When Chekhov's gun is hidden in plain sight on the wall | Anatomy of a Scene

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Just call me Chekhov's Gunslinger.

Okay, I'm proud of this one.

So, part six of the Mrs. Hawking series, Fallen Women, was an important installment. That was our Jack the Ripper story, and it was a huge turning point for the series. So, there was a lot riding on us doing it well. We had a caper we had to design. We had character journeys to build out. And that required us to be really on top of our game if they were going to hit the way we hoped they would. And in my humble opinion, one of the cleverest things we did was the unconventional Chekhov's Gun we incorporated. And I'd really like to tell you how we made it work.

But fair warning, this involves massive spoilers for Fallen Women. So if you haven't watched that one yet, you might want to pause this here and go and watch that one first. I'll wait.

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Okay, now that you've definitely done that, let me explain to you what I mean by Chekhov's Gun. Anton Chekhov is a classic Russian playwright, known for shows like The Cherry Orchard or Uncle Vanya or The Seagull, who once famously wrote that if you were going to hang a gun on the wall in the script of your play, you had better make sure that gun goes off before the end of the final act.

Many people interpret this to be an admonition about planting and payoff, or making sure that any important thing that happens later in the play is adequately set up earlier in the play. And while that is important, that isn't actually what Chekhov was talking about.

What he was actually referring to is sometimes called the Law of Conservation of Detail, or the idea that because plays need to be focused in order to avoid distracting or confusing the audience, no details should be mentioned that aren't absolutely critical to the telling of the story. Or in other words, if you mention that gun in the first act, then it better be because you mean to have it go off in the third, or else it's not important enough to even bring up at all.

The Chekov's Gun in Fallen Women is a literal gun in this case, as can be seen in scene 1.2 in the moment between Nathaniel and Mrs. Hawking when she's teaching him how to shoot. In the previous installment, Mrs. Frost, Nathaniel is taken captive by Mrs. Frost's goons because he isn't able to defend himself. So, in this show, in an effort to make sure he's protected, she encourages him to practice his long dormant shooting skills that he picked up in the army. But Nathaniel is uncomfortable with this because, as he observes, "Only I've never seen you use one."

But Mrs. Hawking tells him that there is no wrong way to fight for your life, encouraging him to do whatever he has to in order to survive, because after all, she does the same thing. "You do what you must." Now, this clearly hints at Nathaniel's arc for this show, that he's going to end up confronting his trauma from the previous story and regain some agency and confidence by learning to defend himself with the gun. And that's definitely part of it.

When Violet is attacked on the street, he has to summon the courage to protect her from her assailant. And he discovers that this attacker is in fact Roland Davies, the person who brutalized him in the previous story. So, you might think that's the end of the story element there. But wait a minute. You'll notice that while Nathaniel draws his gun for this fight, it gets knocked out of his hand and he never actually gets a shot off.

The gun we hung on the wall was never actually fired. But that's because it's not for Nathaniel to fire it.

The final confrontation is a hand-to-hand combat between Mrs. Hawking and Jack the Ripper. And we did everything in our power to make it intense. The choreography had to be right. The villain monologue had to be right. And we even wanted to throw you off balance by having the world's most famous knife killer lying in wait for our hero, not with knives, but with a gun. And it's in this scene that we see the true purpose of introducing the gun in that early moment at all.

Through her teaching Nathaniel, we demonstrate Mrs. Hawking's own ability with guns. That even though she doesn't like them, she knows how to use them. And she's willing to if she absolutely has to because she will do what it takes in order to survive. So that when our villain brings a gun to what you expect to be the knife fight of the century, you know how our hero is going to win it.

I'm quite proud of this design choice because the result is quite surprising and yet it totally makes sense. In the moment, you're paying attention to Nathaniel's journey, but the information is all right there if you look for it with just enough distraction to let it be a surprise.

Writing capers is hard, especially when you want real, genuine, moving character journeys to be part of them. So, we have to be really at the top of our game if we're going to write these to the quality that we hope they're going to be. I think this part came out pretty well, if I may say so myself. I hope you don't mind if I take a little moment to be proud of us for that.

So, if that sounds fun to you, I hope you'll tune in for all the little twists and turns of the Mrs. Hawking series right here on our YouTube channel, Mrs. Hawking. Bye for now!