| Unsung Hero |
10-22-2021 05:42 AM |
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"Conrad losing Nic is a terrible tragedy and we felt like if we were going to tell a true story of grief, it would last for a really long time. And I don't think we wanted to spend multiple episodes, 10, however long it takes for a man to lose the love of his life and the mother of his 9-month-old child. We felt like we would play the loss and the grief and the, 'What the hell just happened?' for a couple of episodes, and then do the time jump so we could find Conrad recovered, on the brink of, ready for whatever new version of his life there would be," co-showrunner and executive producer Peter Elkoff tells ET. "It was really to avoid a prolonged grieving story because we wouldn't want to shortchange it and have him suddenly, three episodes later, without jumping time being like, 'No, I'm fine now.'"
"The reason why we ended 5x05 the way we did, with this little moment of like, 'Oh my god, she's four years old! It just jumped!' was because we're off for a week and it just felt like it would be a great sort of exciting 'Oh my god, they've jumped!'" Elkoff added. "But we don't show any of the changes people have gone through in those four years. We're just saying, 'When you come back next week, things are going to be different.' We thought that was a great way to get people excited [and] ready to come back when the show came back. The larger decision [was] we didn't want Conrad in grief for multiple episodes and secondarily to give the little break something exciting on the other end for the audience."
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ET: Why did you decide that a three-year time jump was a good amount of time to have passed?
Peter Elkoff: Well, two reasons. One, just really basic logic. If we have this really long period of time, people are going to be noticeably older in a way that is no fun for anybody. Because... It just felt like, "Oh, do I look that different than I did three years ago? Not really." But we could have fun with hair and beards and other things. Secondarily, if you go for a year, it's just not enough. You need multiple years, but too many years, and there's so much you have to [address]. How do you tell the stories of what happened in those intervening decades? Whereas three years you can kind of allude to the changes in people's lives in conversation. You don't have to do flashbacks, you can catch people up, like, "Hey, I remember when you went and did that." We felt it was a good, just enough [amount of time] so that also coming back in episode 6, things could be different. And things will be different when the audience comes back. In episode 6, the world's going to look a little different. People's lives are not exactly as they were and I think that's really exciting.
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With this time jump, you're essentially kind of kick-starting a new chapter for the show within the current season. How are you guys viewing episode 6 on? What has the time jump allowed you to really explore or do that you felt, had the time jump not existed, the show would have been saddled with?
We're going to have several characters in the show who will, as we move through the season, become possible romantic foils for Conrad. And I think our audience will really love it because there are three different people who could potentially wind up with him at the end of the season. We're going to keep sort of crossing them through his stories and we're going to make it look like in one episode, "I knew it! I know it's going to be her." And then you're like, "Wait, I don't think it will." You're going to get this really fun soap to follow of trying to figure out who Conrad ends up with. So that was one thing that we couldn't have done without the time cut because the audience wouldn't have accepted him. Three years later, you understand, yeah, it's time for him to find a partner. But three weeks later, it's not [acceptable]. And we've put little wrinkles in other characters' lives that would have needed time to develop. One of our characters, I'm not going to tell you who, will have written a book and become a celebrity in a way. It's really interesting how people react to a little bit of public notoriety.
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Is there anything else you wanted viewers to keep in mind following this intriguing twist?
We have Devon and Leela, and we'll have a new romantic couple at the hospital. Bell and Kit will become, while they won't be married, they will be together. And that's going to bring a lot of happiness and joy to our fans. We love them together and we love seeing how they interact. It plays into a lot of hospital business, as well as the personal lives that they lead. That's really going to be a real bonus for the fans. [The twist] gave us freedom. There'll be a couple of moments, five or six, when people will gasp. But happily.
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https://www.etonline.com/the-residen...clusive-173953
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TVLINE | What challenges have you encountered while writing the time jump, in terms of how much to change? You presumably weren’t looking to break up every couple or change everyone’s jobs at the hospital.
You want to change it so the audience feels that it’s exciting. It’s the fifth year of a show, and it’s always good to shake things up four, five, six years into a show with a very loyal audience and give them something new — but not so much that you knock them off the train and they’re like, “Whoa! I don’t recognize this. Raptor’s a professional baseball player? What?” That was exactly the challenge. [In Episode 5,] there’s really very little information about the changes. It’s just in that little ending, which is terrific, but it doesn’t tell you anything. [The changes] come in Episode 6, and we wanted to do that little piece at the end of Episode 5 to give people a sense of, “Oh, man, I can’t wait to see what’s happening three years from now.”
The Resident Season 5 Episode 5There are some new relationships that are heating along. Kit and Bell, as you’ve probably figured out, are a couple, which I think is something the audience will really appreciate. Everybody loves them so much together, even just as pals. Roles have changed at the hospital. One of our bigger characters is not doing what he had previously been doing. There are some big changes that are unexpected. When we get to Episode 6, a new character shows up who I think will really startle the audience in an excellent way. In Episode 7, too, we have a new character coming on who’s going to really turn the hospital upside down in an excellent way. We tried to really stick to that fine line of giving our characters new elements to their lives, while maintaining their identity.
TVLINE | Which of the new developments do you think viewers will be particularly surprised by?
I think people will be very surprised, when they watch Episode 6, to learn… [pauses] And I don’t want to tell you which character it is, but there’s one character whose circumstances will definitely surprise the audience. It will elicit very strong feelings from people.
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https://tvline.com/2021/10/19/the-re...ump-explained/
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Conrad’s not in the hospital anymore. He’s a private practice doctor. He’s made decisions about work-life balance and being a single dad that takes him out of Chastain and in the crazy hours of working in a hospital. So there are all these new moments for our characters that we just think the audience will really, really love.
