Where this sits in the pilot
Frankie's made it to Washington, DC. Her CIA pursuers — Taylor, lawyer Jamil, and tech officer Martinez, briefed by Susan back at the nursing home — pull the delivery manifest for everything a mysterious shell company shipped to her under an alias, and try to figure out what she's building before she builds it. Intercut with their guesswork, we watch her actually build it.
INT. PARKING GARAGE – DOWNTOWN – WASHINGTON, DC – DAY
Frankie, in a black t-shirt and dark leggings, opens the trunk to reveal the duffle bag. She unzips it — the first item is a Cuddle Bug Halloween Costume, kid size. Then several Cuddle Bug Sippy Cups filled with dark liquid. She puts these items into a matching Cuddle Bug Backpack.
TAYLOR (V.O.)
Trick or treating in July?1
INT. OPERATIONS ROOM – CIA HEADQUARTERS – DAY
Susan and Taylor lean over a screen built into the table, regarding Amazon Product Pages of the Cuddle Bug items. Nearby, Jamil scans a list of deliveries for Sage Rowan.
SUSAN
Cuddle Bug Backpack. Cuddle Bug Sippy Cups. Playdough?
TAYLOR
When you’re pickin’ up kids at school. Good time to make a hit.
The others regard Taylor. How would he know?
SUSAN
I don’t have kids.
(to Jamil)
What else was in those packages?
JAMIL
A Brahma Rough Rider, small.
INT. PARKING GARAGE – DOWNTOWN – WASHINGTON, DC – DAY
Frankie puts on a padded leather vest with floral stitching.
JAMIL (V.O.)
It’s a protective vest.
SUSAN (V.O.)
Bullet proof?
TAYLOR (V.O.)
No. It’s for cowboys. If you get kicked by a horse or gored by a bull it’ll keep you from dying.
SUSAN (V.O.)
What else?
JAMIL (V.O.)
Black Sweatshirt, with Kawaii Eyes. Size triple XL.
Frankie pulls an oversized black sweatshirt over the vest. The combo adds more than a few sizes to her athletic frame. A pair of large anime eyes decorate the sweatshirt’s chest.
TAYLOR (V.O.)
You won’t be lookin’ at her face.
Frankie unpacks two wigs from the duffle.
JAMIL (V.O.)
Women’s Wig, Long Wavy, Brown. Women’s Wig, Short Bob, Blonde. Safety Glasses, Square Nerd.
Frankie puts on the brown wig, glasses, swings the backpack over her shoulder, closes the trunk. Transformed once again.2
INT. OPERATIONS ROOM – CIA HEADQUARTERS – DAY
On the table screen is the product page for the safety glasses where Susan reads the words — Square Nerd.
SUSAN
Who payed for all this?
MARTINEZ
Everything was billed to a corporate card. Synergy Spark. Cayman registered. They specialize in motivational landscaping.
TAYLOR
I didn’t know that was a thing.
SUSAN
ACXPWR-15. Is that a gun?
On the screen, images of a winch device with steel cable.
JAMIL
Power Ascender. To raise and lower utility workers to power lines.
TAYLOR
SWAT teams and Seals use ’em to get in and out of elevated targets.
EXT. STREET – WASHINGTON, DC – DAY
Frankie crosses the street, looking like a plus-sized Mom.
SUSAN
The CIA’s most wanted is going to a Halloween party? What are we missing?
Frankie approaches a pair of official looking Black Suburbans, passing between them to the sidewalk in front of —
EXT. DAVINCI’S VR PIZZA – WASHINGTON, DC – DAY
Signage in bright colors. Families enter and exit. A large window exposes the packed dining room and restaurant within.
TAYLOR (V.O.)
Does she have any kid relatives? Nieces or nephews with a birthday.
SUSAN (V.O.)
(beat)
No.
TAYLOR
Parents?
SUSAN
Father deceased. Mother unknown.
TAYLOR
What about siblings?
As Frankie approaches the entrance, she’s stopped by a SECRET SERVICE AGENT. A suit, flag on the lapel, earpiece, the whole deal. He checks Frankie’s kiddie backpack, waves her inside.
INT. OPERATIONS ROOM – CIA HEADQUARTERS – DAY
Susan has yet to answer Taylor, he’s staring at her.
SUSAN
A half-sister.
TAYLOR
Could she be the one helping her?
SUSAN
No. They’re estranged. Not that they every really knew each other.
TAYLOR
It’s worth following up.
SUSAN
It really isn’t.
TAYLOR
I disagree.
(to Martinez)
Track down the sister and have her tagged for remote surveillance.
SUSAN
That’s not necessary.
TAYLOR
Why not?
SUSAN
Because I’m sitting right here.
Taylor, Jamil, and Martinez regard Susan, confused.
SUSAN (CONT’D)
Frankie’s Dad, was my Dad.
JAMIL
Wait… Frankie’s your sister?
SUSAN
Half.3
TAYLOR
You shot her fiancé.
SUSAN
True.
TAYLOR
You didn’t think this was relevant?
SUSAN
Frankie and I never had a personal relationship. I only found out she existed seven years ago, after my father died.
JAMIL
Before or after your investigation put Frankie in a Black Site? And her fiancé in the ground.
SUSAN
Before.
(beat)
My evidence was legitimate. But Director Griffin couldn’t get past my personal connection to Frankie. So he put me in the basement.
Taylor, Jamil, and Martinez stare at Susan, incredulous.
TAYLOR
Anything else you don’t think we need to know about this case?
SUSAN
No. What’s next on her shopping list, Jamil?
JAMIL
A Mechanic’s Creeper.
