Tv Narrative Quotes

I love 'Boardwalk Empire,' but there were moments where I thought it didn't have the constant through-line that 'Breaking Bad' did and 'Better Call Saul' does.

In 'Lost,' they really believed in the mystery box and not looking too much inside the mystery box. It was some kind of idea generator that you didn't need to dissect and open up. And that's absolutely fascinating and an engaging way to tell a story.

TV has a three storyline structure, but 'The Killing' takes on that structure with such ambition.

A lot of writers dream of feature films, but television - by way of TNT, CBS, Lifetime, and Hallmark Hall of Fame - has always called my name. And after seeing 'True Detective,' can there be any doubt that the storytelling on TV is as genius as it gets?

TV, particularly network television, gives you a much greater opportunity to tell a long-form story, to develop a character and keep it detailed. Film, by its nature, is more finite.

A lot of cop shows, because they have the restraints of having a new case every episode, the victims often become these kind of nameless, faceless plot points, and as an audience we don't feel anything for those people.

On any serialized show, you're going to have through-lines that take you through the season, and you're going to have individual arcs that resolve themselves in shorter order.

The best TV that I watch, I always feel safe when I'm watching it. And that could be like 'Homeland' or 'The Americans'; by 'safety,' I mean the show knows its parameters.

It's very rare for the Internet to have a successful narrative show like 'MyMusic.' It's really a case study for what is the future of the sitcom.

A lot of American shows don't last for as long as 12 episodes. They get cut after one. But certainly one of the great things about The Office in particular was that there was a beginning, a middle and an end.

On 'Master of None,' the majority of the episodes were just one story, and that was by design because we really wanted to focus in on the character of Dev and get the audience in his head.

These detective series on TV always end at precisely the right moment-after the criminal is arrested and before the court turns him loose.

I was tired of writing for shows where there was always a shoot-out in the last act and somebody was killed. 'Star Trek' was formulated to change that.

Remember Star Trek? They're on this huge ship and they've got all these people, right? But you only see them, maybe they go on some mission and one of them gets killed.

Half of a broadcast show, in my experience, is things happening, and the other half is people talking about how they feel about the things that happened. And so there's this sense of everyone saying their subtext out loud.

I must say, I always - from experience, when I watch TV shows and I see characters leave without a proper explanation or leave with not enough time, I get irritated. I like it when there's a clean-cut reason or a defining moment where they have to go. Whether that's death or not, I think that's subjective.

Even though shows like NYPD Blue are soaps in my opinion, but they're individualized to an extent that you can still follow what's going on if you miss a week.

Coming from TV and film, rule number one is that you always service the main character first and foremost. If that's not working, you've got nothing.

The idea was always going to be that each year is a stand-alone story, which did make it easier on some level. It also requires the network to have the creative imagination to say, 'This is also 'Fargo,'' you know what I mean?

It's the big question of every TV show, right, where you have these two people who it's clear the world wants to put them together and everyone wants to see them together, but also when you're telling these stories you can't throw these people together immediately.

It's often the death of the show when you break the tension and the two lead characters get together.

Gravity Falls' normally follows very particular rules: we start out in reality close to the world as we know it, usually one magical element presents itself, and then it's essentially vanished or hidden back to where it came from by the end of the 20 minutes.

Hopping around time in a non-linear storytelling fashion (on 'Lost') allows you to bring back characters who are dead and, in some cases, buried. Now that time travel is the story itself, it opens up even more doors. So when an actor reads that they're getting killed off on the show, they're basically, like, 'Okay, but should I still bother to show up next week?'

I kind of love that British style: two seasons of tight, compact, good television. The more episodes you have, the thinner the episodes get.

How can you sustain life? [Dan] Fogelman is magic, and I think the other scripts of his that I've read for this show specifically are as beautiful as the pilot script [of This Is Us]. And he said it in a meeting [regarding the stillbirth of a child], "You can't kill a baby every week." But I think the idea that you can have these impactful moments that are as heightened as the loss of a child - it's life.