‘I Pretty Much Wanted to Die’

From Sepinwall’s new book, the story of the making of ABC’s hit series Lost:

“The creation of Lost defies nearly everything we know about how successful television shows — or great ones — are made. The idea for Lost came not from a writer, but a network executive. The first writer on the project got fired. The replacement creative team had a fraction of the usual time to write, cast, and produce a pilot episode. The executive who had championed the show was himself fired before it ever aired. One of the two creators all but quit the moment the pilot was finished. Nearly every creative decision at the start of the show was made under the assumption that it would never succeed. Everyone believed it was too weird, too dense, too unusual to work. And it may have been. But it worked, anyway.

“Lost, a show thrown together in a rush and snakebit by top-level turnover, was an enormous hit right from the start (it’s the highest rated of any series discussed in this book). It was among the most thrilling, surprising, memorable dramas in the history of American network television, and at its best could go toe-to-toe with much of what was happening on cable during this period.”

Source: Grantland
Published: Nov 27, 2012
Length: 19 minutes (4,981 words)

How a ‘Parks and Recreation’ pitch becomes a joke, part 1: Inside the writers room

Writers rooms may vary in terms of the decor or the available food (“Everybody Loves Raymond” was always the champ in that regard), but the basic atmosphere is the same from room to room, show to show. You will have a large space (in this case the common room of a suite of offices), usually around a table (here a big coffee table) where the writers can gather to eat, to brainstorm and to argue about completely unrelated matters, which sometimes end up fueling stories and other times are just procrastination while everyone waits for the next good idea.

Source: HitFix
Published: Sep 29, 2011
Length: 9 minutes (2,323 words)