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With Conrad being out of the hospital, what can you say about how he stays in the loop with the characters at the hospital?
Andrew Chapman: The story we’re telling is that he is in private practice. He’s what they call a concierge doctor, so he does house calls. He caters to the rich and famous, but also to the poor and uninsured because he’s that kind of heroic, crusading doctor. He still has privileges at Chastain, and he misses Chastain. More importantly, Chastain misses him. All the doctors there are desperate to get him back. So the first couple of episodes after the time jump will be about really digging into what his life is like as a doctor outside of the hospital, but he brings patients in because he can still work in the hospital, and sometimes when patients have really serious things you need to bring them to the hospital as opposed to just being in a clinic. So that’s how it’s going to work.
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Since this is 3 years down the road, is an exploration of dating again, finding love again, on the table for him?
Andrew Chapman: It’s 3 years down the road for the characters, but it’s only a couple of weeks for our audience. I don’t think that anybody’s ready to see Conrad Hawkins jump into a relationship right away. I think that we need to see him be a single guy for a little bit. That said, he’s definitely going to play the field. He’s definitely going to be the world’s most eligible medical bachelor, and we want to have fun with that and play that. Will any of the relationships be serious? No, probably not, but there are lots of possibilities for love further on down the line in the season, and we definitely are going to play with that. There are lots of people who would love to be Conrad Hawkins’ next big thing. We want to be respectful of the fact that Emily’s gone and that was a really significant relationship in the hospital and in the show. But that’s part of the beauty of having this time jump, life moves on, and people need to live it.
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Where is Devon at in his career after the time jump?
Andrew Chapman: One of the things that’s great about the time jump is it allows us to move people forward, so he’s gone from resident to attending. He has basically filled Conrad’s shoes in the hospital. He’s the big man on campus in the ER and in the medicine wing. He’s very much a full-blown doctor now with confidence and a master diagnostician and all the things that Conrad taught him to be. He’s really assimilated and moved on from that. Also, he’s now in this heavy-duty relationship with Leela, and they live together. We’re pivoting from Conrad and Nic as our central relationship to Devon and Leela as our central relationship. It won’t always be smooth, and there are going to be lots of big obstacles in their way. They are still young, still figuring it out, and there are all kinds of issues with potential marriage, potential children, other people’s families, and how they handle those things. That’s all going to play out through the rest of the season. It’s going to be good relationship stuff.
What about AJ? Is there possible romance on the horizon?
Andrew Chapman: So, 100 percent romance for him in the time jump. You’ll see at the beginning of episode 6 when we come back, there’s a great, really fun reveal as to where his heart lies. He is a little bit of a man about town now that Mina is gone and he’s over that. He’s sort of sowing his wild oats. We’re going to have fun with that. Malcolm-Jamal Warner is such a great actor and plays this so well. He’s also become something of a media star. He’s written a book, and he shows up on television doing medical interviews, so that will open up new avenues of romantic relationships for him but also career stuff and how you deal with being a famous doctor.
How has Trevor and Billie’s relationship evolved in the time jump?
Andrew Chapman: That’s a really great question and very interesting. First of all, we just adore Miles Fowler, who plays Trevor. We think he is a star in the making. His relationship with Billie will take a big turn. They’ve come to a new place over the time jump of how to get along with each other. I’m not giving away too much because it’s in one of the loglines in the coming episodes, but Trevor has gone to med school during the time jump. We’ll see when he comes back in episode 7 that he is an intern at Chastain. So now, whatever peaceful resolution he and Billie have had in their relationship gets completely upended because now they not only have to deal with each other, they have to deal with each other have at work as doctors, and that is really juicy, meaty stuff for the show.
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https://hollywoodlife.com/2021/10/19...ers-interview/
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I was going to say there’s a lightness to Conrad in that last scene we hadn’t really seen this season. Is that the Conrad we’ll see moving forward?
Exactly. We’ve noticed now in episodes that Matt Czuchry plays Conrad [as] a different Conrad. He’s the Conrad of Season 1, a little bit of Season 2 before his and Nic’s relationship really got solidified. He’s a little bit more badass. He’s a little bit more of the renegade he used to be. It’s the Conrad we first fell in love with, not that we didn’t fall in love with his relationship with Nic — it was everything, it was the anchor of the show, but she’s gone. We have to find a new anchor. His attitude towards medicine, towards patients is going to be that. You and I talked about this, how we want to play the idea of work-life balance. He’s a single dad, and he has to make sure he’s a good dad.
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Before the time jump, there were two established couples — Devon and Leela (Anuja Joshi), Jessica (Jessica Miesel) and Feldman (Tasso Feldman) — and Kit and Bell were undefined. So three established relationships now?
Yeah. Devon and Leela are hot and heavy and in a way our central relationship because they’re young and trying to figure out how to be in love and a couple while also working crazy hours at a hospital and saving lives. It’s not a done deal that they’re going to ride off into the sunset as the perfect couple. Jessica and Feldman will also have a big storyline about children. How will that play out? Will they be able to do that?
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Leela’s sister is visiting in the next episode. What can you tease?
It’s very much [about that] work-life balance. Her sister is a free spirit, and Leela believes in hard work and the calling of being a doctor, and so the two of them are very much in conflict about that. It’s really two sides of what it is to be a doctor in the hospital. She’s definitely the opposite of Leela and yet very much similar to Leela. How do you live your life fully? And how do you come to terms with working 24/7 saving lives and having a calling in life? We explore that very deeply between the two of them.
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https://www.tvinsider.com/1018784/th...aves-chastain/
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