"United States of Al" to Address Afghanistan Crisis in Newly-Penned Season 2 Premiere
by Peter White
Sept. 9, 2021


CBS comedy "United States of Al" premiered two weeks before the U.S. announced its withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Its second season, which began production in August, will address the withdrawal and subsequent fallout in its opening episode, according to CBS Entertainment President Kelly Kahl.




Speaking at his opening address ahead of the network’s virtual TCA press tour, Kahl said, “Chuck Lorre and his gifted team of writers and actors, some of whom are veterans, some natives of Afghanistan, some with deep ties to the country, have been working hard to find the appropriate tone as the show moves forward.

The team penned an entirely new first episode that will address current events. It’s shooting right now, we’ve read the script and seen the table read and I believe it will be a very powerful and moving episode of television, of which I expect everyone involved will be very proud.”

https://deadline.com/2021/09/the-united-states-of-al-to-address-afghanistan-crisis-in-newly-penned-episode-1234829810/

United States of Al had filmed an episode and a half of Season 2 when it had to start over after Afghanistan fell to the Taliban (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/united-states-al-season-2-premiere-afghanistan-1235017765/)

"We guessed wrong and had to adjust our plans” when Kabul fell to the Taliban following the United States' withdrawal after two decades, co-creator and showrunner Maria Ferrari said at the TV press tour. The show, which centers on the friendship between a Marine veteran (Parker Young) and his unit’s interpreter (Adhir Kalyan) in Ohio, scrapped its original plans for the Season 2 premiere to focus on how the characters react to the situation. “We chose to tell the story of what we were experiencing,” Ferrari said of the writing staff, which includes five Afghans and seven military veterans.

United States of Al will go without a laugh track for tonight's Season 2 premiere tackling the Afghanistan pullout (https://www.tvinsider.com/1016910/united-states-of-al-season-2-premiere-kabul-afghanistan-hassina/)

Co-creator Maria Ferrari tells TV Insider laughter "didn't feel appropriate" for tonight's emotional premiere, which had to be rewritten and re-shot after the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan following the United States' pullout in mid-August. “When we first began to write, we said, ‘We’re not writing jokes, so just take that piece out of the equation,'” (https://tvline.com/2021/10/06/united-states-of-al-season-2-premiere-afghanistan-crisis-video/) Ferrari tells TVLine. “And then as the script came together, we said (to fellow executive producer Chuck Lorre), ‘It doesn’t sound like this one is going to have a laugh track.'" Lorre pointed out that this was the first time in his career that one of his multi-camera sitcoms hadn’t featured any audience laughter whatsoever. “He was like, ‘All right, you’ve invented a new format,'" says Ferrari. In addition, there won't be a B or C story to balance out the main story. "I don’t think we ever entertained the idea of a historic cutaway because the whole idea was to capture a process of waiting and being single-mindedly focused so I think to give the audience a break, it felt like a cheat to us," says Ferrari. Fellow co-creator David Goetsch adds: "The first stage was us sitting around a snap and counting the timeline and what would be the corresponding scenes or actions that might happen with Riley and Al and Hassina. It was almost like a documentary first stage to it, in my opinion, and then at some point, we had to be like 'OK, how do we make this an episode?'" Ferrari says writing the season premiere proved to be a challenge because "there was a lot of news and a lot of contradictory news, like the AP’s version of events didn’t always match the press that was coming through here. So the first thing they had to do was figure out, OK, what actually happened? You were sort of choosing things that were meaningful to our writers that they wanted to include and that they wanted to see. We tried to build one that felt the most emblematic for us of what that experience felt like."

United States of Al will go without a laugh track for tonight's Season 2 premiere tackling the Afghanistan pullout (https://www.tvinsider.com/1016910/united-states-of-al-season-2-premiere-kabul-afghanistan-hassina/)

