Where this sits in the pilot
Outlaw City is a neo-noir spec pilot about two estranged sisters investigating their father's murder in a small Nevada city built around a Wild-West-themed casino, Fire & Brimstone. Dante — the dead mayor's business partner, and the pilot's real villain — has just walked a trio of old associates through the casino floor, making small talk about how much he'll miss his best friend. He excuses himself to "see some old friends in the lobby." What follows is the first time the script — and the audience — actually sees what Fire & Brimstone is for.
ACROSS THE ROOM
Dante approaches Nero, Callie, and Bev for a stiff reunion.
DANTE
You heard?
NERO
Saw it live at five.
DANTE
Let’s get a drink.
As Dante leads them toward the Burlesque Room.
CALLIE
You don’t wanna talk somewhere a little more private?
DANTE
What happens in my club, stays in my club.
Dante glances up at a clearly marked security camera.1
INT. JAILHOUSE SUITE – FIRE & BRIMSTONE – CONTINUOUS
Dante and the trio are visible on one of the monitors. We ANGLE OFF that screen to find Michael watching another, while eating French Fries out of a paper cup.
He’s looking at the video of Jose Luis and Wynter in the hotel bedroom. As they get sexy, he cues the fast forward.
WYNTER (V.O.)
Not a porn guy?
Michael looks back as Wynter exits the bathroom in a towel, post shower. She is definitely not dead. Though her bare neck does have some belt chafing. She leans close to Michael and steals one of his French Fries, clearly flirting.
Michael quick-scrolls all the way through Wynter playing possum and taking her curtain call for the hidden camera.
WYNTER
Tah-Dah!
Winter raises her arms, letting her towel drop. Michael doesn’t look over at her, eyes on the tech hardware.
MICHAEL
That goes on to a secure drive?
Wynter responds while refastening her towel.
WYNTER
Biometric lock-down. Only the partners have access. They’ve got Judges. Lawyers. Cops. State Reps. Years worth of digitized video. Plus the new stuff. Featuring, Moi.2
MICHAEL
The Oasis will be the same?
WYNTER
4K three-sixty feed of the money suites. Control center’s hidden with the guest rooms. Same.
MICHAEL
Five thousand rooms. Tougher to keep the staff in the dark.
WYNTER
Worth the trouble to fill those little black servers’ with the dark secrets of the rich and powerful.3
Wynter straddles Michael.
WYNTER (CONT’D)
Might be time for me to get a raise.
She lets her towel fall again. Michael feeds her a Fry.
MICHAEL
Your towel’s broken.
Wynter drapes her arms around his neck, her forearms are lined with cutting scars. Apparent residue of self-harm.
MICHAEL (CONT’D)
How come we never met before?
WYNTER
My Uncle Sam gave me a scholarship to study abroad, Afghanistan.
MICHAEL
Must’ve seen some crazy shit.
WYNTER
I was doin’ it, darlin’.
Wynter puts a fry in Michael’s mouth, chews on the opposite end. They’re interrupted as Crystal enters, not amused. Michael’s embarrassed. Wynter doesn’t even know the word.
CRYSTAL
Shut that down, HR in the house.
Wynter climbs off of Michael, collecting her towel. Crystal slaps her bare ass and moves toward the recording gear.
CRYSTAL (CONT’D)
I put Ray and his boys in the Roadhouse with Josephine and Chastity. Let’s tape their party for the piggy bank.
Crystal leans across Michael to remotely activate a camera. Michael is feeling cramped and bothered by these hot ladies. He eases himself up and starts toward the door.
MICHAEL
I should check-in with Dante.
(to Wynter)
Thanks for gettin’ me caught up.
WYNTER
Anytime, boss.
Michael exits. Crystal glares at Wynter. Takes the empty seat and resumes setting-up the video tap of Ray and his team with the working girls.
CRYSTAL
I’m the boss.
WYNTER
He’s a nice boy.
CRYSTAL
No such thing.4
- 1
Dante states the room's rule out loud — "what happens in my club, stays in my club" — and the very next beat of stage direction has him glancing at the camera that's already breaking it. The rule and its violation share one breath. That's a location whose internal logic is doing narrative work instead of just sitting in a production designer's notes.
Story Location - 2
One line does the whole "secrets and layers" job: a biometric lock, a client list running from judges to state reps, years of footage. Nothing here is explained further, and it doesn't need to be — it's specific enough to be believed and withheld enough to stay a live threat for the rest of the season.
Story Location - 3
Michael's question — "the Oasis will be the same?" — is the location checklist's own "distant mountains" move: a second, much bigger version of this exact machine is already under construction down the road, promised but not yet shown. The rules of one location are being used to pre-load stakes into a location that doesn't exist yet.
Story Location - 4
Four lines of dialogue establish who actually runs this room — not Dante, who owns the club, but Crystal, who runs the floor and doesn't like sharing Wynter's attention. A location with contested day-to-day control generates friction on its own, independent of whatever the season's plot is currently doing with it.
Story Location
What this excerpt doesn’t show
This page shows Fire & Brimstone's machinery, not its cost. What the blackmail archive actually does to the people caught in it — a compromised sheriff, a dead sex worker, two sisters who don't yet know their father was part of it — plays out across the rest of the pilot, not on this one page.
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: “Outlaw City” →
Related pages
- How to Build a Story Location That Generates Its Own Drama — the six-layer checklist behind every note on this page.
- Mystery Box vs. Magic Show: Two Ways to Build Narrative Suspense — the withhold-and-reveal contract note 2's archive is built on.
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.