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"Behind the Script of Our Own Flesh and Blood" by David Klein
"Our Own Flesh and Blood" was written as a spec script (the industry term for a script written on the speculation that it will be produced) before I became a staff writer for VS4.
At first, I pitched a series of ideas to Dan, all of which he shot down. Most of the first batch dealt with Legion or the Millennium Group or serial killers in some way, and didn't really stand out from the direction the season was going in. Dan was adamant that the script be a stand-alone, something that didn't involve any recurring plot themes in VS4.
In the second crop of ideas was the tag line, "Frank investigates the death of two parents where the only evidence leads to their adopted child." Dan liked it and asked for a little more information. The interesting thing was that when I originally conceived the idea, the kid wasn't responsible. He had been set up by someone, and, naturally, Frank would be the one to figure it out. But the more I thought about the idea as I tried to expand it, the more I liked the story with the kid as murderer. For one thing, it just seemed very cheap to me to bring up the possibility of something as painful as a child committing such a brutal murder as just a plot device. In addition, the one connection I made very early on was the one between the child-killer and Jordan. It just seems like the audience has a tendency to gloss over all the tragedy in Jordan's and Frank's lives simply because they're fictional characters, and this was a chance to drive home the point that on Millennium, as much or more than any other series, the characters are real, and they are affected by what's happened them. This isn't The X-Files, where the main characters lose relatives left and right and hardly bat an eye.
With all of that, it was pretty much decided in my mind that the story would involve the kid as the killer. It also afforded me the chance to stay away from a serial-killer type episode, something else that was not really part of what Dan and Matt and the rest of the VS4 staff wanted to do. Dan OK'd the idea, and I went to work.
The original synopsis I created definitely differed from the one which appeared on the VS4, and I think that most of the changes were for the better. Originally, the case took place in Seattle (I wasn't really sure at that point whether Frank would still be with his brother at that point or not). Giebelhouse was Frank's investigative partner, and the one who was right about the child being the killer. The script ended much differently than the aired version, with Frank and Jordan on Mount Baker, an image of pristine purity, as in Lamentation.
Of course, when I found out that Frank would still be with Tom and Helen, changes needed to be made. Obviously, the story needed to be set in Baltimore so that Frank could have the intimate connection between Jordan's actions and Frank's case. This necessitated a shift in partners for Frank. Dan suggested I use Ryan. I was a little iffy on that, as I had only read the first three episodes at the time I began work on the story for "Our Own Flesh and Blood," and didn't have a great feel for the character. However, it also seemed like a good chance to really open up Ryan's character, as I didn't feel like a whole lot had been done with him. I also liked the fact that he would be right about the case, giving him an instant credibility that other Frank sidekicks (read: Emma) lacked.
The first draft came really quickly (almost a month before when Dan asked for it), although it just felt like some changes were necessary.
At Dan's behest, I dropped some pointless scenes involving Frank giving out mug shots of March to various bartenders, and trimmed a couple of other scenes. One scene which I had taken out of the first draft and later put back in was the scene in which Alden has killed himself. I liked the finality that lent to the script.
From there, I decided that I really needed to give Frank some narrative drive. He's very passive throughout the whole episode. I just wanted to get back to what I felt was the core of the series from day one, especially in season one, which I think that "Our Own Flesh and Blood" was a bit of a throwback to: Frank trying to defend his family against the sort of crimes he sees on a daily basis. However, the interesting twist in this episode is that he is trying to defend against Jordan becoming the killer, not the victim (a really scary thought). I just felt like Frank needed to do something, instead of just worry. So I added the subplot involving the television in Jordan's room. Originally, Jordan is just in her room sitting in bed when Frank comes in in the first act, and the script ends with the psychologist discussing the events of the episode. The scenes with the television came in after the first draft, as did the scene in the third act of the funeral of Alden's parents.
In the first draft, Alden was at his grandmother's house, and there was sort of a chase sequence, but it just didn't feel right. Additionally, I felt like I wanted to humanize his character so that the audience could understand that he was different from Danielle Barbakow and Lucas Sanderson and the other child killers we've had on the show. I didn't want Alden to be a monster: he was just a boy, a human being who was in a very dark place, and was pushed too far. In addition, the funeral scene gave me the chance to add in the dialogue about role models between Ryan and Detective Eagle, one of my favorite scenes. I really tried to touch on a lot of the factors that people bring up when they discuss kids killing people (role models, lack of friends, viewing of violent images, lack of discipline among children, etc.), not to say so much that those things cause the terrible actions, but just to put it all out there for people to think about.
The scary thing that I tried to play up in the episode is that this could be any of us, both the victims and the killers. It's a scary and very Millennium-esque thought that it's in us to act in this way. However, I tried very hard to steer clear of any morals to the story. I really thought that it would be just as cheap, if not more so, to try to put a pat message on the story. My feeling was that simple instructions like you might get at the end of one of Aesop's fables are for simple stories, and I definitely wanted to do something more complex, dealing with real human interactions and emotions, the kind of thing that you couldn't just slap a moral on. The point of the story, as much as there was one, was just to put this aberrant behavior out on the table and deal with it and the way it affects us. I think "Our Own Flesh and Blood" accomplished this perspective very well, and I'm glad that many of the fans agreed.
The acutal airing of the episode was interesting, because it was moved up from its spot at 415 to 409 due to the unforseen problems with Acolyte. Dan e-mailed me in the middle of the week and said, "There's a good chance your episode will air this Friday." I had to do a real quick rewrite and got the final draft finished on Thursday of that week, sending my changes to Matt, who, luckily, barely had time to implement them all.
In looking at the season, it was a real nice change of pace episode, just something to shake things up a little. I don't think that it quite matches up to "Rapture" or "Tribulation" because it isn't the same type of episode. It's not the kitchen-sink episode, where everything possible is thrown in. When I would talk about it with Dan and he would express his concern over the apparent lack of major twists and turns, I would always compare it to "Covenant" and "The Well-Worn Lock." I hope the fans would agree with that assessment, and to reach that level is as much as I could hope for.
TRIVIA:
- The original title was "Parallax," the definition of which is the way that an object changes place in relation to its surroundings when viewed from two different points. This was a subtle reference to the way that Frank and Ryan see the case differently because they view it from two different perspectives. This title, however, was jettisoned due to the overreliance on one-word titles in VS4. I suggested "Flesh and Blood" as a secondary title, which Matt wisely turned into "Our Own Flesh and Blood" to differentiate it from "Blood and Water."
- The interrogation sequence of Alden is directly inspired by the television show Homicide: Life on the Streets. Homicide is based on the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon, a non-fiction book which chronicles the real procedural practices of Baltimore's Finest (at least, those in the Homicide division). The interrogations on the TV show Homicide are based on those detailed in the book, which are, of course, taken from real life. One thing I always appreciated was the way that the detectives could get into the heads of the most screwed-up people and make them think that they empathized with them. This came through in Eagle telling Alden that he felt like doing the same thing. Originally there was a scene with Ryan asking Eagle if it was true, but in the end I decided that it didn't matter. It's better when you don't know.
- Det. Simon is named for David Simon, the author of Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets.
- The script, being so dialogue-based, is the longest of the VS4's first half.
BLOOPERS:
- Nothing major. One close call was actually spotted by fans, although I will confess to wondering exactly what caused them to think that the school was the same. In my final draft, the school was the same (an obvious blooper, as Jordan now lives in Baltimore, not just a different city but a different state than Falls Church); however, Matt made an excellent 11th-hour save, rewriting the scene in such a way that there are no longer any direct references, while not interrupting the flow of the scene.
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