This is going to be a little geeky and “inside baseball,” but if you guys weren’t TV geeks, you probably wouldn’t be here in the first place, right? That’s why I wanted to talk a little bit about the newest episode of Samantha Who?. This episode, titled, “The Dog,” was written by Pamela Ribon, who some of you may know as Pamie.
I first became aware of Ribon’s work through her Gilmore Girls recaps at Television Without Pity. Eventually she stopped writing about TV and started writing for TV, with jobs on such shows as Mind of Mencia and the short-lived ABC sitcom, Hot Properties. There were talks of her turning her second novel, Why Moms are Weird into a television show, but when that didn’t work out, she snagged a job on Samantha Who?.
While it can’t be said that Pamie runs a production diary, her blog does give some insight into the amount of time and effort that goes into producing a half hour of television. For instance, the first draft of this script? She started working on it at the end of August. Seven months for a half hour about wanting a baby, realizing it’s a bad idea, filling your baby hole with a dog (…and this post just took an unintended and awkward turn [let’s just move on and pretend it never happened]), realizing that’s a bad idea, and giving the dog away to a family that probably has cheaper shoes for said dog to snack on.
Other things you learn about producing a sitcom: The meaning of a “punch-up,” and exactly what the life of a writer is like in Post-it form. I’ll tell you one thing: you’ll never look at a joke about ovaries churning like a broken motel ice machine the same way again.
As far as the episode itself, Samantha and Todd are still doing their non-relationship dance. He’s kind of in love with her again (or really, just in love with her, because I don’t think he ever actually stopped), and she’s completely oblivious. What I love about the Samantha/Todd storyline is that ordinarily, I wouldn’t buy it.
It’s a big pet peeve of mine when one character is so obviously and desperately in love with another character, that he or she makes no attempt to hide it and does everything short of saying, “hello, attractive person with whom I already have a complicated, non-romantic relationship: I am obviously and desperately in love with you,” yet the object of his or her affection somehow manages to be so oblivious and/or self-absorbed that he or she has no idea that the other person has these feelings (I’m looking at you, Ross and Rachel!).
The Todd/Samantha relationship is exactly like this, but I can actually buy the reasoning behind it: One, Samantha has always been self-absorbed, and not even a car accident can completely knock that out of you, and two (and most importantly), she has amnesia. When every day of your life is devoted to reconstructing and recreating basic memories of the first 30 years of your life, you can be excused for not noticing your former boyfriend and current roommate quietly mooning over you from his perch on the sofa.
So I like what they’re doing with Todd and Samantha. It doesn’t seem as though they’re keeping them apart, it’s just something going on in the background while Samantha pieces her life back together. Of course, there are only a few more episodes left this season, so there’s no telling where Samantha and Todd will end up. That is, of course, unless Pamie lets something slip…
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on Apr 06, 2009 @ 14:00 EST5EDT
