There are certain economics involved in making a network TV show that you want to amortize the costs of that, so the more episodes you make, the cheaper they all are individually.

You can make a good show, but you still need some magical alchemy to get people to watch.

Nothing makes me happier than to have a smart person tell me why the show is smart, especially if I didn't intend that. I tend to be a very instinctual writer, and I don't plot shows out like, "This is my thesis and this is how I'm going to subtly sneak my thesis into this episode." I just approach it from, "We know these characters well, here are the situations that they're in, now how would they behave? What would the consequences be?" And it's always fun to see how people interpret that and dissect it afterward, and make me and the other writers seem probably smarter than we really are.

I think the bar is higher these days in terms of audience expectations of authenticity.

TV is just such a fast-moving medium that you do what you can do, and what you can't do, you don't worry about too much.

I have no problem at all going back and forth between cable and network.

I'm perfectly happy to color within the network lines when I have to.