Episodic Television Quotes

I did a good bit of episodic television directing, but directing a movie is so much more complicated.

I want to do more independent film. I'm blessed to be working on really quality episodic television, which to me actually feels like a sort of 13-hour film.

It's hard to fit everything in and still have episodic television.

Coming off 'Sopranos' and 'Mad Men,' I was starting to feel like I was being spoiled creatively. I wanted to move forward as a director in TV and get more involved in the process. After having those two great experiences, doing regular episodic TV wouldn't be quite the thrill.

One of the problems with episodic television of any color is that everything has got to be okay at the end of the episode so it can start again next week. So the events that occur are rarely life-changing. But with film, you can say that this thing only happened once; this is a major thing that happened to these people.

It might sound odd, but filming a soap is closer to acting in a play than filming episodic television.

The network wants you to make a thing that's just a stand-alone episode, so you never get any character or continuity. This is one of the ways in which television can actually be good, and even better than the movies, because it gives you a chance to tell a long story.

Usually, when you talk about serialized TV, you're talking about one specific beat that you play, over and over again.

We do want the freedom to move scenes from episode to episode to episode. And we do want the freedom to move writing from episode to episode to episode, because as it starts to come in and as you start to look at it as a five-hour movie just like you would in a two-hour movie, move a scene from the first 30 minutes to maybe 50 minutes in. In a streaming series, you would now be in a different episode. It's so complicated, and we're so still using the rules that were built for episodic television that we're really trying to figure it out.