I think ultimately what makes the show is not the reality but the drama.

I actually started in the opposite place. I come from a technical background - I'm a mathematician and a programmer by trade - and I was one of those people who would watch a show and say, "Oh, that could never happen."

What you have to get used to as a writer is realizing that most of what you come up with is wrong for the show.

To be fair to ourselves, in almost every original script, the timing is actually worked out down to the minute.

I think ultimately what makes the show is not the reality but the drama.

What happens is that as the scripts are rewritten and re-edited in order to make the story more compelling, you sometimes end up with what you could call a time singularity - where there's no way for everything that happens to happen in real time. It's something that you need to wink at.

I personally have more faith than the average writer in people's willingness to be complicated, and so I'm thrilled by what's happened. I'm elated at audiences' willingness to handle complexity. In some sense, I feel like my belief in what people are capable of is being validated.