Playset: Los Angeles 1936.

Senator Dirk Thornhill, R-CA (Sam): A gladhanding good-time politician, bisexual and promiscuous, from a time when it was understood that a gentleman's private life was off-limits. Having a hard time adjusting. His marriage with Hollywood starlet Katherine Dulac is on the rocks, and it's not going to get any better when she sees the photos taken with one of the boys from the Dionysus.

Katherine has had her career insured against catastrophes that are Not Her Fault, and the photos would certainly qualify. (And it'd be an attractive fire-sale, because her career isn't going anywhere, plus this'd allow her to get a settlement, given that this is before no-fault divorce.

Thus enter Carl Andrews (Powell), Dirk's lawyer, an inveterate schemer who aims to lay his hands on those photos, get them to Katherine and take a nice fat cut at the end of it all. Carl enlists Grissom 'Griz' Smith (Bryan), bent vice-squad cop, to do the legwork. Inevitably, with this much cash on the line, more and bigger vultures start circling, while mistrust reigns.

We had a bit of a tough time with this one, largely (I think) because we were all Cunning Schemer-type characters, and thus got hung up a bit too much on inconclusive talky scenes and planning paralysis. We could have profitably condensed the first three-quarters into the first half, I suspect. Fiasco needs galoots, and information-driven plotting is difficult to pull off on the fly.

Which is always true, but perhaps this playset probably needs to come with a warning that it's liable to slide you in that direction -- detectives and crime lords and lawyers are all information-rich, scheme-building types. If in doubt, prefix your character's job description with 'idiot'.