'And Just Like That' Kills A Character Twice – Seriously

Sandy offers a behind-the-scenes look at a major TV show that recently made a surprising mistake—killing off a character twice. How did this happen, and who was responsible? We’ll explore these questions with a focus on "And Just Like That." Even if you haven’t watched the series, you’ll find valuable insights here. Additionally, Sandy discusses how continuity is usually managed in TV production, highlighting Gregg Nations, the talented script coordinator from "LOST," as covered in a New York Times profile.  

Executive Producer Kristin Overn, Executive Producer/Creator Sandy Adomaitis, Producer Terry Sampson, with music by Ethan Stoller.

Transcript

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Hello, my name is Sandy Adamis, the social media director for the page, international Screenwriting Awards, and your host for the Writer's Hangout. A podcast that celebrates the many stages of writing, from inspiration to the first draft, revising, getting a project made and everything in between. We'll talk to the best and the brightest in the entertainment industry and create a space where you can hang out, learn from the pros, and have fun. Hey writers, it's Sandy. I'm coming to you from Studio City, the jewel of the San Fernando Valley. I'm recording late at night and the moon phase today is waning Gibbs. Writers. I'm interested in watching the movie, the Salt Path. The Salt Path came out In 2024, it was written by Rebecca Linky is based on the book by Rainer Wynn. The book was huge. The movie stars Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. And it is based on the true story of a couple's journey along the England's coast. After legal troubles leave them homeless and they receive a shocking terminal illness diagnosis, the couple decides to walk the 630 miles south width Southwest coast Path from Minehead to pool, battling the elements, physical challenges and their own fears, Now I searched, but the movie isn't streaming in the United States. I was gonna get a VPN, but then I decided to just ask you guys for help first. does anybody have access to salt path? Again, I wanted to rent it. I can't, I'll watch it on a streamer. I'm already paying for it, but I just can't get ahold of it. Now, the book, the Salt Path, is described as a true story, but recent. Investigations have raised questions about the accuracy of some details regarding the couple's loss of their home and the illness. While the author Rainer Wynn maintains the story is true and has provided some supporting documentations, others argue that key aspects of the book were fabricated. Or misrepresented. Now I remember James Fry kids. Check that out. Google James Fry and Oprah. Oh my. I'd like to do a deep dive on this and maybe do an episode about the book in the movie. So again, if there's somebody out there who can give me access to the movie, I would appreciate it. Now today we are going to talk about what the heck is going on behind the scenes of a major television show that just made a mistake by killing off a character twice. Now, how did this happen? Who made this mistake? The series is and just like that. Now, I wanna say upfront, even if you don't watch and just like that, you don't need to to enjoy this episode. I'm also going to get into how continuity is usually handled by talking about. Greg Nations who was so good at his job as the script coordinator on, lost the New York Times, did a profile on him okay. In the HBO series. And just like that, starring most of the original cast from Sex and the City. Sarah, Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kristen Davis reprised the roles as Carrie Bradshaw, Miranda Hobbes, and Charlotte York. Golden Blatt. I. Respectively, no. Samantha Kim Catrell in sight. She's supposedly, the character is supposedly in London and I'm assuming till HBO backs up the money truck London. She shall stay at the helm. Once again is Michael Patrick King. I once tried to make him laugh at a party. He just looked at me horrified. Now, there are several issues with and just like that, which I will not get into here, but the fans of Sex and the City Hate watch this series, myself included, but we cannot turn away. We are loyal to the characters and we will take. Any scraps, Michael, Patrick King, and the writing staff will throw at us. So do the creatives behind the series know this and say to themselves, oh yeah, that character we killed off twice, suck it. This is what happened on the latest episode of and just like that, which aired on July 3rd on Max, A-K-A-H-B-O-A-K-A-H-B-O Max, home of the Sopranos. It's not tv, it's HBO. Okay. There was a plot hole regarding the character Lisa Todd Wesley's. Father Lisa is played by Nicole Ari Parker, who played the lead in one of my favorite overlooked movies. It is called Dancing. In September, Nicole played a TV writer, executive producer, struggling in Hollywood, and the title comes from when your series gets picked up in September, you're dancing Now in season one, Lisa mentions her father's death, but in season three, the current season, the episode that just aired. he dies again. This isn't an offscreen character. He was played by Billy D. Williams and when he died in episode six, titled A Silent Mode. Lisa cries on the phone to Charlotte saying Her dad was 90 years old and died of a stroke. His funeral was being held at a local theater and she will be delivering the eulogy. How did this happen and is it important? Mistakes are made, but I think nobody cared. believe it or not, on a television show, there are lines of defense starting with the script coordinator not to be confused with the script supervisor who is on set. The script coordinator takes the drafts from the writers who are working on the script, puts them all together with the proper formatting and after the approval of the show runner. This is what goes out to everyone. Cast, crew, studio, network executives, hundreds of people. If a mistake isn't caught in the writer's room, the script coordinator should have caught it. Now I'm