Why are the best TV episodes always the ones without the main characters?

I n episode four of Hulu ‘s brilliant culinary drama The Bear , pastry chef Marcus (played by Lionel Boyce) learns how to make a pudding in Copenhagen . That’s it, really. He plods around the Danish capital at dawn, sampling the best baked goods the city has to offer, before top chef Luca (Will Poulter) patiently guides him through the creation of a gourmet dessert. Why, then, is this one of the best TV episodes of the year? ‘There’s something really beautiful and unique about seeing a Black person in a foreign place where they’re being treated really well. Not even really well, just like everybody else,’ screenwriter Stacy Osei-Kuffour tells me about the episode, titled ‘Honeydew’, which she co-wrote. Fans of The Bear will know that the Jeremy Allen White-led series, about a Michelin-starred chef who returns home to run his deceased brother’s sandwich shop, is typically intense, to say the least. There is swearing, shouting and the occasional hurling of kitchen utensils, all set in the restaurant’s gritty, Chicago locale. Osei-Kuffour’s tender episode could not be a bigger departure from the show’s usually relentless pace. Watching ‘Honeydew’ reminded me of the best thing I’d seen on TV this year, the third episode of HBO’s devastating video game adaptation, The Last of Us . Like in ‘Honeydew’, the main characters Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) are absent in the episode, titled ‘Long, Long Time’, and replaced by two new ones who have almost no bearing on the show’s overarching plot whatsoever. The post-apocalyptic drama, about a deadly pandemic that turns infected people into fungus-controlled zombies, takes a beat to explore a poignant gay love story between two survivors, drawing career-best performances from Parks and Rec star Nick Offerman and The White Lotus’ s Murray Bartlett. The result was so emphatic that, for days, ‘Long, Long Time’ was the only thing anyone could talk about. It currently has a 98 per cent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and has earned both Bartlett and Offerman Emmy nominations for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. Lionel Boyce (left) and Will Poulter in ‘The Bear’ series two, episode four These two are just the latest in a long line of genre-defining, standalone episodes. There’s The Sopranos’ famous ‘Pine Barrens’, which sees gangsters Christopher (Michael Imperioli) and Paulie (Tony Sirico) lost in the vast, snowy woodlands of New Jersey to hilarious effect. And who could forget the nightmare-inducing introduction of the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who ‘s ‘Blink’, starring a fresh-faced Carey Mulligan in an episode which otherwise barely features David Tennant’s eponymous Time Lord. These episodes could easily be described as ‘filler’ if they weren’t so utterly excellent. So, why take the risk? Pacing has a lot to do with it. ‘We talked about taking a breath,’ Osei-Kuffour says of crafting ‘Honeydew’ with her co-writers. In the episode, Carmy (Allen White’s head chef) sends Marcus on a pilgrimage to the pastry mecca to learn new skills and form new ideas for their restaurant. By leaving the Chicago venue’s fractious parameters, ‘Honeydew’ takes the heat out of the kitchen. We watch as Marcus stretches, presses and folds dough, his imagination expanding with new inspiration. In one scene that still puts a lump in my throat, he calls his mother for whom he is the main caregiver. ‘I was just calling so you could hear my voice,’ he says. ‘I really like the city. It’s really cool. The place I’m staying at is a boat. The restaurant is beautiful. It smells really good in there and I’m really happy I’m here. I really wish you were here, too.’ I felt quite relieved that it wouldn’t be the blockbuster of the season. As it turned out, it was the blockbuster of my career! Steven Moffat on Doctor Who’s ‘Blink’ In an interview with Gizmodo , The Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin used exactly the same language as Osei-Kuffour to describe ‘Long, Long Time’: ‘You kind of have to have this weird, almost music-like sense of rhythm if you’re building a series. And one of the things that I felt pretty strongly was, look, we’ve got this insane first episode where the world falls apart and there’s tragedy. And the second episode is incredibly tense and features danger and Clickers [zombies] and tragedy. We need a breath.’ In other words, standalone episodes allow audiences to recuperate, while also offering a chance to explore characters who aren’t usually at the forefront of the show. It’s a luxury unique to the medium of television. ‘I think too, we’re at a time in television where certain characters are finally getting their due where, in the past, not only was there not an episode about them, there wasn’t even a f***ing scene,’ Osei-Kuffour says. ‘Two gay men falling in love during an apocalypse? That’s insane.’ Murray Bartlett and Nick Offerman in ‘The Last of Us’ Of course, there are other, less sexy reasons for standalone episodes. They are sometimes forced on creators due to the need for ‘bottle episodes’ – where a set of characters remain in one location for an entire episode, like ‘Fly’ – which are often born out of budgetary restrictions.’We were hopelessly over-budget,’ Breaking Bad series creator Vince Gilligan admitted in 2013, noting that moving production trucks to a new location costs between $25,000 to $35,000. Doctor Who’s ‘Blink’, I learn, was also forged in similar conditions. ‘So, is this a feature about episodes born out of production issues?’ writer-producer Steven Moffat, who wrote ‘Blink’, asks me as I join him on our Zoom call. It is not, I say, but I’d love to hear about them anyway. Due to time constraints, he explains, Doctor Who will often film multiple episodes at the same time, and, unlike the real Doctor, the actor playing the Time Lord cannot be in two places at once. ‘We call them Doctor-lite episodes,’ Moffat explains. ‘On one occasion, I just locked Peter Capaldi [the Doctor’s 12th incarnation] up in the Tardis. So he was in the episode, but there was only one location so we could shoot his scenes in just two days.’ For ‘Blink’, Moffat had just one day with Tennant at his disposal, instead crafting the entire 2007 episode around a then-unknown actor named Carey Mulligan. ‘I felt quite relieved that it wouldn’t be the blockbuster of the season,’ Moffat said of landing the Doctor-lite episode. ‘As it turned out, it was the blockbuster of my career!’ Moffat’s Weeping Angels transpired to be the most popular villains in Doctor Who history (as voted for by fans) and went on to spawn numerous reprisals such as ‘The Angels Take Manhattan’ (2012). The Angels are a race of predatory creatures disguised as statues who stalk their prey when they’re not watching before freezing again if spotted. If they catch you, they’ll drain you of your life potential and send you back in time. As Moffat points out, the fear factor in ‘Blink’ is ramped up by virtue of the Doctor’s absence. ‘The Doctor turns the scary off. That’s what he does. He comes in and makes jokes about the monsters… So getting rid of him instantly makes everything more frightening.’ Moffat likens the concept to JRR Tolkien’s classic novel, The Hobbit . As Gandalf the Grey and his band of Dwarves approach the terrifying Mirkwood Forest stretch of their journey, the wizard suddenly announces that he must leave them for this portion of the quest – ‘He’s the only one that’s any good!’ Moffat says. A young Carey Mulligan in ‘Doctor Who’ The methodology can be used to have the opposite effect in series that are usually fraught with danger. Offerman’s character Bill, for instance, represented safety in the Last of Us video game. He is a trained survivalist capable of building an impenetrable oasis (comprised of his former suburban neighbourhood) while the world falls apart around him. For a brief moment, the audience can relax in Bill’s safe haven without having a face-eating zombie in sight. ‘The quiet episodes make the tenser, more dramatic episodes pop even more than they usually would just by their contrast,’ Breaking Bad ‘s Gilligan pointed out in a past interview. Osei-Kuffour admits she initially ‘pitched all this crazy s*** to happen to Marcus’ in Copenhagen, but the showrunners steered her towards a calmer alternative. ‘I really learned that sometimes less is more,’ she says, ‘and it’s been really beautiful to see how moved everyone is from this gentle, quiet episode.’ All of this serves to highlight that TV is an incredibly freeing genre. It’s like the Swiss Army knife of entertainment. Don’t like that character? Kill them off. Run out of money? Just shoot an entire episode in one room. ‘It’s one of those things that television series can do that a movie can’t,’ Moffat says. Of course, with the advent of streaming and prestige HBO shows like Succession and Game of Thrones, small budgets are much less of an issue than they were in the past. While we may therefore see fewer ‘bottle episodes’ confined to single locations, standalone episodes are here to stay as producers are given more freedom (and more money) to experiment with their genres. ‘I don’t think that a couple of years ago, Marcus would have had his own episode,’ Osei-Kuffour says. ‘I just think those were the times and obviously that is changing. I think that is why these episodes are having such an explosion, because it’s so new, but also so exciting.’