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 Chemistry - Pairing Characters Is A Tricky Business |
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* The LOST parts are written in bold.
David and Maddie on "Moonlighting."
Mulder and Scully on "The X-Files."
Sam and Diane on "Cheers."
Great couples make memorable, even magical television. But for producers, creating a great couple requires an advanced degree in chemistry.
Building a show around characters intended to catch fire romantically calls for precisely the right mixture of elements. Otherwise, rather than a slow burn, the result can be a quick fizzle.
Meredith and McDreamy on "Grey's Anatomy" have plenty of heat - but what if Rob Lowe, who was reportedly in the running, had been cast instead of Patrick Dempsey? Would the result have been McChilly?
"There's that unknowable thing about chemistry that you can't be sure about even as you're sitting in a room," says Jenny Bicks, creator of "Men in Trees."
"Lost" executive producer Carlton Cuse cites the "luck factor" in casting, adding that "the alchemy of it is something that's really hard to achieve."
But what does he know? Until talked out of it by the network, "Lost" intended to kill off its romantic hero, Dr. Jack Shephard, at the end of the first episode.
In a lab, chemistry is an exact science. On screen, it's anything but.
Just ask "CSI" viewers, who are split over whether Grissom and Sara are cute or creepy as a couple. Or the "Lost" faithful who want Kate with Jack - a bunch just as passionate as those who want her with Sawyer.
Get the chemistry right, and even that can backfire. From the first episode, "Gilmore Girls" fans wanted Lorelai with Luke. Together, they were just so adorable that no other relationship for either of them felt right. Ditto for Ross and Rachel, whose off-again, off-again relationship hijacked "Friends."
Timing is the eternal challenge, says Bicks, a "Sex and the City" veteran whose "Men in Trees" balances a whole ecosystem of couples.
"Get them together? Keep them apart?" she asks rhetorically. "If you get them together, is it too soon? If you keep them apart, how? We think about this all the time."
But Bicks, and anyone who remembers "Moonlighting," knows that untimely consummation can be the kiss of death for a romantic comedy.
Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd famously combusted whenever they were together on-screen. Audiences demanded to see them together, and with the show spinning out of control - thanks in large part to the stars' dislike for each other - producers gave in. Their coupling was the TV equivalent of a cold shower.
Conversely, Donna and Josh on "The West Wing" had crackling chemistry, but they held out so long that when they finally fell into bed, the scenes felt like an afterthought.
Evangeline Lilly, who plays Kate on "Lost," mentions timing when asked whether she'd like her character to wind up with Jack or Sawyer.
"I think the writers have a very tricky job in dealing with when to bring people together and when to keep them apart," she says. "I wouldn't claim to be smart enough to figure out which is the best answer for that."
Bicks' answer on "Men in Trees" was to pair Anne Heche's Marin and James Tupper's Jack from the get-go.
"I wanted to get them together early because I felt as though it was kind of the dumb thing to keep them apart for years," Bicks says. "In reality, when two people are hot for each other, they get together fast, and then the complications come afterward."
The couple have now been torn apart by the return of Jack's old love - although Heche and Tupper are rumored to be together in real life. Just as on TV, the potential complications are mind-boggling.
http://www.sunjournal.com/story/2...ng_characters_is_tricky_business/
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