gonna read you an article about. Perhaps the most famous script coordinator in the business Writer Greg Nations. Greg and I worked together and became friends, and I can attest to everything that follows. Greg was the script coordinator on Lost. We all remember Lost right back in 2004. It was the hottest television show created by JJ Abrams It followed the survivors of a commercial jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles after the plane crashes. On a mysterious island somewhere in the South Pacific it had a interesting format. The episodes usually focus on a main storyline set on the island with flashbacks or flash forwards. that give importance to the character involved that week. The first episode it blasted out of the gate with this plane crash and it made television history Okay, here is the New York Times article by Edward Wyatt from January 15th, 2009. and I'll put a link in the bio. Gonna skip down just talking about lost, and then it gets to A co-producer and the show's longtime script coordinator, Mr. Nations, has become the keeper of what has been found on lost charged with tracking everything that has happened And will happen to the characters on and off the island, in addition to charting the many mysterious characteristics of the island itself. While most television series maintain a Bible, a guy to characters and plot lines that are developed by the creators, but revealed over multiple seasons, few, if any shows have twists and turns as byzantine, as those un lost and unlike many jobs, which get easier as the material becomes more familiar, this one has become more complicated and that will be true this season when the island itself starts moving through time as the people who seem to be the guardians of its secrets, try to protect it from the shadowy conspirator who could have a darker use for its powers. By the way I did watch loss. I checked out by this time back to the article before the show's premier in September, 2004. The producers were unsure that loss would last beyond a few episodes. They therefore spent little time keeping track of the interlocking, overlapping, and offering confounding storylines that began to emerge even in the first episode. But when the series proved to be an hit, we quickly realized we needed some system to keep track of all the details. that we weren't going to be able to do that. By memory said Carlton Cues, one of the show's, executive producers and my old boss. Enter Mr. Nations, who has now compiled an archive that were he ever to print it out. Might, as he put it in an interview at the Lost Production Office on Disney's Burbank Studio. Lot give War and Peace a run for its money. Just how long the entire document is. He does not know. He has never printed it out in full, in part because he and his secretive boss do not want copies falling into the wrong hands, But he does keep multiple electronic copies, which he keeps in undisclosed locations. In addition to charting story arcs and tracking characters, Mr. Nations has noted each character sojourns on and off the island mapped the research stations established by the Mysterious Dharma Initiative and recorded the appearances and disappearances of polar bearers smoke monsters. And an unhealthy array of guns. It didn't take us very long to learn to rely on Greg. When we had to check out an issue of continuity. Mr. Q said he had a timeline charts, dossiers. he took it into a dimension that exceeded. Anything we could imagine, Keeping those details straight is likely to be increasingly important as the series speed towards its climax, jumping both off and back onto the island and among the past, present, and future. If Mr. Echo shows up live, or Jack's chest here appears at an inappropriate time, for example, viewers will notice. Many have abandoned the show already. Oops. Yeah, That was me. After it drew an average of 16 million viewers per episode in its first season. Its audience has steadily decreased to an estimated 13.5 million per episode last season. According to the Nielsen Media research, some of that decline undoubtedly reflects a drop in overall network television viewership. Oh, we were all so innocent back there in 2009, weren't we? Back to the article, but it can also be traced to a feeling among one time fans. that the series has left them behind without a good reentry point. let's skip ahead. That's not really about Greg. Let's go down. Last year's promotional video featured Qs and Damon the creator and executive producer to the series, giving a tour of the writer's office. It did not take long before stills from the video were blown up and posted online to show the walls of the writer's work room. Were cast. Were divided between sections titled Alive, undead, rest in Peace. Visitors to One site commented that one of the characters appeared to be. alive even though he was aboard the freighter that blew up in the last season episode. I dunno. I thought that was interesting. Trust me, that was not a mistake. They were messing with the viewers. There is no way that Carlton cues, Damon Loff, the writers, Greg would allow a mistake like that. They were effing with the fans. In a good way. Mr. Nations acknowledge that he sometimes monitors those sites there. See? You go. The fans present their theories and it's fun to read, but I usually don't comment on that. He said, when I do, I am known for giving very vague answers. It drives them crazy. Born in Texas and raised in Missouri. Nations graduated with an accounting degree from Southwest Missouri State University before attending film school at the University of Southern California. Like many who followed that path, he found that a master's degree qualified him in Hollywood to work as a low paid writer's assistant on the short lived series on a minor broadcast network specifically. Pigsty on the UPN network and sister sister on wb. Those experiences to however, put him in a position to fill an opening for a script coordinator on Nash Bridges. That is where I met Greg, which Mr. Qs was a writer and executive producer. A few years later