this is from the dailies, sadly this scene was not in the final cut of the series finale!
From the beginning we knew from the scripts we would get a chance to make a fun crime board in the finale of the Season 3 of Awkwafina is Nora from Queens.
…but then last night watching the finale together with the cast and crew, I realized “THE CRIME BOARD WAS CUT!!!!!!!” 😭
Since this is the one blog post I had already prepared for the finale episode (I have a few more brewing, stay tuned!) I’m just going to publish it anyways.
This was the first version of the script (“pre-production draft”)
last version of the script (green revisions). hmmm maybe we had a clue with Nora’s lines denigrating the whole idea of a board that this scene might get cut…
Honestly the finale was great even with this scene cut and eitherway I’m going to walk you through all the FUN WE HAD making it.
When we started the show I asked Kiran what type of small personal project as a venue for his own jokes (Kiran’s a standup comedian and comedy writer!) he would like this season. I gave him a couple of options and he chose this crime board, so it was something we chatted about all season long.
Of course when one thinks of crime boards there are a few key enduring images such as the detectives trying to figure out each ring in The Wire, the DEA in Breaking Bad, or Carrie Matheson (Claire Danes) on Homeland.
One persistent pop culture image of a crime board stands out, however, because it is so heavily memed, the one from Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
an obvious reference image for us
Hilariously I found an academic paper intellectualizing the depiction of crime boards on screen:
The crime board is, in this sense, what Ronald Thomas has called a ‘device of truth’, a representational technology that lends authority to a mode of detection long established in crime fiction. This is a mode in which ‘unique interpretive powers’ render crimes visible ‘only to the eyes of the detective’, powers that remain inseparable from the development of forensic technology.[4] The typical crime board not only gathers together and arranges facts yielded by such technologies, it is also a technology of truth in itself, serving a meta-investigative function by visually rendering a theory of causality, association, and guilt.
Ok…
Anyways, when we chatted with episode 307 director Jordan Kim about his vision for this board he also referred to the Always Sunny in Philadelphia meme, so we knew we were on the right track with our references.
We took the premise of the board: an engagement plan for Wally to propose to Brenda at the Queens Museum to Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston music and really fleshed out each element as far as we could go with visual artifacts:
Maps of NYC
Maps of Queens, particularly the area around the Queens Museum
Floor plans of the Queens Museum
Photos of the Queens Museum particularly the map room
Photos of each character including photos that looked like long lens surveillance photos of Brenda (which we found on Getty stock images!!!!), well we asked graphics to add cross hatch graphics to look like detective show photo graphics.
Images of each singer
receipts, purchases, and rental quotes of items Wally would need
The much needed red string that each of these crime boards seem to have.
To-Do lists for each character (loved Kiran’s jokes here)
Kiran made a playlist on Spotify of the songs mentioned in the script plus other songs that made sense in the context of the story and script, we turned it on and worked on putting together the crime board.
You can listen to it too here, it has, of course Taylor’s Version of “Love Story:”
Once the crime board was done we had to bring it to set and here is the journey the board took with the set dressers from our office to set through Kaufman Astoria studios with a stop-off at the crew breakfast truck hahhaha.
