I've never really told jokes. I'm not good at it.

People are out of their home on a Saturday night or they're at the movies or they're at dinner and a lot of the people who flip on the television are doing just that. They may have never seen your show before and you can't count on to your audience to be there week in and week out.

But Steven Bochco was smart; he knew that viewers were smart.

It gets harder and harder to succeed and find audiences with the 500-channel universe, the remote control, and people being so trigger happy with that remote control. It just gets harder to get a foothold.

We also have issue oriented storylines which are an examination of an issue, be it ethical or social.

But I do believe that in all my shows, I really enjoy the quirky, the eccentric characters, the ones you don't meet every day.

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.