LYNCHIAN TREATMENTS

Here's my entry into McSweeney's Columnist Contest. Locate the winners here.

GOAL

This column would answer the question: what if David Lynch wrote and directed every show on television? The goal would be to expand on themes common to reality, news, and fictive shows from the unfortunately uncommon Lynchian angle.

SAMPLE: Gossip Girl - “Season Three Premiere”
Treatment

“It’s a bright, perfect morning in the Upper East Side—perfect for shopping,” So notes the plucky voice of Gossip Girl as Blair Waldorf plucks glistening fruits off a silver platter presented by her nanny, Dorota. “Miss Blair,” Dorota says, “this arrived for you this morning.” With a coy look, Dorota sets down the platter and hands Blair a seafoam green envelope. Blair snatches the note, running her lacquered fingers over the embossed “B” on the paper face. She runs a nail under the lip and smells the contents before flipping her hair and collapsing into the decadent wonderland of silks and furs that is her bed. “Miss Blair,” Dorota coos as Blair reads the note, “Is it from a boy?” Then, carefully approaching the bed as if an alter, “a new boy, perhaps?” Blair is trembling, and a snowy pigeon perched on the sill peers in through the glass.

Cut to a tunnel in Central Park, where Chuck Bass slips out of the sun and into the shadows. Out of the darkness, a cigarette flares beneath a brimmed hat. “Did you find what I’m looking for,” asks Chuck. “Can I get a light,” the man in the hat asks. Chuck notes, with instant hostility, the cigarette was just lit. “Do you want an answer or not,” the man asks, dropping his cigarette to the ground, where it sputters in a puddle. The man procures another cigarette with a gloved hand. Chuck produces a monographed lighter and lights the second cigarette. “What we want to find and what we mean to do only seem like separate answers,” the man in the hat says, handing Chuck what seems to be a pewter cigarette case. He puts out the second cigarette without dragging from it, turns, and leaves the tunnel.

Serena van der Woodson stands in her foyer drinking black coffee examining two men on dueling ladders hang a massive new piece by Damien Hirst. She listens to Trent Reznor’s instrumental Ghosts suite and ignores a call from Blair. She sends Dan Humphrey a text: What happened? Blair texts instead: It’s happening. There’s a knock on the door, and Serena calls out “coming!” Approaching the door she trips and drops the coffee, but opens the door anyway, flustered. There’s no one there, but on the ground a seafoam envelope with a letter-pressed “S” begins to stain.

Dan reads Serena’s text on a rooftop in Brooklyn, holding Vanessa Abrams tightly. He doesn’t respond to Serena, says over the sound of the wind: “Everything’s gonna be alright. You know that.” Vanessa begins to cry. “Since everything happened, I feel as though we’re all disappearing,” she sobs. Gossip Girl notes that there are times when even writers (referring to Dan) don’t know what to say.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Erik van der Woodsen tells a flustered Jenny Humphrey over mocha’s at Rufus Humphey’s gallery space, which he’s having trouble selling because of the economy. Eric flips through Polaroid’s that show Jenny at night, crossing the street, half inside a subway train, and unlocking the front door of her father’s Williamsburg loft. “Do you think I have a stalker?” Jenny asks. Eric turns over the light green envelope that contained the photos, which Jenny found in her oversized Hermes handbag that morning. “If you do,” Eric says, “I hope he’s cute.”

Cut to a dim, gurney-filled hallway. The camera moves slowly through flickering fluorescents, ominous ambient noise accompanying echoing footsteps in the background. It turns into a room where Nate Archibald rests, unconscious and on life support. A gloved hand reaches forward and begins to pull out Nate’s breathing tube, and a voice whispers “I know what’s in there.” Nate’s eyes open in sheer terror, the ambient noise crescendos, and the screen goes black.

Chuck is riding in his limousine, the open cigarette case in his hand. He drops the case when the limo strikes a woman and her shopping cart, which, of all things, is full of milk bottles. Chuck, somehow still sneering, slowly exits the car and pushes through the gathered crowd. The woman sits up, apparently ok. She points at Chuck and screams, “stop following me.” On the floor of the limo, in the back seat near the pewter cigarette case is an old-fashioned 3.5-inch floppy disk.

