WHO: Melpomene WHEN: About five years ago WHERE: New York City WHAT: Backstory WARNINGS: Fragile male ego, mention of attempted domestic violence
The pilot of Last Song had opened with a hefty amount of promise. Melpomene watched it with her feet up, and then, as the minutes past, sat up straight, and by the end she was leaning forward, thumbnail thoughtfully caught between her teeth. In the first ten minutes, Zeus had come down from his mountain, and taken fire back from the humans, and with the fire went electricity, and the world was plunged into darkness.
Some of the dialogue fell a little flat, and other lines were so over the top painfully ironic that Melpomene cringed. This could be so good (and such a sweet tribute to her father) but the show was so very much in the wrong hands that unless something drastic happened it didn’t stand a chance.
So, Melpomene engineered something drastic to happen, ran into the creator, who was also the lead writer, in a bar, and went home with him.
It was almost too late to save the show, all of the first season already shot and through post production, but with the ratings crashing after that first interested spike, Marcus held an emergency meeting in his apartment and the group of them argued bitterly about whose fault it was and what on earth they could do to save it. Melpomene was there, leaning in the doorway wearing Marcus's shirt with her hands curled around a mug of coffee, listening for the right moment. She stepped in after a particularly bitter outburst from Marcus and leaned over the table between him and the producer, pulled a page from the scattered pile of scribbled-over scripts on the table, and cast her eyes over it while everyone sat in the awkward silence after their boss had told them all the were absolute cretins.
You know you’ve killed the wrong person in the finale, she pointed out. Marcus's injured ego bristled, but more than one writer was listening to her. She carried on: the killing they’d wrote into the script took the audience horribly by surprise, and would only turn more people off, but as turning people off seemed to be the thing they’d been trying to do all season, maybe that was their intention? No? Then, had they remembered what they’d said in episode three? Well, if they all pretended that this comment combined with this take on episodes six and seven was, in fact, foreshadowing that they were always intending that this character painfully betrayed everyone, then wouldn’t that have more impact? Did that set up season two so beautifully?
Sit down, said the producer, giving her his seat. Let’s try it Romeo’s way.
They spent the whole night re-writing the final episode, and by dawn, every one of them was a little in awe about how clever they all were, and surprised by how good (read: heartrending) they new script was. A number of strings behind the scenes were pulled the next day, they managed to squeeze enough budget for reshoots, and pulled a new season finale out of their asses, and floored everybody.
The afterparty was one of the highlights of Melpomene’s year. She loved a party anyway, especially one full of writers and creators and industry types, where anything dramatic could happen. The fight that broke out between her and Marcus was certainly dramatic; he dragged her away to the corner of the garden by her arm and screamed at her about how she was ruining his vision, how entitled she was, how much of a bitch she was for belittling him on purpose, in front of his team.
Melpomene sipped her sazerac and let him shout, knowing that the balcony doors above them were open, and that the whole party was listening. She told him, in a low voice designed not to be overheard, how terrible of a writer he was, and how the show was not past saving, but he certainly was, and he’d knocked the drink out of her hand and crunched the broken glass underfoot as he lunged forward to try and shut her up.
He never managed to get the grip around her throat he’d been going for, she moved away too quickly and a number of nearby eavesdroppers suddenly made themselves known (and the balcony above was just as suddenly very well populated) and Marcus stormed off in a rage.
One of the producers put his arm around her shoulders and replaced her lost cocktail with another, and offered her a job on the team of writers, which Melpomene gracefully accepted.
The second season picked up viewers slowly at first, but it grew exponentially, faster than anyone (except Melpomene) expected, continued to grow into its third, and was now shooting what the muse, and critics alike, were convinced was going to be a triumphant forth.