(As the credits roll, shrink them to fill only half of the TV screen. In the other half, we see Amy and Andrea seated in chairs in the Barksdale living room, in front of the tree. Both are wearing Santa caps and smiling phony, tired smiles.)
ANDREA: Wow, that was quite an episode! I'm sure I speak for everyone watching when I ask: how the heck did you get out of that marshmallow man's stomach, Amy?
AMY: It was really quite simple, Andrea.
ANDREA: The miracle of computer technology?
AMY: (uneasy) Er... no.
(Cut to shot of Amy curled up in an upside-down fetal position inside a white cavern. Caption at the bottom reads: Unaired scene from "A Very Amy Christmas." Amy turns her face to one side and starts gobbling through the marshmallow with as much gusto as Homer Simpson. Cut back to shot of Amy and Andrea in the living room.)
AMY: (clearly embarrassed) The director literally had me eat my way out. Bastard.
ANDREA: And what about the real Snowman? The script never truly explained how he existed.
AMY: And it never will. That's the beauty of dropped plotlines. (Bt) Now let's answer some of our audience's questions about our show. Bring on the letters!
(Andrea reaches down and picks up four letters. She shows them to Amy, who does a double-take.)
AMY: That's all who wrote??
ANDREA: That's all who watch. (She tears into one letter, lifts it out to read it, then blushes and tosses it to the side.) Er... wrong address. (She tears into another -- with the same result. Andrea then looks at the third one, and her face relaxes.) Okay, here's one from A. Terwilliger who asks: "Is this the last time we'll be seeing you?? Was this the final Abruptly Amy?? Will we see you any more on Daria?? Please, please, please, please tell me!" The last sentence is written entirely in caps.
AMY: (cringing slightly) Well A., our producers are in overdrive to get Lifetime to commit to a full season, though I'll confess that the odds are against us. As for whether I'll be appearing on Daria, that's a big, big secret. (large, exaggerated wink.) You'll just have to watch.
ANDREA: I know I'll be there, standing silently in the background as always. My contract specifies that I make appearances on both shows.
AMY: But at the very least, you can catch me in the upcoming animated musical version of Survivor.
ANDREA: I'm... not... going to ask. (She quickly tears into the remaining letter, reads.) Here's a letter from (squints) "Mega Amy Fan" that reads: "Dear Abruptly Amy will you please, please tell me if you are going to say the sarcasm line every episode that one always has me laughing out loud and if not could you give the reasons why and will you always be with Kristovo and will we get more flashback episodes and will there be any new characters? (Pause. looks at Amy's puzzled expression.) That was the only sentence.
AMY: Oh. Okay. (Bt. She smiles warmly at the camera.) Dear Mega: of course I'll tell you everything -- after you learn proper spelling and punctuation. But by the time that happens, the answers will have long been revealed. Have a nice day.
VOICE: (off screen, angry) Dammit Barksdale, you have to treat the viewers with respect!
AMY: (looking off screen, bristling) The viewers can kiss my [bleep]ing [bleep]! I don't owe them anything -- my contract's expired!
(Andrea smiles stiffly at the camera as they continue to hurl insults at each other.)
ANDREA: Well I'm afraid we're all out of time.
AMY: (threatening) YOU made the Daria people think I destroyed Jane Lane's property!
VOICE: (equally threatening) I'll see to it that you never work in this town AGAIN!!!
ANDREA: We were so pleased to have you with us. And here's hoping for a full season of Abruptly Amy. (She gives the camera a thumbs-up.)
AMY: [BLEEP] [BLEEP] [BLEEP] [BLEEP] [BLEEP] [BLEEP] [BLEEP] [BLEEP]!!!
(The lighting in the room quickly goes dim. Cheerful Christmas music plays as the camera pulls away from Amy and Andrea.)
So with "A Very Amy Christmas," all eight of the "lost" Abruptly Amy episodes have been revealed to the public, for better or for worse. How many more will be made remains to be seen. I'll discuss that later, but first I would like to gleefully point out that in AVAC, I managed to weave references to the previous seven episodes as well as the pilot episode.
