It’s quick. You might miss it.

I sure as hell didn’t.

(Potential BoJack Season 5 spoilers ahead.)

BoJack Horseman tackles issues that are normally not portrayed in popular media (or, issues that are only ever portrayed in a watered-down, “acceptable” way): abortion, asexuality, and serial monogamy, just to name a few.

In popular media, PTSD is a condition normally attributed to soldiers . . . male soldiers (sometimes women soldiers, but it is primarily thought of as a wartime mental condition). Even when we see women suffering what are obvious trauma symptoms, we refrain from mentioning PTSD as a potential explanation.

Season 5 Episode 9 of BoJack Horseman shows Hollyhock returning to Bojack’s house after being drugged thin and almost dying there. She has two episodes in the house where she becomes irrationally fearful and the whole world becomes a bit grey.

She does not have any of those episodes once they leave the house, and she never returns, instead going right to the airport with only moments to spare.

This indicates that BoJack’s house (where the trauma occurred) is a trigger for her. And of course it would be. Of course she would show signs of avoidance. Last season, we saw a good-hearted Hollyhock stand up for an old lady who she believed to be her grandmother. She was consequently drugged by this woman for being too fat at a time when she was already insecure about her body.

Hollyhock has two trauma-related episodes at BoJack’s house: One when she walks in and simply sees the furniture, and another when she sees BoJack with his own pills.

When Hollyhock sees BoJack with pills, she immediately and irrationally assumes BoJack is poisoning her. BoJack has never hurt her . . . in fact, he went through great lengths to help Hollyhock feel better about her self-image last season (well, as great as BoJack can go, basically). He traveled all over California seeking her birth mother, and all without the promise of any recognition or reward. BoJack is selfless when it comes to his half-sister, and he sees his demons reflected in her.

He knows what she could become (in the worst way).

In the second traumatic episode, when BoJack is holding his pills in the kitchen, we see the split. We see the disconnect between the Hollyhock who misses and cares for BoJack, who knows he would never drug her, and the Hollyhock who is traumatized. Logic goes right out the window. She cowers in terror from a man (horse?) who has proven he would never intentionally harm her.

I braced myself for the response I thought was coming.

BoJack is going to take it personally. He’s going to get mad at Hollyhock. He’s going to get defensive and ask why she’s acting “crazy.”

But, to my relief, and perhaps because BoJack has dealt with so much of his own trauma, he actually handles this situation well. He does not belittle Hollyhock’s feelings. He’s understanding, and offers a solution (even though he really just wants more drugs for himself, ultimately) to leave the house where the trauma occurred.

Which left me thinking: Did BoJack see Hollyhock’s trauma symptoms and (considerately) gloss over them without making a big deal out of them? Or were his actions solely fueled by addition, and he was just considerate “by accident”?

We may never have a clear answer, and the truth is probably a muddied cocktail of the two. I hope Season 6 will explore Hollyhock’s PTSD symptoms in more depth — hopefully through healing.

BoJack Horseman and Female PTSD was originally published in Sitcom World on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When people feel incredibly passionate about a piece of television, it can often move them to create something brand new that pays homage to the original idea. This may take the form of fan-fiction, speculative screenwriting or perhaps— if the enthusiast in question has a talent for design, sculpture or illustration — fan-art.

Sitcom fan-art lies at an explosive intersection between comedy, humor, talent and creativity. What’s fascinating to me is the wide spectrum of vastly different interpretations a given show can inspire. Not only does the choice of style or medium affect the outcome, the sheer range of random aspects that attracts people to a sitcom in the first place — be it a lead character, an ensemble cast or even one of the sets — varies wildly from artist to artist.

And yet, despite these differences, they all have at least one guaranteed commonality — a deep and sincere love of the show. Listed below (in alphabetical order) are some of the finest examples I could find of these adoring tributes.

Every image is linked to the original source over on the weird and wonderful DeviantArt — if you like a piece, I encourage you to let the creator know.