Co-creator Maria Ferrari tells TV Insider laughter "didn't feel appropriate" for tonight's emotional premiere, which had to be rewritten and re-shot after the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan following the United States' pullout in mid-August. “When we first began to write, we said, ‘We’re not writing jokes, so just take that piece out of the equation,'” (https://tvline.com/2021/10/06/united-states-of-al-season-2-premiere-afghanistan-crisis-video/) Ferrari tells TVLine. “And then as the script came together, we said (to fellow executive producer Chuck Lorre), ‘It doesn’t sound like this one is going to have a laugh track.'" Lorre pointed out that this was the first time in his career that one of his multi-camera sitcoms hadn’t featured any audience laughter whatsoever. “He was like, ‘All right, you’ve invented a new format,'" says Ferrari. In addition, there won't be a B or C story to balance out the main story. "I don’t think we ever entertained the idea of a historic cutaway because the whole idea was to capture a process of waiting and being single-mindedly focused so I think to give the audience a break, it felt like a cheat to us," says Ferrari. Fellow co-creator David Goetsch adds: "The first stage was us sitting around a snap and counting the timeline and what would be the corresponding scenes or actions that might happen with Riley and Al and Hassina. It was almost like a documentary first stage to it, in my opinion, and then at some point, we had to be like 'OK, how do we make this an episode?'" Ferrari says writing the season premiere proved to be a challenge because "there was a lot of news and a lot of contradictory news, like the AP’s version of events didn’t always match the press that was coming through here. So the first thing they had to do was figure out, OK, what actually happened? You were sort of choosing things that were meaningful to our writers that they wanted to include and that they wanted to see. We tried to build one that felt the most emblematic for us of what that experience felt like."

United States of Al tried to capture the "unbelievable sense of waiting" during Afghanistan crisis (https://tvline.com/2021/10/07/united-states-of-al-recap-season-2-premiere-explained-afghanistan/)

The CBS comedy had just 22 minutes to portray a week's worth of waiting for information from Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. Thursday's Season 2 premiere, which had to be rewritten and reshot after the Afghanistan crisis in August, made sure to show how much time had passed as Adhir Kalyan's titular character tried to find out how his family was doing back in Afghanistan. "The experience that we had was that, day to day, the news changed," says co-creator David Goetsch. "There were these powerful swings, and there was so much uncertainty. A bunch of our staff went on Kabul hours… and weren’t sleeping. So the idea here — to have the Dugan family support Al and stay up, and go through what happens in Act 2, in particular — was to try and create an accurate sense of the rawness that comes from night after night after night of trying to help someone." Fellow co-creator Maria Ferrari adds: "We really wanted to convey the unbelievable sense of waiting that was so much a part of this experience, which is a particularly hard thing to do in a 22-minute show. Like, how can you convey a week’s worth of waiting? Spacing it out over several days helped us do that. Also this staff, because this was their story, they really wanted to tell it as it happened. They wanted the characters to say things like 'I didn’t know that' on that day. They wanted to share their experiences as they experienced them." Ferrari and Goetsch say they were given extra time to make sure the premiere was distinctive from other episodes. "There’s more fourth wall, more movement… Our normal production schedule is to shoot for three days, and we were fortunate enough to get five days, so we had extra time for extra setups," says Goetsch, adding: "We’re lucky to have four cameras, to have scenes that are this dramatic and not have to turn one around and match a performance. You can be on multiple actors, like when they’re all staring at the phone, worried. That was a tremendous advantage for us. Because our actors are so talented, in most scenes, they would give us a range of a performance, because we weren’t sure how it was all going to fit together. You could imagine a scene that felt right (as you were shooting it), but then you put it together and that’s not the right thing, tonally. They really gave us some fantastic choices when we got into editing." United States of Al won't give up tackling the aftermath of the Afghanistan crisis. "Our tone last season was a mixture of very dramatic moments and very comedic moments, so going forward I think we’ll be able to do that," says Goetsch. "But Chuck (Lorre) has also been very supportive in saying, 'Look, if there is another important story to tell, in the way that we needed to tell this story, then at that time we will consider it.' And that, as creators, is exciting. We hope the situation improves for everyone, obviously, but to be able to have more freedom to tell a story…" Ferrari adds: "It gives us the flexibility we need to be reactive."

ALSO:


United States of Al story editor Habib Zahori says juggling the show and the Afghanistan crisis amounted to "the worst week of my life" (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/united-states-of-al-fall-of-kabul-episode-sitcom-cbs-1235026346/): "And I’ve lived through some horrible periods, through the war in Afghanistan, through the first period of Taliban rule," says Zahori a former Afghan journalist who lives in Ontario, Canada. “(But) I thought it was my ethical responsibility to make sure that this story gets told, and that it gets told as realistically as possible.” Zahori says the Season 2 premiere captures "exactly what I went through to get my sister and family out" of Afghanistan. Zahori with help from Chase Millsap, a U.S. vet and military consultant on the show, managed to evacuate 11 people, including his three siblings. Zahori says, however, that he cannot watch the Season 2 premiere. “I get mentally transported back to those moments when I was helping my siblings to push through the crowd in front of the airport,” he says. “There was a moment when my sisters and my brother were trying to get in, and my sister, my older sister, called me. ‘I just saw a woman get shot in the face,’ she said. ‘She was standing right beside me.’ I was the one that told them to go to that gate. What if it had been my sister instead of that woman?”