When I decided to do a Christmas episode, I knew from the get-go that it would have a reappearance by Big Harv and a lot of skewering of the holiday. At first I thought the storyline would be "Big Harv ruins Andrea's first Christmas with the Barksdales." Amy would be trying to get a resistant Andrea in the holiday spirit when she learns that childrens' snowmen keep coming to life and attacking them. Yet after the events in "Double in Paradise," it struck me that Amy would more likely be in a bah humbug mood, which would make her ripe for traditional Christmas story tampering. With her thus preoccupied, I was free to spin out a subplot in which Rita finally did something more than whine. One of the things this episode illustrates is how similar Amy and Rita are, deep down.
I also knew early on that just lampooning Christmas as a holiday wouldn't work for this fic, since it has already been done so many times on television, and done well. Thus, this fic turned out to be an amalgamation of satirical and bizarre, and frankly (WARNING: nit-picking mode) it did not have as sharp a focus as I would have liked. An ideal script would have tied together the absurdities of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas merchandise blending together with the Super Space Armor and Big Harv being a marshmallow man. Instead, those ideas just seemed to float there. Although I suppose the overarching theme was that commercialism is bad, caring about others is good. And surprisingly, I never undermined that theme. What is WRONG with me?! The holiday spirit must be infecting my brain. Furthermore, I was disappointed I didn't get to show Big Harv doing more neato tricks... but that's often the case when you're introducing a super-villain for the first (er, okay, second) time. You have to allow the suspense to build, which I think I did fairly well. And if we haven't seen the villain use its entire bag of tricks, that must mean the villain will reappear, and Big Harv will.
Of course, every time I dwell upon the weaknesses of my script, I remember that Abruptly Amy is supposed to be a bad show. So shall I take these weaknesses as a sign of triumph? Ah well: here is a list of bits that I am pleased with:
And now for some cliches:
Some references to outside sources:
And some random points of interest:
Well that's it for unordered lists...
I'd say that I liked writing "A Very Amy Christmas" better than "A.A. A.O.K." It was quirkier and more fun, and therefore will likely be better remembered than "A.A. A.O.K." At the same time, it was interesting to note that while Acts One and Two seemed to flow better in "A Very Amy Christmas," "A.A. A.O.K." had the better Act Three. It seemed to tie up all of the loose ends better, whereas I think "A Very Amy Christmas"'s loose ends were nearly too much to handle. Though again, given that Abruptly Amy is supposed to be bad, maybe that's a good thing. Still, as a writer, I look for things to be as tight as possible.
A.A. as a Satire: Does it Work?
That's part of what has made this project so frustrating for me. A.A. is the first time I've tried writing straight satire. A part of me, the part looking to hone my skills as a writer, wishes to know that I am doing a good job at it. However A.A. has so many layers, creating a "mirror" effect, that I can't tell exactly what I'm successful at. Should I feel proud if people tell me that the script was painful to read? Or if they tell me they couldn't stop laughing?
Abruptly Amy is supposed to be a really bad show written by bad writers that makes use of all of the hideous cliches rampant in television. Yet it is also supposed to be a project in which good writers, fully aware of the cliches, set out to mock bad television. So where are the lines drawn?
These questions aren't as easy to answer as one might think. If they were, real television satire wouldn't have so much trouble. Look at The Simpsons: by now, the camps are evenly divided between "Stop beating this dead horse!" and "This show will NEVER stop being funny and relevant!" And not too long ago, the Daria community got into a major tizzy over whether Daria should have stuck with its Season One satirical roots instead of going the Character Development route. Overall, it's very difficult for people to know when a line has been crossed from satire to serious, or serious to satire. Satire is a wispy thing. I was told that once and this project certainly brought it home to me.