Arrested Development

It Is All Illusion

Tobias Funke

Arrested Development

George Bluth's: Cornballs Cereal

Broad City

Broad Blessing

Broad City

Frasier

Frasier's Apartment Wallpaper

Frasier Chibis

Friends

Friends FanArt

Friends - 041

FRIENDS series: MONICA GELLER

Futurama

Futurama Zero Gravity

BENDER

Happy Days

Fonzie

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia

Always Sunny in Bethlehem

Meanwhile, at Paddys Pub

The Nightman Cometh

Louie

Louis CK Editorial Portrait

Mork and Mindy

Robin Williams Tribute

Parks and Recreation

Parks and Recreation Cast

Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec

Rick and Morty

Defies All Logic, That Thing!

Rick and Morty

Sanchez n' Smith

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley

Seinfeld

Saiyanfeld

Seinfeld poster

Seinfeld

South Park

All Grown Up: South Park

-::SoUtH-PArK::-

South Park

SP

The Big Bang Theory

The Big Bang Theory

Big Bang Theory Sheldon

The Big Bang Theory

The Last Man On Earth

The Last Man on Earth

The Last Man on Earth - Bachelor Party

The Office

falling into you

The Office

The Dunduda Triangle

Veep

The Most Interesting Man in the West Wing

It’s the Spectacular Sitcom ‘Fan-Art’ Showcase! was originally published in Sitcom World on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When “Master of None” arrived on Netflix back in 2015, it was easy to feel like the show basically came out of nowhere. This is somewhat paradoxical when you consider that the show’s star (and writer/director/showrunner) Aziz Ansari, has been everywhere this past decade, emerging as a live-wire second banana on sitcoms like “Parks & Recreation,” as well popping up in a relatively thankless capacity in Apatow-produced yukfests “Get Him to the Greek” and “I Love You, Man”. He’s done stand-up specials, hosted SNL, partied with Kanye West and enraged Chris Brown. By any metric, the guy already had a pretty impressive resume before this show.

Ansari’s hyper-caffeinated, endearing-goofball routine was certainly winning in conservative doses early in his career. But I don’t think any of us expected that he was as capable of producing something as raw and confessional as “Master of None”. The show’s first season masterfully updated the emerging television trend of comedy as loose autobiography: the kind practiced by Woody Allen during his brilliant 70’s/80’s run, and more recently, in Louis C.K.’s paradigm-shifting 30-minute comedy “Louie”.

“Master of None” frequently gets compared to melancholic behavioral dramedies like “Girls” and “Love,” and while the show is similarly preoccupied with the daydreams and hang-ups of oversexed city-dwellers, that is where the similarities begin and end. For one, “Master of None” has, since its inception, been informed by Ansari’s status as an Indian-American man in an overwhelmingly Caucasian professional practice. Two of season one’s highlights — “Parents,” where Ansari’s perpetually stoked doppelganger Dev Shah confronts his own privilege through the unsentimental immigrant anecdotes of his mother and father, as well as the combustively funny “Indians on TV” — were each contained, 30-minute short stories that explicitly tackled themes of xenophobia and the separation can feel from one’s own culture. The show is also beautifully directed: there is a crispness to its visual language, and a sophistication to the esoteric soundtrack cuts (everything from the Walker Brothers to Italian pop and D’Angelo gets a workout here), that makes each episode feel more like arthouse cinema than just another comedy about a 20-something creative drifting through the big city.

Season one of “Master of None” ended with Dev boarding a one-way plane to Italy in an impulsive moment of crisis. His career as an actor seemed to be in a state of permanent limbo, and his sort-of relationship with Rachel (the lovely Noel Wells) had gone up in flames. Would season two follow Dev as he trotted across the globe, in search of love and pasta? Did Ansari and series co-creator and sometimes-director Alan Yang even think they were going to get a season two? In its second season, the rich well of humanity in “Master of None” is so deep that it exposes the hollow and schematic process of watching-TV-as-editorializing. This unfortunate byproduct of fanboy culture has seeped into the viewing practices of today’s audiences, though it’s easier to pinpoint popular examples in high-pedigree dramas such as “Game of Thrones” and “Westworld”.

