My main qualm about TV criticism has been when people review TV the way they review movies. They watch the pilot, and write a definitive review of the show. The obvious analogy is that you don't read the first eight pages of a book and then talk about whether the book works or not. People want so desperately in this day and age to declare something thumbs-up or thumbs-down that they declare it immediately.

I don't know why anybody does anything in the world of television.

My favorite TV show of all time is 'The Wire,' which has the feeling of a project-based show. You draw in people from disparate parts of the world, and they have to work together to achieve a goal.

My main qualm about TV criticism has been when people review TV the way they review movies. They watch the pilot, and write a definitive review of the show. The obvious analogy is that you don't read the first eight pages of a book and then talk about whether the book works or not. People want so desperately in this day and age to declare something thumbs-up or thumbs-down that they declare it immediately.

For storytelling purposes, there has to be conflict, but that doesn't mean the people have to be mean. I've never liked mean-spirited comedy.

In high school, my friend and I discovered that your cable-access station had to let you do whatever you wanted - it was like the Wild West. We made a couple weird things, like a tribute to the Zucker brothers, where we had a panel discussion about the Naked Gun movies. We wrote a script and made jokes that I'm sure were terrible and showed clips of The Naked Gun without permission.

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.