Earlier this spring, the cast and crew of the NBC comedy Just Shoot Me gathered on a soundstage in Studio City, Calif., to film their 102nd episode. It was the fifth-season finale, and the actors were like exuberant kids on the last day of school. David Spade (Finch), whose latest film would be released in April, passed out Joe Dirt baseball caps to the camera guys and thanked them for "making me look taller." Wendie Malick (Nina) was anxious to drive back to her Topanga Canyon ranch and tend to her pregnant mare. And George Segal (Jack) and his wife, Sonia, were eagerly anticipating a summer stint in London, where George was to perform in a West End run of Art.
But it was a bittersweet night for me. After three years as a writer and two more as head writer for the show, I was overseeing my last episode.
My decision to leave was not easy. I've been a part of Just Shoot Me since the pilot. While I didn't create the show, I sort of inherited it, and I've come to know the fictional staff of Blush Magazine better than anyone. I know what they fantasize about, what embarrasses them, what you'd find in their desk drawers, even what they're like in bed. The actors think they know these characters best, and that's understandable, but they don't. I do.
Which is in large part why I'm leaving. In the beginning, we writers asked ourselves, "Who are these five characters, and what should we do with them?" This past season we found ourselves asking, "What haven't we done yet?" We've paired them off and unpaired them, married them and divorced them. We've explored everyone's backstory, from old flames to childhood traumas. And we had Spade's character sleep with an 80-year-old woman (our finest hour). What's left?
A lot, probably. There are tricks to keeping a middle-aged show fresh, such as weaving a new character into the mix. When Shelley Long left the top-rated comedy Cheers in the mid-'80s, her departure made room for Kirstie Alley and undoubtedly added several years to the life of that series.
So let's think. Next year, the Just Shoot Me characters could--no, no, not my problem anymore. But I do feel strangely guilty, as if I'm somehow deserting these pretend people. Why?
It's probably because there's so much of me in them. In my fiction-writing classes at Stanford (I took several; mercifully, most of my short stories are lost and forgotten) I was taught to "write what I know." It's certainly true in television: the best moments of our show usually began with a writer saying something like, "You won't believe what happened to me this weekend."
One episode this season, in which Maya (Laura San Giacomo) adopts a dog, leading her boyfriend, Elliott (Enrico Colantoni), to fear she's rehearsing to have a baby, was inspired by an argument my wife and I had over how to "raise" our new puppy. (Cris and I resolved our differences, and now she's pregnant with our first child.)
Another episode started as a writers' room debate over when it's okay for a married man to go to a strip club. And we found enough material for a two-parter in a producer's account of how he suffered a panic attack in front of his fiancée moments after proposing to her.
Of course, we exaggerate, rearrange and sharpen these true accounts--it is a sitcom, after all. On tv, it's hard to obey that other golden rule from my creative writing classes: "show, don't tell." Time and budget restrictions often mean that instead of depicting a character on a date at a fancy restaurant, we must instead have him appear at the office the next day and say, "Let me tell you about my evening."
Perhaps I have mixed feelings about deserting these characters because I want to believe they'll be lost without me. In truth, I know perfectly well they'll be fine. After all, fresh writers mean fresh ideas. Next fall viewers will happily watch as Jack, Finch, Maya, Elliott and Nina move forward in their fictional lives without any assistance from me.
By then I hope to be immersed in my own project, creating and shaping characters for a new tv show. But in years to come, if I'm feeling nostalgic, I can always catch Just Shoot Me in syndication, enjoying past episodes as one might pore over photos in a family album, and remembering when the little moments in my life once paralleled those of my old friends on the screen.
Marsh McCall, '86, is a television writer/producer who lives in Los Angeles.