In “Master of None,” I, for one, am never really watching because I’m itching to see where Dev’s boundless stomach and free-floating curiosity will take him. No, I watch the show because it offers a very particular kind of insight — one that’s resolutely different then any comedy (and indeed, any drama) currently on television. It is a decidedly modern kind of comedy that is very clued-in and perceptive as to the way we live, love and interact now.

The world of “Master of None” is one where dates are arranged through Tinder and people only smoke weed pens and everyone is constantly staring at their smartphones. It’s one where every lonely soul is seen swiping right in search of love, taking photos of their food and obsessing over where to get the best bowl of Ramen, all while life threatens to race right past them. Ansari has emphasized the amount of care and detail that goes into making this show as naturalistic as it is — no small degree of which, I assume, comes from working with his parents (both playing themselves, to hilarious and moving effect) and also his brother (who co-wrote “Parents,” season one’s best episode, and has contributed again to season two). Ansari has stated in interviews that he wouldn’t want “Master of None” to outstay its welcome, and he’s even gone so far as to suggest that the show’s new batch of episodes might be its swan song.

That would be a shame. While I would hate to see the show grind itself into repetitious tedium as so many promising comedies have, the prospect of spending one more season with Dev and his friends is one that I would have a hard time passing up. In a stroke of what can only be considered genius, “Master of None” season two turns out to be funnier, more touching, more visually ambitious, and altogether more satisfying than its first season. In this superb new batch of episodes, Ansari and Yang continue to probe modern romantic anomie with a wisdom and depth that’s uncommon for men their age (it should also be noted that Ansari’s unapologetic foodie obsession grows to greater heights here, with pasta shots that will have you checking red-eye prices to Italy at inopportune times in the day). I must admit, I half-expected the show’s creators to stumble, to falter, to give into the sophomore slump. I could not be more thrilled that Ansari and Yang, and of course, the cast and crew, have managed to prove me wrong. It may be too early to say (it’s only May, after all), but it’s looking like “Master of None” will be placing high on my top ten of the year list once again.

Season two opens in gorgeous black-and-white, with an extended low-angle pan that lingers lovingly over pasta cookbooks and Criterion DVDs from the likes of Vittoria de Sica and Michelangelo Antonioni (“The Bicycle Thieves” and “La Notte,” natch). In this opening, Ansari — who directed the first two episodes — isn’t just shifting his stylistic compass from season one’s “Manhattan” fixation to Italian neo-realism. He’s also letting us know, in one fluid visual moment, where exactly Dev Shah has been since the concluding events of the first season. Like many of the characters in these kinds of stories, Dev is drifting. In this case, he’s drifting through the city of Modena, Italy: depicted here as one of those colorful and charming village communes where all the neighbors shout to each other through their adjacent windows and grandmas invite the local policemen in to taste their lasagna.

Our hero routine hasn’t changed a whole lot: Dev is now taking pasta-making classes (possibly to fuel what appears to be a pasta addiction) and at one point, he even makes an offhand crack that he’ll open his own shop in New York one day. His social circle, meanwhile, has dwindled. He has a small circle of friends, including a radiant local beauty named Francesca, but they’re mostly of a superficial sort — and, as if to further exacerbate Dev’s growing loneliness, they’re all coupled up. It isn’t until Dev receives a fateful visit from his “Big Bud,” Arnold (Eric Wareheim, evoking a kind of bemused innocence through a hulking grizzly-bear frame), that he gets the shake-up in his routine that he needs. The “Big Bud/Lil’ Bud” reunion will have “Master of None” fans wishing they could spend a day with Dev and Arnold as they scoot around the Italian countryside on Vespas, dine at gourmet Osterias, sip Spritzes, and literally get themselves stuck in the kind of impossibly narrow Italian alleyways that mostly exists in the traveler’s imagination.

