Mayor Napolitano evades arrest — by subway

This week's LA Observed Script Project pages were submitted by Steve Chivers, a writer and producer for TV, movies and the Web. LAOSP producer Eric Estrin gives him thanks — and props — for managing to find a ray of sunshine in "the dank, moral cesspool that is 'Right of Way.'” Eric means that in the best possible way, I'm sure.

Her name is Rachel Davis, and when she was introduced in our story, trouble emanated from her in heat waves. Her 11-year-old creator, Jonah Lazar, encapsulated her sex appeal with a single word: “Vavoom.”

Since then, Rachel has indeed proven to be a handful. She helped her mother, Celeste, plot her own kidnapping, lied to the mayor about it, tried to seduce him, and set him up for a mugging as she ran off to snort cocaine and make out with Sydney Pizer, a fat Scotsman 40 years her senior, who also happens to be a blood relative.

Now it turns out Rachel is related to Mayor Napolitano as well. She’s his daughter, which she knew (but Napolitano did not) when she put her hand on his leg in the car and moved in close for a kiss.

Yet somehow, in a testament to the depravity of our story’s array of characters, Steve has begun to turn this emotionally unstable little powder keg into our most sympathetic figure outside the put-upon mayor.

“Celeste had become entirely unlikable to me, and I felt like Rachel was heading in that direction too. I wanted to make her father-daughter relationship with Napolitano mean something and give her some added dimension,” he said.

Also at the Script Notes blog, Estrin talks about being on KPCC's Off-Ramp, where John Rabe and the "Off-Ramp Players" — including reporter Frank Stoltze — read scenes from "Right of Way."