when Mr. Qs was looking for someone to fill a similar position on Lost, he remembered Mr. Nations. Mr. Nations now says he might have approached the Lost project differently. The best thing would've been to create a database where everything's linked. And if we're talking about Jack and what was established in his first flashback episode, you could click on something that takes you there. Remember, this is back in 2009. He's Greg said, but as an accountant, he was more inclined just to make notes in a ledger. I just created these word documents and I just write everything down. For the most part, Mr. Nations does not dwell on what is to come, and in that respect He is sometimes as much in the dark as any other fan when he participates in the mini camps. Each year when the writers sketch out the storylines for the coming season, Mr. Nation does not regularly sit with the writers. He's often the first reader of the completed script, however, so he can advise the show's production staffs. Based in Hollywood on what it will and what it will need to shoot in the next episode. Yes, production leaned. Extraordinarily heavy on Greg Nations on any show that the two of us worked on. Now it's different now, 2025. I see the script coordinators in the room and they spend all day in the room. And if they have to put a. Script together, they'll bounce out, but they are sitting in the room. I think it's a great idea that way they know they don't have to struggle maybe over notes as much and what the writer meant because they were there when it was being created. Okay. Back. To Greg, Mr. Nations has had his own small hand in determining some outcomes of the series He wrote. And Greg wrote a really good episode with Elizabeth Sarnoff, the fourth episode of Season Four Egg Town, in which viewers learned that Kate, one of the crash survivors is raising Aaron, the baby, born to Claire on the island, but being sometimes privy to writing sessions has created a few complications. In terms of maintaining the Bible, sometimes I remember things from the writer's room that went through the script stage, that went through various rewrites that they shot, that made it into the editing room, but didn't make it into the final cut. Mr. Nations explained that becomes an issue. Do we consider that canon? Is that part of the mythology? Is that part of the makeup of the character or because it didn't ear? Do we take that away now? The answer he said, depends. Sometimes Damon will say, oh yeah, that's part of what is going on. Even though we didn't say it in the script, we all know it, and that's going to be dealt with sometime down the road. So I have to be aware of those things. Too, I can just imagine Damon wanting to go home for the night and Greg chasing him in the parking lot, asking him random questions that Damon doesn't wanna answer. No one back to the article. No one is infallible, of course. And fans of Lost have created extended lists online of Con. Annuity errors and bloopers. Mr. Nations emits that Without his database, he would have trouble remembering everything about the series. There you go. I guess that's the answer. Even with a Greg Nations, things happen, and Back to the article. Mr. Nation admits that without his database, he would have trouble remembering everything about the series. That was evident when a reporter asked him a question that had been suggested by a colleague. What became of the body of Naomi, who in season four was one of the rescuers from the freighter sent to search for the island. She died after Locke threw a knife into her back. She died in the jungle. Mr. Nation said, so she must still be on the island. But wait, didn't Sayeed insist on taking Naomi's body back to the ship? You know you're right. I'm trying to do Greg's voice. You know You're right. Greg Nation said she was on the ship and the ship exploded. I guess she's fish food. You found something that I wasn't tracking now. I guess I had better. There you go, Greg. Always a gentleman. Okay, so I had notes on my wrap up. And maybe I'm gonna be a little bit softer on them now, because even with all the stop gaps lost put into place, things happened. And so back to and just like that. I guess it's okay. perhaps Michael Patrick King doesn't have a Greg Nations, Heather, McDonald's. Of Juicy Scoop had an interesting theory regarding Nicole Ari Parker and the fact that, why didn't she step up and say, Hey, my father already died. Heather was saying she probably didn't want her storyline cut, so she just kept her mouth shut. And in defense of Nicole, She wants to be a team player, and if nobody else is making a big deal about it, she's not gonna make a big deal about it. Or maybe she did and the people she went to just said, eh, let it go Now. Michael Patrick King, I will introduce you to Greg Nations if you would like, and I'll explain the joke I did at that party that you looked at me horrified and walked away. one more thing before we wrap up. Just last Monday, July 7th, the production team on, and just like that clarified to the Hollywood Reporter, the Dead Dad reference in season one of show was referencing Lisa's stepfather. Okay, now I'm back to something is going on behind the scenes because that is bs. Also, why isn't the writer Michael Patrick King, the creative side coming out and saying something looks like they didn't want to come out and say anything. So they got the production team, which means. Not the creative team and they came out and made a statement okay, I'm not buying it. what do you guys think is going on over? And just like that, would love to hear what you think. And that's a wrap for the Writer's Hangout. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Your positive feedback will help us keep the show going so we can continue bringing you more future episodes. Remember, keep writing. The world needs your stories. The Writers Hangout is sponsored by the Page International Screenwriting Awards, with executive producer Kristen Overn, producer Sandy Adamides, and myself, Terry Sampson. And our music is composed by Ethan Stoller.