Halfway through “Master of None’s” second season, Ansari and Yang begin to take more radical chances with form, often reaping even greater narrative rewards than they did the first time around. “Religion,” the third chapter, is another look into the life of Dev’s parents, with the episode’s main conflict revolving around Dev’s desire to eat pork versus his parent’s religiously-rooted refusal of the very same act (the episode also begins with the single greatest use of Tupac Shakur’s “Only God Can Judge Me” ever, but that’s mostly incidental). Like “Parents” in season one, “Religion” sees Ansari stepping outside of the solipsistic millennial cocoon that can inhibit the better impulses of someone like Lena Dunham, and exuding a wisdom that betrays the youthful style of his comedy. Religion and ethnic identity has always been a big part of this show, but watching the normally apathetic Dev being forced to grapple with his own cultural legacy isn’t just funny: it’s truly wonderful, and it has the capacity to teach us about ourselves. One of my only complaints about “Master of None’s” first season was that there wasn’t enough Shoukath Ansari (Aziz’s father), and those of us who wanted more of him in a second season will be delighted to know that Dev’s dad still doesn’t know how to use his iPad, and his micro-obsession with ordering certain food items continues unabated. A later scene where Dev’s dad (who, like Ansari’s real-life old man, is a doctor) must explain to a worried patient why her husband stuck an electric toothbrush up his ass had me on the floor with laughter.

“First Date,” the fourth episode, is one of “Master of None’s” most formally layered episodes. Directed by Wareheim, the episode focuses almost solely on Dev as he navigates a series of romantic first encounters that run the range from promising to vaguely unfulfilling and, finally, soul-crushing. It’s hard to say what’s more impressive: the deftness with which Wareheim bounces from conversation to conversation and partner to partner, or the show’s typically devastating take on the hollow nature of our age of digital romance (has there ever been a more haunting use of Kraftwerk’s “Computer Love” than in the opening titles of this episode?).

Sexual mishaps and attempts at earnest romance can feel labored in some sitcoms because the writers don’t always understand the greater implications of the emotions at play. This is a dilemma that “Master of None” thankfully sidesteps. Don’t believe me? See the ingenious scene that ends “First Date,” where Dev lambasts a recent one-night stand for keeping a racist tchotchke on her bedside counter. The girl in question seems to be operating from a place of privileged white obliviousness rather than outright malice, but she does ask a damning and worthwhile question: is Dev a hypocrite for still consenting to sleep with her? “It doesn’t reflect great on my principals” is the reply she gets — and it’s a line that’s more cutting and indicative of who Dev Shah is than either of them might be willing to admit.

There are other highlights in this second season, almost too many to count. Bobby Cannavale — guest-starring as an Anthony Bourdain-style rock n’ roll chef named Chef Jeff, whom Dev meets during his stint as the host of a cooking show called “Clash of the Cupcakes” — is so funny and relaxed that he might actually win back the goodwill of the many critics who trashed his underrated performance in HBO’s “Vinyl”. In “Master of None,” Cannavale confirms what I’ve long suspected: that he’s a wildly gifted performer whose outsized gifts are perhaps more suited to comedy than antihero drama.

Cannavale’s episodes bristle with wound-up comic energy but the season’s eighth chapter, “Thanksgiving,” might just be its piece de resistance. Through a series of Thanksgiving dinners from the 90’s to the present day, we observe the sexual awakening of Denise (Dev’s lesbian friend played by the outstanding actress and writer Lena Waithe), and how she chooses to come out to her mother, played with gravitas and heartache by the great Angela Bassett. “Thanksgiving” is laced with potent subtext about race and sexuality, and the episode’s construct is almost as daring as its radical perspective. The season’s sixth episode, “New York, I Love You,” boldly disbands from Dev and his buds for an entire episode while ping-ponging from one manic street encounter to the next in a fashion that suggests this is “Master of None’s” answer to Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours”.