It almost depends on the individual whether something comes across as satirical or not. Has the individual had the kind of experiences that would allow him/her to understand the joke? Is the individual sophisticated enough to distinguish the sign posts left in writing that say it is a mockery? With regard to the A.A. project: most people going in were fortunate enough to know that we were mocking Daria's mythical aunt. We had certainly explained it enough times, especially in the FAQ. Whether they found it funny depended upon how much they a) felt Amy ought to be mocked, at least in a mostly benevolent manner, b) understood the squabbles and pressures of Daria fandom, c) understood the pressures of being a fanfic writer, particularly one held in high esteem, and d) understood and appreciated the silly cliches that run rampant in television and movies. If they understood even one out of three, they probably received great amusement from these fics. If none of the three, they most likely didn't. Some of my regular fans (who, ironically enough, never wrote me about how they liked my more on-canon work) informed me that they couldn't get into A.A. at all. Others loved it right off of the bat. Others were resistant at first, but slowly came to embrace it. It's true: Abruptly Amy demands a lot more from the reader than the average Daria fic. You almost need to put aside all thoughts of Daria as you read it, lest you become too outraged on the show's behalf. ; >
Darians were lucky to have the background story of A.A. before going in, but what about someone approaching it cold turkey? How would they know if it was good satire? This is where the effectiveness of our writing comes into play. Judged by the standards of seasoned satirical writers, I would guess that our writing was uneven. Often on the mark, sometimes not. Sometimes I wondered if that which seemed so funny in script would translate onto the TV screen. Sometimes we sacrificed satire, with its underlying relationship with the truth, for the just plain wacky and bizarre. Wacky and bizarre is certainly not a bad thing, but one has to be careful not to rely on it as a crutch, or else the audience will become desensitized to it. The show would then fail to have the impact it could have had. This happened to The Simpsons when the writers ran out of things to subtly mock and focused on having Homer do increasingly outrageous things, until nothing he did surprised us anymore. Nor did it amuse us. A show is often at its funniest and most satirical when things are suggested.
At least we have an excuse for the weaknesses in our satire: we're young writers experimenting with a style unfamiliar to (most of) us. And does weakness in satire always mean weakness in writing? From what I've gathered, A.A. is a show that moves at a quick pace, and always seems to hold its tongue in cheek. It is meant to project an air of fun, and how well that air comes across depends upon how good the writing is. I can't speak for the other writers, but I worked damn hard to make the action and dialogue flow in a snappy enough manner that if a joke were to fall flat, things would quickly move on. Dialogue was honed to allow as much humor as possible, but if something didn't work, the scene wouldn't have to depend on it.
Another reason for any weakness in A.A. could be my fault: I may have made the focus too broad. I've often debated whether, if I actually tried to sell A.A. to Hollywood, I should narrow the scope to focus on the more intricate details of a woman from the big city stuck in her home town. But then again, some of the most successful shows have cast wide nets -- take The Simpsons. I suppose the most important thing is never to stray too far from the original premise (woman from the big city in a small town) and to keep the humor sharp.
That leads me to Question Number Three. In my opinion, making the characters something more than walking vehicles of satire is a good thing. That way, while the humor would always be a strong part of the episode, the show would not always have to rely on it to hold interest. The difficult part is knowing how individual to make the characters. Right now, I would say we're aiming toward making the A.A.s more individualized than the Simpson characters, but less so than the Daria characters.
The bottom line to all of this is that I feel A.A. has done an excellent job tackling television cliches thus far, but that there's even sharper satire around the corner. Which brings me to...
Future Plans
It appears very likely that we will be doing at least five more A.A.s for a full season. However, it wouldn't be until spring -- Madame la Creator needs to get some rest and focus on her DWUs. Plus, I'd need to explain how the episodes got the green light, given that a) only eight episodes of A.A. were made originally, b) Amy was so ashamed of her show, she treated it like "a nightmare from which she's awakened," c) Miguel Rodriguez (aka Kristovo) became blinded by lasers, and d) Alan Smithee began working in the fast food industry shortly after A.A.'s cancellation. I plan to do that in "An Interview With Amy Terwilliger," which I'll write as soon as I have time.
