I had never actually intended to write Madison’s “origin story.” In fact, when the first script (Dragnet) was making its way around my friends, it was suggested I needed to explain exactly how she got into old time radio. And I had played with a few intro scenes building to her getting zapped and, frankly, they all sucked. No. I was sure my original instinct was correct. Just start where she’s there with no explanation what-so-ever. When Jeremy prepared to write the theme song, we both agreed we could do a little “MST3K” theme song where we gave a basic “she got sent back, that’s all you need to know, done” and I’ve been very happy with that. So… why did I actually decide to do the origin story?
This year, back in August, when I was looking for our Christmas episode to adapt (yes, I start that early!) I found someone had done this immense list of literally 500 different holiday episodes from the golden age of radio. Boy, was that a beast to sift through! A lot were Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra specials and the like, but that’s where I found our Nero Wolfe and where I stumbled upon a New Year’s Eve episode of “The Mysterious Traveler.”
I am always on the look out for an episode I can adapt of any of the anthology series. I’ve used a few Inner Sanctums now and Escape, but still comb through the others. I do enjoy The Mysterious Traveler, and when I heard the sort of time-jump and loop that this supernatural story had, (and especially as it started with the girlfriend angry at her boyfriend on NYE because of his excessive drinking) I knew this was meant to the Madison’s origin story! And, of course, I had to release it on New Years.
Now, even as I started dropping the trailer and advertising the episode, some folks responded that they kinda didn’t want to know the origin! They liked the mystery. Well, I think I still keep the mystery. Because while it’s suggested that maybe her TikTok livestream caused the time travel, there is the still question of why? And how would that even work? And certainly the: why did Jeff get to go back but Madison didn’t? Madison has a history of being “zapped” at just the right moment before she is killed. Is that really what happened, so the TikTok livestream had nothing to do with it? Well, much like the theme song, all I can tell you is “freaky-deaky science stuff.”
But the joy of all of this was being able to present the very first moment Madison arrived in OTR, and still do it within the story of an actual OTR script. I love the juxtaposition of the two men in her life, and we really see that Madison was… not very nice to them! She likes to complain about her ex’s but maybe it’s not all on them? And maybe there’s a little Groundhog Day in “Madison on the Air.” Did she get stuck here (when Jeff got to go back) because she’s needing to learn a lesson? Well… I guess that’s all still a mystery.
-Chrisi (aka Madison)