I don’t want to sound like I’m up on my moral high horse when it comes to a show that includes detailed dissections of Diane Lane movies and another scene where a large, angry man is repeatedly fed slices of melon in order to keep calm. “Master of None” is still a comedy, even when it’s serious. In fact, it’s a comedy especially when it’s serious. The show tackles loaded, thorny issues head-on without ever coming off as sanctimonious, and more importantly, it never forgets to make us laugh.

Call me crazy, but I think a show like this, as modest and slight as it might seem on the surface, is more important than ever in today’s political climate. Plenty of people will watch “Master of None” because it’s a pleasant and engaging comedy that’s unmarred by the occasionally sour tone of “Louie” or the “me-first” navel-gazing of “Girls”. There will be people who watch it as entertainment, and that’s great. And yet, what Ansari and Yang have done here is not easy: they’ve made a show that celebrates diversity that takes on topics big and small with an unusual lightness of touch. Like Donald Glover’s similarly mercurial “Atlanta,” “Master of None” offers viewers a singular multicultural perspective that they won’t find on almost any other show of this stripe (save for maybe “Blackish,” but I could be extrapolating there), while at the same time giving Ansari’s fanbase blissfully elongated comedic digressions, pop culture allusions that are actually funny, and winsome musings on topics that are universal regardless of race or creed.

It’s ironic that “Master of None” has been made and released with the binge-watching format in mind. On one hand, it makes perfect sense. This is a breezy show that’s as easy to watch as any network sitcom, while being incalculably more rewarding. On the other hand, each episode of “Master of None” is packed with such a sense of fullness –such an abundance of gorgeous mise-en-scene, of witty writing and understated performances, of dryly absurd humor that’s pitched at just the right tempo — that I almost felt sad knowing that I blew through the entire season in just three days. This is a show that’s easy to digest, but meant to savor, like of the great meals Dev eats throughout this new season. Here’s a toast to “Master of None”: still one of the small screen’s best and bravest shows. Season Two Grade: A.

Television Review: Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang have outdone themselves in the brilliant second season… was originally published in Sitcom World on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Watching The Simpsons from start to finish, in typical Netflix-style, allowed a sobering reflection on the way the series has changed. Then I realized: Bart is now Homer.

To clarify, I’m going to be talking about the differences in the series pre-2005 and post-2005, more or less. Really, it is the difference between the digital age and how life was back in the 90s. So there is not a hard and fast date, but that is roughly the time period I’d like my readers to keep in mind. Remember dial-up. Remember trying to send your first text message. Remember how you had to destroy your computer to download a copy of an Evanescence song (and it took 9 hours to download).

And now think of today.

Take Bart at the inception of the series: 10 years old, living in the early 90s, with a skateboard and a bus driver into the glam rock and grunge scene, and without a cell phone to call his father when he leaves him alone after soccer practice (Season 4, Episode 14). In this episode, Bart stews in the rain. His anger grows. And boils. and boils. Homer, none the wiser, watches TV without a second thought. There are no Google Calendar reminders to tell him to “Pick Up Bart.”

Modern episodes have a far faster pace. At first it jarred me — Different acts shift into gear with a jolt. Homer has an affair, but it is a dream within a dream (within a dream?). The realism has completely vanished. I watched the most recent episodes while trying to impose upon them the pace and the personality traits of the Simpsons I grew up with.

And then I realized: Bart (present-day) can’t be Bart (90s Bart). If he was 10 in 1989, he would be about 38 years old now. This means Bart went through his own grunge phase, maybe cried when Kurt Cobain died, got a couple of tattoos, grew weed in his closet, grew up and had his own family.

And now he’s Homer’s age.