There's plenty of room for expansion in the A.A. Continuum. While I like the kick-em-bash-em aspect of the show, I would also like to see Abruptly Amy focus more on its original premise: a woman who is a fish out of water. I.e: Amy, used to the big city life, has to cope with living in a small town. Not just any small town -- her home town. Thus far, the episodes have dealt very little with this, even though a whole mess of shows like Judging Amy, Providence, and Ed are ripe for skewering. The town of Rutherford could be developed in a way that would not make it a carbon copy of The Simpsons's Springfield. I intend to sit down very soon and write some ideas for an arc. The ideas won't be completely fixed, however, as I want to allow some room for creativity on the part of my collaborators. Some writers have asked to join the team, and I'd like their input as well.
At the very least, if no one has the energy to continue with the episodes, I plan to play around with A.A. with the intent of possibly, possibly selling the idea for real. Of course that would require my stripping it of its Daria connections (and let's face it: they aren't real strong). I would also have to work on really, really hard to figure out how best to present it as a satire. I might end up stripping it of its spinoff connection altogether; I'll have to see...
Special Thanks to My Co-Conspirators
If I've sounded as though I've been nit-picking about A.A., don't take it as a sign that I'm unhappy with your work. Quite the opposite! Working with you guys has been a wonderful experience. You opened up avenues of possibility for Abruptly Amy that I had never considered! This was truly a collaborative effort. Although a whole other season's worth of episodes might yet be written, it won't be the same as the first time around.
Try as you might to deny it, you had fun writing these scripts. Or if you didn't you did a great job faking it. As I said earlier, the tongue-in-cheekiness of the scripts really came through to me. It was great to see your interpretations of the characters, and to receive your additions to the A.A. canon.
Just as wonderful was seeing how people originally not associated with the project became passionate about it. I originally asked Milo Minderbender (goes by "Mindbender" in the pics) if he would be interested in doing fan art for the episodes. I figured he might do a few, or maybe forget altogether due to time restrictions, but no -- he did sixteen pieces of fan art. Great ones, wonderfully detailed, giving Abruptly Amy an air of authenticity it might not have otherwise had.
Then there's Chad Page, who created the first genuine A.A. fanfic. Since then, a few other people have been clamoring to write fanfics. And Steven Galloway, whose phony reviews have been a real treat, and will soon be up on the A.A. website. Also thanks goes out to Rey Fox, Medea, Leopard Lady, Ssd, and Pat Leland, to name some. Why am I thanking you? Why not?
I must say that as project leader, I learned a great deal about directing fellow writers and about promoting the project. The biggest lesson was that it was better to guide rather than to be pushy. Of course, not being pushy wasn't too difficult, given how easy my group was to work with. Other big lessons: I should give guidelines as quickly as possible, and be as clear as possible. And that I should follow up on everything, which certainly takes a lot of energy. Also, I should be prepared to make snap decisions, such as when I had to figure out how to promote A.A. during the first few weeks. I walk away from this part of the project a little wiser... I hope.
Before I end this bloated postscript and reaffirm my status as long postscript champ, I would like to dedicate this fanfic to my doggy, Clover: the best furry companion a girl could have. May she rest in peace.
This fanfic is the property of Kara Wild, copyright December 2000. All rights reserved.
The words disappear and the screen goes dark...
(Suddenly we hear a gasp, off screen. Cut to shot of Daria sitting boltright up in bed, obviously during the middle of the night. She breathes heavily, sweat glistening on her face.)
HELEN: (off screen, soothing) Shhh... it's all right, sweetie. It was just a terrible dream.
QUINN: (off screen) Yeah, Daria.
JAKE: (off screen) Yeah, kiddo!
DARIA: What a relief. It seemed so real. Mom, Aunt Amy was this idiotic F.B.I. agent living with Aunt Rita and this woman who was supposed to be Grandma. Her life was a nightmare of bad acting and gratuitous sex and violence. What was worse: she kept trying to make me come visit her. You guys were there, too, hating it as much as I was.
QUINN: Eww! Quit giving me a rash, Daria!
HELEN: Well you're safe now, with your loved ones.
DARIA: Yeah. I never thought I'd be so happy to see... you...... guys...
(Her words trail off as she looks off screen. Slowly pan over to show whom Daria was speaking to. Not Helen, Jake, and Quinn, but Amy, Rita, Andrea, and Ruth. They smirk at her and do a little wave. Daria screams.)