"Backlight" - The Final Year, Part 1
I’m sitting here completely in awe. It’s beginning. The release of the final season of Misguided has kicked off, and years of hard work, determination, and learning on the spot are all paying off. Now, other people get to experience what I’ve been tinkering with for what seems like a lifetime. The past three installments of “Backlight” focused on looking back at an entire season. While the next set of essays will reflect on what’s happened to get us here, it will be episode by episode until we reach our final destination. It’s nice that it’s happening in the present. I’m experiencing this watch with you, and it’s the first time it’s officially out in the world for others to enjoy.
Enjoy is such an interesting term to go alongside this particular season. The central storyline has to do with the loss of Paul’s mother, which only happened because of the very real loss of our friend Jackie Zeman. So to enjoy doesn’t quite sit right. Throughout creating this season, I kept reflecting on Meryl Streep talking about the loss of her friend Carrie Fisher… and how to take your broken heart and turn it into art. Taking that loss and turning it into a story that fits within the world I created was tough, but also incredibly healing. So maybe this season we will all heal together.
I had big dreams for this season. Initially, I wanted to do five seasons altogether, but with all the challenges that piled on in making this particular season happen, I figured going out with 4 Seasons might be more in line with what the Universe had in store for us. I didn’t need to force another storyline to happen. There are elements in this season that play out assuming there would be a fifth season, and I wanted to keep them in because, at the end of the day, I thought those pieces represented something Misguided has always been about: having hope. Years ago, I got a tweet talking about the sweet optimism that this show had, and I’ve always tried to honor that sentiment. At the very beginning, it was all about following your dreams and never giving up. If anything, that’s what this season shows: that no matter how heavy the road becomes, keeping that spark of hope alive is what carries us through.
So, here we are, with “The Comeback,” which was a perfect title for the first episode back after such a long hiatus. Little did I know, the HBO show with the same name would also be making a return to television this year. What a happy coincidence. One thing I’ve never really written about are the titles and how they came to be, or at least, the formula I used to create them. Each title starts with the article “The,” which seemed to be the popular thing to do for quite a bit when I first started writing Misguided. We had The Chew, The Talk, The Revolution, The Real, and of course, The View. Slap the word “the” in front of another word and, boom, you’ve got a show. I figured, why not just title each episode in the same way?
With “The Comeback,” I wanted to start not with the death of Mo, but rather the aftermath. We kick off at the Celebration of Life reception taking place at the Lighthouse Restaurant. I brought my friend Jeffrey back, who was in Season 3 as background, and bumped him up to co-star this time around as Cooper, the new bar manager. We are also introduced to two new characters in attendance at the reception: Teja Anderson as Josephine and Kasey Mahaffy as Detective Bennett Daniels. Naming characters is something very special to me, and this season I chose to honor two very good friends who I lost and wanted to honor in some capacity. Josephine, or Jo for short, is named after my friend Jo-Lin, who I dedicated Season 1 to. Jo was my first manager in NYC and responsible for helping me secure my first role on One Life to Live. Bennett is named after my friend Lecinda Bennett, who passed away in March 2020. She had been a huge champion of Misguided and such a dear friend who I met because of our mutual love for Guiding Light. This season is full of special moments that honor those I’ve lost along the way, and these two character names are examples of that.
And then again, sometimes character names are just left-over placeholders because you never put much thought into them in the first place and didn’t think you would ever write about them. Enter Kyle. Kyle was used as a high school memory Paul had flashes of when his battle with amnesia went away. When I was going through this new season of Misguided, I realized that Kyle was in fact here to stay, and that was that. Nothing of note, but now Kyle’s brought to life with the incredible talent of Daniel Montgomery. In the dream sequence, Paul and Kyle are in high school graduation gowns, and I wanted to include that because it directly relates back to the very first video I made for Misguided. In the prologue, Paul (me IRL) is giving a high school graduation speech, quoting the opening of Guiding Light. I figured if I could relate back to that particular moment, it would look as though I had planned this all along; and you know what, maybe I did or maybe I didn’t, but I’m glad it worked out the way it did.
The last character we see at the end of the episode is Doyle. My sweet Doyle, played by Justin Klosky. I could (and have) gush about Justin at length, but as for right now, I’ll just say how grateful I am for him, for his willingness to step back into this role and bring such a calm and focused energy to set. When filming, my mind was racing, thinking about all the items on my to-do list, trying to figure out what the next shot setup would be and where the lunch order I placed was... Justin looked me in my eyes and brought me right back to the scene. He calmed me, centered me, and truly made me believe I could conquer the world. He’s kind of magical like that.
So the season has officially started, and I’m curious to hear your thoughts. We’re just getting started, and there’s a lot of story this season. Buckle up, we aren’t done yet…
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