Homer Simpson, at the start of the series, was dim-witted but still a responsible adult. He was the kind of parent who said “boys will be boys” to most of his son’s antics (unfairly, as Lisa gets no such treatment, and perhaps that is why she always has to be good), but buckled down hard and forbade Bart to see The Itchy and Scratchy Movie when he feared for his son’s future (Season 4, Episode 6).

This is not the same father I saw in “Much Apu About Something” (Season 27, Episode 12). In this episode, Homer lets Bart destroy a local business just because Apu cannot handle how his customer base has changed (healthier food, a ‘younger’ crowd).

That’s not something Homer the Father would do. That is something Bart as a Father would do.

When you see flashbacks of Homer as a young boy, he is good-hearted, hungry (as a baby, he stole a slice of pizza), innocent, but dim-witted — Much like the original Homer at the start of the series. Homer, as an only child, is used to being the center of attention, and never had to compete with a sibling. His self-centered nature is irritating but genuine — He does not intend to hurt others with his carelessness.

But since birth, Bart has had a mean streak to him. He has had trouble knowing right from wrong, and only seems to show a softer side when a family member is in pain (usually Lisa, for whom he has always had a weakness). He’s had to compete with Lisa and Maggie for attention, and was clearly very jealous when Lisa was born. As such, Bart’s need for attention is more calculated and planned than Homer’s.

Once I accepted this — That modern-day Homer is actually a grown-up version of Bart — the series became more palatable. I was able to appreciate the newer episodes for what they were. Bart, as an adult, is an irresponsible father.

Then, if the modern Homer is a grown-up version of Bart, who is Bart now? Modern Bart has a lot less shame than the original. 1990s Bart loves to make his father mad, but would not humiliate him publicly with a web series cartoon like “Angry Dad.” Remember how heartbroken Bart was when Homer couldn’t play a game of “Capture the Flag?” At a picnic, Homer tricks the kids to score a winning point . . . only to fall down, drunk and tired. Unable to move, Homer rolls around as the neighborhood kids throw eggs at him.

Modern-day Bart would record this on his phone and post it to YouTube. But in this episode (Season 9, Episode 23), Bart looks down. He is ashamed of his father. Homer, even in his drunken stupor, recognizes Bart’s shame and vows to be a more fit role model.

Otto now is still into the same music he was back then, but it’s not new anymore. It’s retro. At the start of the series, Otto was into bands that were popular at the time. But you wouldn’t catch Otto dead at a “Maroon 5” concert. Most of Otto’s favorite artists are dead or washed up. By staying the same, even his character has changed — He’s not modern anymore, he’s deliberately and decidedly un-modern. He might even be considered a hipster with those giant headphones. He’s a wannabe who wasn’t even born when his favorite bands came out.

Now, Bart is far more of a sociopath, and he has a father who does not have the good intentions as the Homer of the past did. Few cartoons have had to straddle the time period before and after smart phones the way The Simpsons have. King of the Hill did, a little bit, and their story lines similarly began to change in this direction. Luckily for KOTH, Hank Hill was a figure who was naturally resistant to change, so his household changed very slowly, and they managed to stretch that out in a believable manner until the show’s end. The Simpsons are a family that thrives off drastic change, and so the writers had to accommodate the Internet faster instead of slower.

The Simpsons has done what it had to do — Change Homer to be more like Bart, since enough time has passed for Bart to have grown up, and turn Bart into an even more exaggerated version of a “bad” child.

And I think I’m (sort of) okay with that.

Bart is Now Homer: Reflections on The Simpsons Binge was originally published in Sitcom World on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I feel a tremendous amount of relief when I finish a first draft, even though all I can think about is what a huge mess I made. My goal was for thirty pages, but I probably got closer to twenty-three or thirty-seven. I got a new idea for where to take the show halfway through writing it that’s reflected in the second half, but not in the first. Characters reference events that don’t happen. What is on the page is not for human consumption.

