This Creepy Nihilistic Thing

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 29 May 2014.

Plot-wise, I feel like the Farthington stuff is really coming together.

Thief starring James Caan and Tuesday Weld

The problem I'm seeing is that it has in some ways crowded out the stories of Joe Lazarus, Arthur White's Brand New Life, and Will Witkowski. I don't want to undo any of the Farthington stuff; it's really good. I just want to figure out how to revise and reinsert a few things it has eclipsed.

Originally (and I think we disagreed on this one a bit), I really loved the idea that at some point, Arthur came really close to making the sort of music he was born to make. I saw Brand New Life being the first step in that process and an escape with Joe Lazarus being the closest he came to fulfilling it. Before Farthington, Will was the nemesis who crushed Arthur right when he was about to become the artist he was supposed to become.

The Farthington plot eclipses all that in a lot of ways, so we've got to figure out how to give its impact back. I really don't want to lose the idea that, at some point, Arthur almost became the artist he could have been. He won't stand up as a protagonist if we never feel that he could have been great. At the same time, that feeling we develop is something to make suspect, as the bit of heaven Arthur can show people on earth is only a faint glimmer of what heaven has in store for us. We should be torn between the idea of loving the bit of heaven we see through Arthur and the lesser thing rooted in the American Dream, lamenting that Arthur could have "made it."

So, I don't want to touch the Farthington plotline.

I just want to make room for an Arthur who almost made it and wasn't just a victim; a Joe Lazarus who almost saved Arthur and was dashed by failure; a Will who is the flawed but protective brother who tries to save Arthur from Carlton Farthington; and a Brand New Life that for a period sets Arthur on a positive path.

Reasserting these ideas may complicate the story a bit, but if we're thinking of five TV seasons, we need several ups and downs and some squirminess in terms of how the audience reads the characters.

I don't yet have a clear picture of how to reintegrate these pieces, but my hunch is that after Will rescues Arthur from Farthington and gets him his first treatment, Joe Lazarus helps bring Arthur back to his true form; Will then works with Joe to put Brand New Life together; Will sees the initial success and starts doing a bunch of dumb commercial stuff in his eagerness to make Arthur a star; and the tension that creates between Will and Joe drives Arthur back into the predatory hands of Farthington, who validates Arthur's vision and lures him into the heroic quest to save Iceland.

Maybe after Will kills Farthington, we think he's a good guy looking out for his brother. But then he has Arthur committed until the money runs out, at which points he dumps him on Linda. So maybe what looks like Will's heroic quest actually ends up being this creepy nihilistic thing...more like the end of Thief starring James Caan and Tuesday Weld.