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.

As far as how important the real-life resonance of the stories is, I think it must play at least a small role in the show's success, because it gives the show this sense of suspense from the fact that it seems at least plausible.

To create a situation where each new episode has to start in the exact same place as the previous one, with the actors' hair in the exact same place, seemed crazy.

The rule, I think, is: Do your homework, learn what there is to learn about the real world, and then when you get in the room, forget it all.

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."

The idea that you could stitch together every detail episode to episode and preserve continuity for the length of a season and tell a story while using no time cuts, no flashbacks, nothing but pure real time just seemed too difficult.

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.