Serena and Blair meet in the park above a tunnel. The sun is going down and they have shared mysterious notes. “I don’t understand,” Blair laments. “I didn’t ask for things to be like this.” “None of us did,” Serena consoles. The camera pans backwards to a man in a brimmed hat snapping Polaroids of the girls embraced.

Later in the evening, just after close, Rufus Humphrey is looking at the pictures of Jenny when Chuck walks into the gallery. Jenny sits with arms crossed, frustrated with her dad prying into her life. “Jenny, this could be serious, I just want you to be safe,” he says. “Where’s Dan,” asks Chuck. “What, no hello?” Rufus remarks. Jenny grabs her coat and bolts. Rufus sighs, and tells Chuck that Dan was at the loft when he left. Vanessa, Blair, and Serena walk in, surprised to see Chuck. They ask Chuck why he’s there, and he says he’s looking for Dan. Serena says they just came from the loft, where they ran into Vanessa who had just received a green envelope full of Polaroids of the other girls in the park. Vanessa thought Dan would come to the gallery. “We better find him,” Rufus announces. He’s comparing the pictures of Jenny with the ones of Serena and Blair with increasing concern. He keeps turning one over and over. “That’s it I’m calling the police.” He sets down the pictures and Vanessa picks up the one Rufus couldn’t understand, which, rather obscurely, shows the leg of a hospital bed. “Oh my god,” she whispers. “Nate.”

Chuck’s limo is still covered in milk splatter as everyone rides towards the hospital. We learn (via Chuck Bass monologue and effected flashbacks) that since Nate graduated and quit his internship where the deputy mayor made a pass at him, the deputy mayor has gone missing. Nate was found the night of her disappearance in a subway tunnel badly beaten and mumbling “I know the answer.” He had no identification, and Chuck hired his father’s “best private eye” to locate Nate, as Blair couldn’t seem to focus on anything but the disappearance. Chuck learned Nate had been hospitalized via Polaroid (a picture of the hospital address, found in his fathers study), a fact he neglected to mention to Nate’s other friends, family, or Page Six. Rufus is particularly exasperated as the limo pulls into the ER bay. Serena and Blair share their green notes with the group, which both read “You’re next, from Nate.” Hysteria peaks when Vanessa exclaims, “is that Dan?”

Dan is watching a team of nurses tighten the straps on Nate’s gurney and wheel him into an ambulance. Blair and Vanessa each try to run to Nate, but are restrained. Rufus asks Dan what they hell is going on. Dan explains that something Vanessa said reminded him of the first time he visited Nate in the hospital, just over one week ago. “A man stopped me getting out of the elevator on Nate’s floor,” Dan explains. “He asked the time, then said he better disappear.” Chuck asks if he was wearing a hat and gloves. Dan confirms he was and Chuck rushes inside the hospital. As the ambulance doors shut Nate yells “She needs the answer! Get the answer!”

Chuck curtly asks the receptionist, who is drinking milk from a bottle, if they have an old computer sitting around the hospital that can read a floppy disc. “I think they have something like that down in the morgue.” Chuck heads downstairs, where the milk cart lady sits. “Have we met,” Chuck asks, coolly startled. “I don’t believe we have,” she says, “until right now.” Chuck squints at her, and hands her the disc. “I need to know what’s on this disc. Reception said you could help me.” She says, “Of course you do” and heads to a back room with an uncertain light source.

Chuck returns to the group with a crude printout. Dan examines Blair and Serena’s notes and denies that they could be from Nate. “That’s not Nate’s handwriting,” he explains, which he would know, since he’s a writer. Chuck’s on the phone. “Yes I’d like to report an emergency.” Chuck hands the printout to Dan and Rufus. It’s the address of the Williamsburg loft and, below that, the words “Next question.” Under his breath, Rufus says: “Jenny…”

Since storming out of the gallery, Jenny has managed some shopping and purchased a takeout dinner. She’s fumbling for her keys when she hears a strange noise behind her and sees a flash. The sound of developing film. She slowly turns and screams. The camera gets closer, and the Polaroid flashes illuminate her terror. Jenny drops her takeout and finds her keys. She slips inside and slams the door, just ahead of a black-gloved hand. A far off siren is heard, and the Brooklyn street appears empty, until the milk cart lady rolls up, a white pigeon on her shoulder. She picks up the takeout, then turns into the shadows of an alley.

“Sometimes disappearing is the easy part,” the narrator says, adding: “XoXo, Gossip Girl.”