Casting is a very inexact process. What we were missing on this show was the office politic. |
Chemistry is not anything an executive producer or writer can orchestrate or plan; you just hope for it. |
If a knife is plunged into someone's sternum, you pay attention. But for shows that don't depend on violence or melodramatic scenes, it's tougher to compete in a six-act show than in four acts, or in 41 minutes instead of 45 minutes. |
In retrospect, I think it's a plus, because now we've been able to go back and spend extra time on each of those episodes and make them better. |
It's unfortunate when it happened. We felt we were just coming into a run of our best shows of the season. |
Last year, most of the episodes tended to be more on the self-contained side of the fence. This year, we'll probably look for a balance where it will be more serialized. And we can thank series like 'Desperate Housewives' and 'Lost' and others that have introduced the audience back to the serialization of television programs. I believe, personally, storytelling can be much richer when you can count on your constituency being more habitual about watching week in and week out. |
That was never designed to be a staple of the show that we would revisit week after week after week. That was something that these two sort of brought to life, and that's a perfect example of something that they did that then informed the writers that this is a part of the show. |
The more lawyers there are, the more people are out there to encourage others not to go to law school. |
We couldn't be more excited. His comedic and dramatic strengths make him a natural for this series. |
We discovered that the series really wants to be a comedy more than a drama. |
We're reduced to writing eight-minute acts. It's very difficult storytelling, especially for character scenes. An hour is now 41 minutes, and that's a terrible trim. |
You're looking for characters to tell particular stories, and then on top of that, you're looking for a populace that you can achieve an interaction with. We discovered that the series really wants to be a comedy more than a drama. So we are looking for characters and actors with strong comedic skills as well as dramatic skills. |