I really like Boardwalk Empire on HBO. It's another ways long-form dramatic

series of set in the Prohibition era of Atlantic City. It's about running booze and

stuff like that and predictably there's a lot of stuff in it to probably offend people.

I don't know, make a choice about what you watch or whatever, but I really like Boardwalk

Empire and one of the things that I liked about Boardwalk Empire and frankly one of the

things that I like about watching sometimes sometimes programming that others might find controversial,

is that seems to be where people will really take the risks in terms of what they do with plot structure.

And not every episode of Boardwalk worked this way, but a lot of them did.

The thing that would happen at the beginning would match with the thing that happened at the very

end and the real point of the show that corresponded with the

title of the episode would happen directly at the middle point of the

episode. So all of the action from the beginning to the midpoint would rise to this epiphany moment that is sort of decoded by knowing the title of the episode.

But then, and this is where it got interesting, coming back down

the mountain from the peak of the middle of the episode to the end of the episode, things would

happen sequentially that would correspond to the rising action the other way.

And in doing so, this is really interesting way to tell a story and one that isn't super

familiar and already tried and worn out for modern audiences.

Well, it's actually a name for this type of structure and it's called Chiasm.

And this Chiastic structure is not an entirely Hebrew invention, but that's the place where we're most likely

to come in contact with it today because it pops up a ton in the Bible.

Now, sometimes it's really, really glaringly obvious. Other times it's a little

bit sneakier but once you see it, oh my goodness my friends, it is everywhere.

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