“Do you like karaoke?”
With those few words, an unlikely post-shift night out happens: Mel King (Taylor Dearden) and Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) find themselves on stage at a karaoke bar, belting out Alanis Morrisette’s anthem “You Oughta Know.”
The post-credits sequence was pitched to the two actors by the show’s producers, and they agreed — reluctantly. So into the script it went.
“That was a really late idea,” executive producer R. Scott Gemmill tells Gold Derby. “I was already writing Episode 15. As much I loved ending on Robby and the baby — that was always the intention from before I even started [writing] the first episode — it just felt like I needed something propulsive to really blast us out. And those two [Mel and Santos] had had such a s—ty day.
“Isa can sing and it felt like something Santos would do. I love the idea of them bonding and Mel being a fish-out-of-water in that scenario,” he continues. “I chose the Alanis Morissette song because I thought it was something you could really wail to and really let all your emotions out. But I did give Taylor and Isa the option to pick whatever song they wanted, but they stuck with it. That was such a fun Easter egg. I was really excited for the fans to see that.”
In the episode, Santos suggests the idea to King as “primal scream therapy.” “There’s nothing like getting absolutely wasted to shake off a s–tshow like today,” she tells King. The ever-agreeable Mel quickly signs on. “I could use a fun night.”
That relationship played out similarly off-screen, too. “I remember Isa has always been great with when there might be a moment where I’m like, ‘I don’t know how to do this,’ and she’s always been really helpful with me and pitches ideas for me,” Dearden tells Gold Derby. “We heard the pitch, and I went, ‘I don’t know how to play this. Mel doesn’t drink. I don’t know how to do this.’ I’m kind of freaking out a little because we have to shoot it in a few days.”
But Briones had a solution at the ready: “Think about it,” Dearden recalls Briones telling her. “Santos would absolutely spike Mel’s Sprite.'”
Dearden says she would not have otherwise gotten through it. “That helped me just really have fun with it,” she says. “We had such a fun day. It was such a blast.”
Briones agrees that Santos would have definitely spiked Mel’s drink — “in the least problematic way possible,” she tells Gold Derby. “I think maybe she was like, ‘Try it. It’s sweet. You’ll like it.'”
She sees the karaoke performance as a much-needed moment of bonding between two people who’ve had a rough day. “Clearly they both needed this,” says Briones. “The thesis of the show is all of these people just need each other. We all just need human connection and people to lean on. Everything would be solved if people just talked to each other and hung out. It would be so much better if they just made friends.”
Santos needs the friendship connection as much as Mel does, says Briones. “She’s very good at sensing when other people need help, and when other people are in crisis, that’s actually something she’s very good at,” she says. “Because she’s so finely attuned to when someone is feeling vulnerable, that’s an easier way to look at herself than actually deal with her own stuff. She should not be alone, and she knows that. So instead of asking someone to be there for her, it has to always be under the guise of being there for someone else, for her to help herself.”
Briones thinks it’s a “huge” turning point for Santos, at least. “I think it’s a moment of hope, if she reached out to people and leaned on other people and didn’t push people away,” she says. “You could see her smile. She could have fun. She could have friends. She could have a fun life.”
So who picked the song for them? “It was chosen for us,” admits Dearden. “But we both were like, that is the right song — absolutely the right song.”
No less than Morissette herself signaled her approval, tweeting last night: “Paging Dr. Santos and Dr. King.”
—Additional reporting by Philiana Ng
