have a villain who was campy, but whom you had to take a little bit seriously at times. As she turned out, she's one of my favorite villains I've ever created... It's a bit of a shame to waste her on Abruptly Amy, but she fits it well.

The plot, the remainder of which will be revealed in future episodes, came from an attempt to mimic the successful "mythology" approach of The X-Files... revealing a little bit at a time while dragging it out and making it as convoluted as possible. I reread the original AA several times to be sure I got all the details right. (I'm a perfectionist even when I write intentionally bad scripts.)

Beyond that I simply tried to imitate Kara's wacky style, and employ the same conventions she'd used in her work: Amy talking to the camera, Amy smart one minute but stupid the next, Andrea's unprecedentedly bad attitude, gratuitous cameos by the Daria cast, Amy doing action-hero stunts, etc.

I also made an effort to employ every action / detective movie clichˇ I would think of:

• Central villain has one very distinguishing feature.
• Crucial Plot Stuff (TM) always occurring right in front of a security camera.
• Head honchos don't listen to their best agent (Kristovo's line about "the Kingfish in D.C." not believing him).
• Villain hiding out in an Old Abandoned Warehouse (TM).
• Hero makes entrance by crashing through the ceiling.
• Explosive with big, obvious countdown timer attached. (You'll see this in any movie with a bomb in it, guaranteed.)
• Car not starting during the crucial moment. (Every horror/psycho movie ever made, ever.)
• Escaping huge fireball at the last second. (True Lies has the most ridiculously exaggerated example of this.)
• The Gratuitous Underwear Scene (or G.U.S.). (99.9% of PG-and-up movies these days have at least one.)
• Hero jumping from one moving vehicle to another.
• All the swordfight cliches (watch any movie featuring swordplay, I guarantee you will see the exact textbook moves I outlined here).
• Hero hanging from a great height.
• Villain taunts hero / reveals Evil Plans (TM).
• Villain screams as s/he plummets to doom.
• Villain apparently perishes but later turns out to Not Really Be Dead (TM). (Again, in most action movies, and on average 3 times in every horror movie.

(D'I miss any?)

C.E. Forman "artistic" touches and other miscellaneous crap you may have easily overlooked amid all the nonsense going on:

"Corona, Corona": The title is a play on "Corrina, Corrina" (feel-good family mush movie starring Whoopi Goldberg).

My famous "bookends" storytelling technique: Two similar scenes at the start and end of the fic, like a pair of bookends.

Andrea raising her fists triumphantly after being suspended, and her cry of "Yes!", is lifted from her reaction to winning the DeMartino pool in "The Big House".

Corona's tattoo webwork gets expanded to cover more of her body, indicating her increasing rank in the Society.

Corona's line, "Is Amy truly your savior? Or perhaps... merely a chimerrrra?" is a pretty sly reference to Kara Wild's "Amy: Savior or Chimera?" essay. It's also my personal favorite line.

Notice the many appearances of the number 18 in this script: Young Amy is 18 in the first scene, Daria has her 18th birthday, Corona *looks* 18, Andrea says she's the same age, there are 18 scenes, 18 distinct characters with speaking parts, I did 18 fics before this one (16 solo, 2 joint)... (No real point to this, just something I threw in.)

If you enjoyed this one, you'll like my next one as well. (It's #7, but keep tuning in and keeping up with the new developments in Abruptly Amy... we need the ratings bad!)