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There are no secrets anymore.
The circumstances leading to that video were no joke, though.
USA online grid went through asimilar reckoningduring season one ofMr.
Robot,when fans deduced that the title character was just a figment of the heros imagination.
(In that case, the writer stuck with the plot twist.)
Watching TV this way can feel a bit like predicting the end of a chess match.
The pieces all have properties that cant change, and the board has a certain number of spaces.
But he didnt really lose to a bunch of lights and wires in a box.
He lost to the combined intellectual power of IBM and anyone it contracted with.
Thats not a fair competition.
The one that unfurls on the web in the age of Peak TV isnt fair, either.
Those foolhardy souls who dare to compete with the hive-mind will get their posteriors handed to them.
Matt Zoller Seitz
SPOILERS AHEAD!
That was the biggest challenge.
We had to place that return-from-the-dead vocabulary at least five episodes away from Michaels return.
We also had to find a way to remind the audience of Michael without priming them for his return.
We wrote that knowing it was going to become relevant in a different way.
It just had extra meaning to us as writers because we knew where we were going.
I felt like those would be too close actually to his return.
I always write the recaps as well, because theyre such a part of the show.
I did take a poll to the staff about whether I should be including Michael in the recap.
There were maybe one or two dissents, but it was nearly unanimous: Dont include Michael.
Because youre primed to read recaps.
We dont do it to defy expectations.
We do it because we take a stab at tell what we think would really happen.
Joel Fields,executive producer and writer:We had this story set very early on.
We had pretty much outlined the entire season by the beginning of season five.
So by the time we started writing season six, we were pitching out the whole season.
So it always was going to be a theme about the emotional dynamics between the characters.
JF: We avoided writing it for the longest time.
And then we proceeded to rewrite it for several months.
JW: Essentially we had to make it believable that Stan would let them go.
It was just a very, very complex undertaking.
JF: It was about figuring out what emotionally would happen in the confrontation.
And yet theres that moment when the car pulls past and he steps aside.
It was not a moment written into the script.
That was more a visual moment that hadnt been written into the scene.
And then maybe a couple weeks later we started to hear, Hes thinking about Lauren.
Then you reedit the show a little bit differently.
You start to sort of see the narrative that maybe things arent as clear-cut as they seem.
Its about the editing, the pacing, the music.
You want everyone to know by that Monday, something is going to happen here.
And we spend weeks on that how do we maximize that?
Lets say that didnt happen and Arie was engaged to Becca and that was the end of it.
it’s crucial that you see it.
Ive got to see what this is.
He was a wartime captain.
It started coming out, like, Hes so not Starfleet.Hes so not the Federation.
What would explain that?
And we all, just as a staff, were like, What if hes from the mirror universe?
So you start just with his interactions with her.
So youll find that in episodes 10 and 11, we actually sort of sidelined Lorca a bit.
That ended up distracting them in a lot of ways, so they werent looking at Lorca.
