Inside the Los Angeles Waves Empire: Showrunner David Stassen on “Running Point: Season 2

A casual viewer might be fooled into thinking that Running Point is just another sports workplace TV comedy series. On a surface level, this is correct. But, at its core, Running Point is a family comedy about the relationships between the Gordon siblings who manage the team. Sister Isla Gordon (Kate Hudson) is back for another season helming the Los Angeles Waves with her brothers Cam (Justin Theroux), Ness (Scott MacArthur), and Sandy (Drew Tarver) and their half -brother Jackie (Fabrizio Guido).

Mindy Kaling, Ike Barinholtz and Elaine Ko crafted this comedy series starring Kate Hudson around running the front office of a fictional basketball team in LA, taking inspiration from the life of LA Lakers owner Jeanie Buss.

The show is a densely-layered gag fest built upon on several principal layers – the round-robin quips, the sibling rivalry, and the reality of running a sports empire they inherited. These main characters all have this wound from their dead father that they’re never going to heal. Showrunner David Stassen, spoke with Creative Screenwriting Magazine about his work on the show.

How does the comedy in Running Point work?

The tragedy in the family affects how they behave in the workplace. Whenever we’re writing, we always come back to this need for love, acceptance, and appreciation that maybe they’re all lacking. You have to mix in serious moments to ground the comedy. Kate Hudson is great at playing those moments. You only need a few of them to make the show work. Whenever Kate comes into editing, those are the scenes that we dig out.

Everyone has a few zinger lines throughout each episode. If you go to Kate once or twice, we really clock how whatever struggle she’s going through is affecting her. It helps center the show to a place of reality even if you’re not the owner of a billionaire basketball franchise. Isla has been underestimated and underappreciated most of her life. There’s something universally relatable in what she’s going through.

David Stassen-

Having said that, there’s always a need and a place for characters that bounce off the walls. Characters like Al Fleischman (Ken Marino) are often portrayed more like caricatures. The first thing that comes up when you’re introducing a new character is that you want them to be memorable. You want them to to stand out and grab the audience’s attention. And luckily, Ken Marino has no problem doing that. He really leaned into the bling. He’s definitely inspired by the courtside Lakers fans with money.

I think the best bad guys on screen like Hans Gruber in Die Hard are smart. Al Fleischman might be ridiculous, but he’s also a shrewd businessman. He wants access and he’s going to get it. He might be denied by Isla or Ali Lee (Brenda Song), but he’s going to find a way in. He meets Cam, who helps him, and they get something from each other.

Being funny is always the first instinct in writing the show. But then, hopefully, you’re making all these characters, especially in our world where it’s so corporate business, have good business skills.

Elaborate on the underlying themes of the season.

I think this is a story about about people who feel underestimated. If you strip away the fancy offices, the basketball team, the cars and the houses, I think everyone has felt underestimated. The core of the show is about is a group of people who want more and work hard to get there.

I love how Season 2 ends. It’s a culmination of Isla’s work running the team and of Cam’s machinations to win back power. It feels like a 20-episode build up to the last two episodes of Season 2, where it all comes to a head. We have the big Isla-Cam showdown, and then we have the team going for the championship.

Discuss the sibling dynamics.

Cam is the leader. He’s the father figure. He always thinks that his way is the right way. It’s pretty self-serving and he doesn’t have a lot of self-reflection. The next oldest brother is Ness. He’s a jock and successful and has led a charmed life. But he doesn’t feel like he gets a lot of respect for his intelligence or the job that he does at work.

Isla was the biggest basketball fan of all of them growing up, but often overlooked. When she was ignored by her father, she shied away from the team. She was a party girl and embarrassed the family. Then she got a stable job and stayed in the shadows of the organization until this moment came when Cam promoted her for his own self-serving reasons.

Sandy is the one who was maybe ignored as the youngest child and has his own worries about not being accepted as gay by their dad.

Jackie Moreno is a half-sibling to the others. Jackie is like the heart of the family. He’s the one that did not grow up with the wounds and now the scars of their father. He’s kind of pure love and sees the best in people. There’s this constellation of emotions that each one has that forms a center that they all orbit around.

All the brothers are younger than Cam so they naturally look up to him as the leader. And Isla is the one who’s going always think, ‘Maybe there’s a different way  approach every problem?’

Cam Cordon (Justin Theroux) Al Fleischman (Ken Marino) Photo courtesy of Netflix

How does Season 2 continue the story?

At the end of Season 1, Isla ostensibly takes over the reins. This is really her season. She’s stepping into her own, finding herself. There’s no major great revelation, but you see that gentle universal progress that’s really making her a leader.

Season 1 was easier to write because you get to start with such a big challenge or a question for your main character. Will this underestimated person rise to the occasion? And everyone doubts her. By the end of the first season, she’s done it. Even though the last shot misses in Season 1 and they just lose the game, that was just one unlucky moment. She’s proven herself, but there’s more work to do.

So for Season 2, we came in and asked, ‘What’s the challenge?’ Cam is back. So now you have this guy lurking around the office who Isla loves, but she only trusts him about 50% of the time. He says he’s back just to be helpful, but Cam’s Cam, and he’s only going to look out for himself. She’s wary of him, but wants to believe in the best in people.

On top of that, she doesn’t want to be the one hit wonder if the Waves have a bad season. So she needs to keep the progress of the team going up to show that she deserves to be there.

How did you break Season 2 in the writers’ room?

When you’re planning the beginning of a season, and breaking the start of each episode idea, it’s very loose. We call it “blue sky,” just throwing stuff up, seeing what sticks, and what gets a great reaction from the room.

There a lot of funny jokes that are passed back and forth. So, we might think, ‘What if star player Travis Bugg (Chet Hanks) misbehaved and Isla took him out to dinner and he took it the wrong way and tried to kiss her?’ That’s an idea we had. And it easy to break. The scenes came naturally from that.

How would this be handled? What would the brothers do? And then you start to dig into the the specific order of the scenes. But even then, as it’s specific in the scene order and you’re figuring out the conflict, you’re still throwing out funny stuff and writing it down in the outline.

It’s not like a procedural, where each scene is likely color-coded. It’s very organic and no two episodes break the same way.

We’ll write note cards down and throw them up on a cork board. We’ll usually do an A story first and then figure out a B story that maybe uses the characters who aren’t too involved in the A story. Or Isla might be finishing up the conversation in the A story and then a B story conversation happens in the same scene.

Mindy Kaling and I have worked together for almost two decades, and we have been very lucky to bring in other writers that are very good at picking up what we need. There’s a lot of chemistry involved in breaking a story.

Travis Bugg (Chet Hanks) Photo courtesy of Netflix

What nuances did the cast bring to the show?

That’s a great question because all of the actors really take it so seriously. And as much fun as they have, they come to set having thought about where they are coming from in this moment. Maybe I’m eating a plate of cheese fries when Isla walks in? Then I’m distracted and I’m not giving her great advice. But she’s distracted by the cheese fries and doesn’t notice. They all want to bring a little more nuance to their character.

If you give them good material they want to run with it. If they see a good joke on the page, they want to do it and build on it. You have to decide it in post. How much can we add here? Let this go on for another twelve seconds. Let me use the first two sentences.

The world of comedy is its constant writing. It’s writing when you’re talking in the room, it’s writing when you’re making the outline, it’s writing the first draft on set. We’re constantly rewriting and then editing is rewriting the show. Everyone contributes on a comedic and structural level.

 

by Staff Writer

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