“Look.” I pointed to the two bowls on the table.
“Mixed nuts. And pretzels, too.”
It worked. Monk immediately forgot about the sex addict detective and focused instead on this urgent public health crisis.
“What were they thinking?” Monk reached into his jacket for rubber gloves and prepared to deal with the problem. “You might want to push your chairs away from the table. This could get ugly.”
I turned to Mills. “So what was Stipe’s role on the show?”
“We were contractually obligated to give Stipe a consulting producing credit, but it was meaningless. He wasn’t actually part of the day-to-day production,” Mills said. “We only kept him around for publicity purposes and to draw the niche viewers.”
“Niche viewers?” I asked.
Monk laid out napkins on the table, emptied the bowls onto them, and began sorting the nuts and pretzels.
“The original fans,” Mills said, watching Monk. “We’re only using them as a publicity hook. It gets us press. But it’s just a launching pad for a larger promotional offensive. Our goal is to expand the franchise to a much broader, mainstream audience of intelligent, educated, free-spending consumers who have heard of the original show but probably never saw it.”
“Don’t you think the fans know what you’re doing and resent being used?”
“They’re morons who dress up in Halloween costumes and speak a fictional language from a crap TV show,” Mills said. “Who cares what they think?”
I waved the waitress over. I ordered a hamburger and fries for myself and six empty bowls for Monk to use for sorting and sent her away before he could lecture her on the dangers of mixing nuts and baked goods.
“If you have such disdain for Stipe, the fans, and the original series, why are you bothering with Beyond Earth at all?”
“Because it’s a pre-sold franchise,” he said. “A brand.”
“But it was a failure,” I said.
“That doesn’t matter,” Mills said. “It existed before and people know that.”
“Why not just come up with something new?”
“New is old school. It’s too risky for the networks and for the audiences. People are much more comfortable with the familiar,” Mills said. “Reimagination is the new new.”
“It’s more authentic,” Beck said.
I glanced at Monk, who was carefully organizing the almonds, peanuts, cashews, and pretzels into individual piles.
I knew better than to assume from his silence and preoccupation with his task that he wasn’t absorbing every word. But it irritated me anyway, since I was doing all the talking and I had no idea what to ask that was relevant besides “Did you kill him?”
So I just asked whatever interested me, hoping they’d say something that would help Monk later.
“How could it be more authentic?” I said. “It’s a remake.”
“A reimagination,” Mills corrected me.
“What’s the difference?”
“We’re not remaking what was, we’re going back and making Beyond Earth the show that it should have been,” Mills said. “It’s a new beginning. A fresh imagining of a preimagined concept. We’re making it real.”
“It’s a show with inside-out aliens,” I said. “That’s not real.”
“We’re giving it an internal, unflinchingly honest reality consistent with the reality we experience every day,” Mills said.
“Authenticity,” Beck said, nodding sagely.
“The premise of the show is that humanity was destroyed and now all that’s left of mankind are these people trapped in a spaceship,” Mills said. “They should be miserably depressed, filthy, and barely scratching out an existence. But when you watch the original show, everything is bright and colorful and everybody is happy-go-lucky. That’s not being true to the internal reality of the fictional universe.”
“It’s inauthentic,” Beck said.
“Our show is more visceral,” Mills said. “You can smell the sweat.”
Monk looked up, disgusted. “Why would you want to smell sweat?”
“It’s the scent of authenticity,” Beck said.
“I wouldn’t want to smell that either,” Monk said and started brushing the piles of nuts into individual bowls. I told you he was listening.
“The characters are more psychologically complex now,” Beck said. “Take my character, Captain Stryker. The only way he can deal with his inner turmoil, the conflict between his despair and his need to be a strong leader for mankind, is to mate with every female alien he can, no matter what they look like. They just have to be the female of their species.”
“So, basically, he’s a pervert,” I said.
“But that’s okay,” Mills said. “He’s a noble pervert that the audience can relate to.”
“Because he’s authentic,” Beck said.
“Not many actors have the chops to pull off an edgy character like this and make him sympathetic and heroic, ” Mills said, putting his arm around Beck. “But Jud has chops to spare.”
“How did Stipe feel about his series being reimagined into a crew of noble perverts?”
“All he cared about was getting a check,” Mills replied. “He hasn’t had a career since Beyond Earth was canceled. He saw this as an opportunity to make some money and maybe get back in the game. If Beyond Earth is a hit, everybody wins.”
“Except the original fans,” I said.
“They are only a small fraction of the audience that we’re aiming for,” Mills said.
“But it’s more than a show to them,” I said. “You’re messing with their lives. Weren’t you worried they might get really pissed off?”
“Not really,” Mills said.
“Did Stipe get any threats?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Are you getting any?” I asked.
“Just some hate mail and petitions from the Galactic Uprising,” Mills said. “But I don’t take it seriously.”
“Even after what happened today?”
“Stipe betrayed the fans, not me,” Mills said. “They got the guy they were angry with. I’m just a hired gun doing his job, which is making a TV show that will reach the widest possible audience.”
“They might not see the distinction,” I said.
“They do. I’m an outsider. I don’t
