The payment for sins can be delayed. But they cant be avoided.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about what the audience would want. That's my job, is to anticipate ahead of the audience.

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

Obviously there are different standards and practices that are allowed on cable versus network. You just have to embrace what your network is going to allow.

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

Series finales have that responsibility to leave you feeling good about entire series. You want to feel like the viewer closes the book satisfied. And if you strike out on the finale it skews how you feel about the entire series.

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.