I would far rather add a character who generates strong feelings than someone who just kind of floats along, generating medium-warmth smiles of gentle affirmation.

One of the worst things you could do in that world is curse at someone.

Mockumentary formats are great for a couple of things. One of them is delivering the toughest part of any sitcom episode, what writers call "pipe" - the nuts and bolts of the story where you explain what's happening, the boring plot stuff.

I care more about making sure the story is correct and the characters are behaving in character than I do about the individual jokes.

I would far rather add a character who generates strong feelings than someone who just kind of floats along, generating medium-warmth smiles of gentle affirmation.

A million years ago, when doing research about the world of municipal government, one thing that struck me is how often people's job titles changed - from one department to another, from the public to the private sector and back again. People move around a lot, everyone has her eye on some other, slightly better situation in some other corner of city hall. Plus governments are constantly shuffling and reorganizing and shuttering or condensing departments - they are often byzantine hodge-podges of fractured org charts lying atop a bed of shifting sand.

You really don't settle on an idea until you're really sure it's the best idea. Then once you settle on it you commit to it entirely. That was always the plan.