Multiple Primetime Emmy- and Writers Guild Award-winning film and television writer, director, and producer Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) has been named the recipient of the WGAW Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement. The award is presented to a Guild member who has “advanced the literature of television and made outstanding contributions to the profession of the television writer.” Gilligan will be honored at the WGAW’s 2025 Writers Guild Awards ceremony on Saturday, February 15 at the Beverly Hilton.

“‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,’” said Gilligan. “Cribbing from a better writer is about all I can think to do right now, preoccupied as we all are by what has happened to beautiful Southern California. But this award is a true honor, and I appreciate it deeply.”

Gilligan was born in Richmond, Virginia, and raised in Farmville and Chesterfield County. While attending NYU, Gilligan won the Virginia Governor’s Screenwriting Award in 1989 for his screenplay Home Fries, which was later made into a movie starring Drew Barrymore and Luke Wilson. This award led Gilligan to land an agent and enter the industry. He wrote 1993’s Wilder Napalm before joining season two of The X-Files in 1995. In addition to writing nearly 30 episodes, Gilligan went on to become an executive producer of The X-Files. He was one of the creators and executive producers of the spin-off series The Lone Gunmen.

In 2008, Gilligan created Breaking Bad, widely considered to be among the greatest television shows of all time. It was one of the most-watched cable series in history during its run and it is currently the highest-rated show on IMDb.

Gilligan went on to co-create the Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul in 2015 with Peter Gould. Together, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul were named “TV Programs of the Year” ten times by the American Film Institute and won four Peabody Awards, sixteen Primetime Emmy Awards, and nine Writers Guild Awards. In 2019 Gilligan wrote and directed the film El Camino, a coda to the Breaking Bad finale from 2013.

Named after one of the most influential writers in entertainment history, the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement is the WGAW’s highest award for television writing. Past Television Laurel Award recipients include Linda Bloodworth Thomason, Yvette Lee Bowser, Merrill Markoe, Jenji Kohan, Diane English, Aaron Sorkin, Steven Bochco, Susan Harris, Stephen J. Cannell, Shonda Rhimes, David Chase, Marta Kauffman & David Crane, Larry David, Garry Marshall, and Alison Cross.

So our Rookie (Gingle Wang) hasn’t been dead terribly long as other ghosts would describe it, and isn’t terribly familiar with the big business that the haunting and urban legend celebrity ghosts perpetuate. When the offerings at a ghost’s grave or shrine begin tapering off and especially if they stop, for any reason or none at all, the ghost in question has 30 days to either obtain an official haunting license or glitch out of existence, basically forever. And for some reason, our Rookie isn’t ready to do that just yet. 

The rivalry between the two main celebrities of our ghostly world, Catherine (Sandrine Pinna) and her haunted hotel versus Jessica (Eleven Yao) and her horde of fakes, is just like the smiling poison you’ll see between live celebs on any reality TV show today. Catherine has her tried and true methods that work most of the time, while Jessica seems intent on trying out a bunch of new methods to take her haunting mythos worldwide, though neither of our lady poltergeists are impressing the Chairghost (Di-yang Huang) terribly much at the moment. And our Rookie is trying rather desperately to follow in either of their footsteps, inevitably resulting in hilarious if not pathetic shenanigans. 

Like any rookie out hunting a job, our Rookie attends a ghostly seminar and performs miserably, but she manages to meet Catherine’s self-proclaimed manager Makoto (Chen Bolin), and gets taken back to the hotel for some professional haunting lessons from the legend herself. Spectral hijinks ensue, as Catherine and Makoto try so very hard to find a talent, a haunting niche, something that can give our Rookie recognition in the ghost world so she doesn’t go poof forever! 

The problem is, is that our Rookie just doesn’t seem to be good at, well, anything. Like any ghost, she actually has unfinished business and that’s why she’s still stuck on this earthly plane, but the how and why of her death, and the very real rage and sorrow she still feels because of it, is something we the living can actually all relate to as well. As she dutifully dons schoolgirl garb and Jack Skellington makeup to repeat her chosen phrase, “I hate this world!”, our Rookie is building her own urban legend to rival even Catherine and Jessica, but even in this she feels herself a fraud. Makoto and the others helped her basically put this whole thing together, and while it might save her spectral butt from glitching out, it doesn’t address her personal grievances, which is kinda the whole point of ghosts. 