INT. DINING ROOM – DAVINCI’S VR PIZZA – DAY
Frankie moves through the raucous crowd, blending in. She scans the place like a pro, spotting another Secret Service Agent at the top of the stairs. A kiddie-gate blocks the stairs, a sign informs customers to, “WAIT FOR VR-GUARDIAN.”
JAMIL (V.O.)
Three hundred pound rated.
TAYLOR (V.O.)
That’s for working under a car.
Frankie moves toward the rear of the restaurant, along the way, she places Cuddle Bug Sippy Cups atop random tables.
INT. OPERATIONS ROOM – CIA HEADQUARTERS – DAY
Susan, Taylor, and Jamil regard an image of the creeper.
SUSAN
That’s more than twice her weight. Could she be loading something?
JAMIL
Or stealing. She’s a thief, right?
TAYLOR
Explosives. Could she be rolling explosives into position?
Taylor, Jamil and Martinez regard Susan.
SUSAN
That’s not her style, but she’s certainly capable of anything.
(beat)
Everything I know about Frankie, I learned from my investigation.
TAYLOR
How did both of you end up at CIA?
SUSAN
Our father was in the Analysis Directorate. We’re legacies.
MARTINEZ
I thought my family was complicated.
A heavy beat. Then Jamil resumes reading —
JAMIL
Duct Tape, five rolls.
EXT. BACK ALLEY – DAVINCI’S VR PIZZA – DAY
As Frankie exits the back door another Secret Service Agent on rear-guard turns to look at her. She smiles, faking lost.
TAYLOR (V.O.)
You got cinch straps and flex cuffs on that list?
Secret Service takes one look at Frankie and turns away, she doesn’t seem like a threat. She attacks him from behind with a kidney punch, leg sweep, and a sleeper hold to the neck.
JAMIL (V.O.)
Two packs of ten.
Frankie chokes-out Secret Service, secures him with the gear, rolls him under a dumpster, and re-enters the pizza joint.
INT. OPERATIONS ROOM – CIA HEADQUARTERS – DAY
Susan regards the list, curious.
SUSAN
Because they can’t be mailed?
TAYLOR
She could order one in pieces and put it together. But if you get pulled over with a gun, life gets complicated. Even in Texas.
SUSAN
(to Martinez)
Do they sell guns at Gas and Fish?
INT. DINING ROOM – DAVINCI’S VR PIZZA – DAY
Frankie picks up a slice of pizza from a random table, leans against the wall and takes a bite, savoring the flavor.
MARTINEZ (V.O.)
Only thing she bought was candy and soda. Diet Coke, six pack. Mentos Mint Candy, three rolls.
Frankie looks at her watch, a timer ticks down from ten seconds. She looks across the room at the various Sippy Cups.
TAYLOR (V.O.)
I know what the Playdough’s for. She’s gonna wrap it around the Mentos, then drop ’em in the soda. When it burns through the dough it’ll go pop and make a real mess.
The TOPS of the Sippy Cups POP OFF like gunshots, blasting soda everywhere. Kids and Parents scream in surprise.4
// The answer to the mystery box
SAME SCENE — the beat right after this excerpt ends“The Secret Service Agent guarding the head of the stairs pulls his gun and leaves his post. Frankie uses this moment of distraction to vault over the gated railing, unseen.” A Halloween costume, a bulletproof-for-cowboys vest, a wig, a winch, duct tape, and a six-pack of soda were never a bomb kit or a kidnapping kit. They were a disguise to get her past a Secret Service checkpoint, and a homemade smoke-bomb-that-isn’t to buy her four seconds of chaos once she was inside. The “solve me” is answered honestly, on schedule, and it’s smaller and funnier than anything the analysts guessed.
- 1
A kid’s Halloween costume and sippy cups full of dark liquid, with no explanation attached — the classic Mystery Box opening move. The scene doesn’t tell you what it’s for. It dares you to guess, the same way it dares the CIA team on the other end of the intercut.
Mystery Box vs. Magic Show - 2
Every guess the analysts make is wrong in a specific, checkable way (bulletproof? no — for cowboys) and each wrong guess adds one real fact to the pile without spending the answer. That’s the mechanic: reveal enough to keep the audience solving, never enough to let them finish early.
Rolling Reveals - 3
The biggest reveal in the sequence — Susan has been sitting in the room describing her own sister the entire time — arrives inside a scene that was ostensibly about shipping manifests, with no separate “confession scene” built to hold it. It lands harder for being smuggled into a procedural beat instead of announced.
Rolling Reveals - 4
The payoff arrives as a sound and an image — cups popping, soda everywhere — not as a line of dialogue explaining what just happened. Magic Show storytelling shows its hand and earns the reaction through execution; this is a Mystery Box question answered with a Magic Show’s confidence in the reveal itself.
Mystery Box vs. Magic Show
What this excerpt doesn’t show
This page is a self-contained puzzle box — it doesn’t need the cold open or the reunion scene to work, which is part of why it was chosen. What it can’t show is what Frankie does with the four seconds of chaos she just bought herself; that’s a different sequence, and a different kind of tension, built out of its own decisions rather than its own questions.
Read the whole thing
This excerpt is drawn from a 60-page pilot. The full logline, genre, and comps are on the original post — Spec TV Pilot: “Catalyst” →
Related pages
- Mystery Box vs. Magic Show: Two Ways to Build Narrative Suspense — the framework behind notes 1 and 4.
- Rolling Reveals: How to Keep Scenes Delivering New Information — the scene-level mechanics behind notes 2 and 3.
About the author
Jesse Alexander is a screenwriter, showrunner, and narrative designer whose work spans film, television, games, and transmedia storytelling. Scribbler’s Toolbox collects practical frameworks developed from professional story development and production.