Member-only story

HBO’s ‘Room 104’ Takes Creativity and Storytelling In Television To New Heights

With a simple but shockingly intriguing premise and an element of unpredictability, “Room 104” shows that TV doesn’t have to be formulaic.

Howard Chai
3 min readDec 17, 2018

In a time where serialization is the standard, HBO decided to zag a bit last year with Room 104, a 12-episode anthology series created by Mark and Jay Duplass where each episode, as opposed to each season, is a separate and complete story. The only requirement each episode must meet is that they must take place in the same seedy motel, in Room 104.

One may think that this greatly limits the variety of stories, but somehow the opposite is true. While the episodes of other shows with a similar format, such as Joe Swanberg’s Netflix series Easy, are tied together either thematically or tonally, Room 104 deviates from the norm even further. Each episode is not only a completely separate story, but also a completely different genre.

The first episode of the first season is straight psychological horror that dances on the edge of reality. In a later episode, the room becomes the cage where two MMA fighters fight. There’s an episode told completely through interpretative dance, one told as a one-man musical — starring Atlanta’s Brian Tyree…

--

--

Howard Chai
Howard Chai

Written by Howard Chai

I strive towards a career that ends up leaving me somewhere between Howard Beck and Howard Beale.

No responses yet