The leading ghosts are about to compete in a ghost-off for the Golden Ghost Awards, its all being dead-broadcast amongst the dead talents society and the competition is totally fierce, yo! But even as she gamely tries to continue the urban legend she began with help, our Rookie finds herself realizing that she doesn’t have to be declared special or hugely popular, to deserve to continue to exist. No, her death wasn’t fair at all, and to make our Rookie continue to struggle for acceptance, recognition, and to be seen in the afterlife, isn’t fair at all either. No wonder that even in the beginning, our Rookie had decided to use, “I hate this world!” as her catchphrase. 

Full of heart and sympathy for the struggles of recognition that both the living and the dead can totally understand, Dead Talents Society boasts plenty of jump scares and ghostly gore but from an adorably jaded behind-the-scenes point of view! 

The legacy of a family-owned sweet soup shop in the back alleyways of Hong Kong begins showing strains when the mom holding everything together suffers a stroke. 

So May (Stephy Tang) is the elder daughter of the family, and dreams of escaping the life chained to the kitchen she was never allowed into anyway, by becoming a flight attendant. Her father (Simon Yam), highly traditional and stubborn, eternally critical and curmudgeonly, merely seems to suffer his and his family’s existence, relying almost solely on the running of their dessert soup shop as his legacy to the world. Her brother (Jeffrey Ngai) has his head immersed in video games and modern sensibilities, despite being catered to inside the house by his mom and when she’s not around, expecting his sister to do the same. The only sweetness in a rather sour family existence is a mom (Mimi Kung), who is the matriarch of the house in every sense of the word, good-naturedly running after her adult children even as they try to run away from this tiny slice of their parent’s life, and making amends, apologies, and even excuses for her grouch of a husband as they run the dessert soup shop they opened together many years ago. This means everything falls apart when Mom suffers a sudden stroke and lands in the hospital. 

May would like nothing more than to escape to another country with her flight attendant job, but her brother has completely shut down with mom in the hospital, refusing to even answer the phone when dad repeatedly calls demanding bro come in and help with the shop, and dad can’t do everything the shop requires alone either. Hiding her pain, May turns in her flight attendant credentials and tries to go help with the shop, attempting to learn and recreate the recipes that made her family’s shop famous, which earns her nothing but more censure from Dad. In the grand old tradition of Asian families not actually talking to each other about their traumas, dad long ago decided he would never insist his firstborn child would be stuck working in the shop and doing nothing else, but never bothered to tell her that, or why. 

Things instantly go from bad to remarkably worse when Mom sadly passes away, and though Dad did kind of get to say goodbye to her, no one in the family is equipped to deal with the gaping hole Mom left when she crossed over. The unfeeling government is buying up all the small businesses in the neighborhood for development and the Mays family’s shop is the last holdout, so whatever legacy Mom left behind in the shop is in danger too. Dad’s gone from harsh disapproving words to almost constant beleaguered silence, and Bro has stuck his head firmly in his headphones and sorrowful silence too. Only May is left to try and save the family dessert soup shop, and frankly, whats left of her family, from total collapse. 

And May tries, oh she tries so hard. Despite being a newcomer to her situation, a traveling writer (Kevin Kam-Yin Chu) who decides to take May up on her statement that her family’s red bean dessert soup is the best and right way to make such a thing and eventually ends up becoming May’s beau and shop helper too, May feels quite alone in her struggles. She takes dad to look at other locations for the shop, which of course earns her more censure; May tries to enlist her brother to help in some real way only to be told he doesn’t want to fight fate and modernization; and dear old traditional dad seems resigned to let the shop just freaking close rather than putting up any kind of real struggle. We understand everyone misses Mom in helpless, hopeless sorrow, but the bleak acceptance almost right up to the very end of the film is really depressing. 

Surprisingly, the film ends on a sweeter note than one might expect, given the bitterness of a great deal of the film. An acknowledged staple of many Asian cultures is that this is how a family expresses their love, their legacy, and their dreams for their children – with excellent food. And while Little Red Sweet has many other tastes running through its story, things do come full circle in a quietly loving and yes, very sweet way.