But that’s okay because you’re going to re-write the shit out of your script. Maybe once, maybe a lot of times. How many times you do it is up to you, but personally I don’t let anyone see it until I’m at least a few drafts in. I’ll do a draft for clean up, one for tying loose ends, a punch for jokes, for characters, to slightly change phrases and word choices, and if necessary, to rip out entire chunks of the script for major rewrites. Don’t be afraid to cross out your favorite moments, characters, scenes — the stuff you had in your head when you had the idea in the first place. If it’s not working or needs to be changed, change it. To be an effective editor of your own work, you need to first and foremost be honest with yourself. Cut everything that doesn’t work — your concern is for the larger narrative now.

To be an effective editor of your own work, you need to first and foremost be honest with yourself.

You’ll never be truly objective, but distancing yourself from it emotionally is crucial. What I find helps is to put the script away and not look at it for a certain length of time. You probably don’t have forever, but even resting for a week and then looking at it with fresh eyes is a tremendous help.

If you get the sense that something is wrong but you can’t quite pinpoint what it is, look at the context clues. Is there a certain point in your script where things begin to go wrong? Do some things work at some points, but not at others? What’s the difference there? Could it be a specific character that isn’t working? Did you select the right moments for your major plot points? I said in the first part of this series to ask yourself a lot of questions. That goes for editing, as well. Your mission is to get to the heart of what works and what doesn’t.

Once you’ve done all you can to revise the script yourself, you send it to others to get their thoughts.

Who should I ask to give me notes?

Getting other people’s eyes on your script is a necessary part of the process. You can be so close to a script that you don’t even realize that parts of it are unclear or even don’t make any sense to another person. If you can, send it to multiple people and see what they think. If possible, sending it to smart people who know what they’re talking about is best. If you know someone with real connections to the entertainment industry, it might be best to hold off until your script is closer to completion, but that’s your call.

Other people will inevitably have insight into your work that you hadn’t considered, but it is important that you know what notes to take and which to ignore. Someone might tell you to change something that’s your favorite part of the script. And you should very seriously consider that you need to change it — that what you love is actually hurting your work. But also don’t be afraid to go with your instinct. If you vehemently disagree with a note someone gives you even after you examine it from all sides, then don’t take the note.

If you vehemently disagree with a note someone gives you even after you examine it from all sides, then don’t take the note.

The purpose behind having other people read your script and give you notes is to gain outside perspective on your work and see if successfully connects with others. But also know that other people possibly don’t know what they’re talking about. Maybe they didn’t even read your script very closely. Be open to all and any criticism, but in the end, go with your gut.

What about a live table read?

One of the best things you can do for your script is getting it read out loud and hear how it sounds in the mouths of real people. So if you can organize actors (or friends) to read your script live, problem areas and weaknesses are going to reveal themselves much more clearly than if you’re just reading it in your head. Clunky dialogue will make itself obvious. And when you have actors performing the script in semi-real time, you can actually get a sense of your script as a story.

Depending on where you live (like a major city), a lot of local comedy theaters will help organize live table reads where an audience might even show up. If you don’t have access to that, gathering your friends works too. Invite them over for pizza and ask them if they’ll read your script. It probably won’t be the same as getting actors to do it, but hearing your words out loud is enough to offset your friends’ bad acting.

What about paying someone to look at my script?

There are lots of professional script doctors out there who will take your money in exchange for detailed notes on your script. There are lots of seminars you can go to where people will lay out a lot of the concepts I’ve been laying out and perhaps even more. And possibly a lot better than I have been doing.

I’ve never looked into hiring someone like this, but I know of people who have and it apparently worked out well for them. I know someone who is much more successful than me who did it. So I don’t want to say don’t do it, but unless you’re really stuck and don’t know what else to do, I would say it’s probably an unnecessary step. If you have people you know and trust and can field their opinions in a way that works for you, that should be enough.

If you do decide to hire someone to look at your script, my main advice would be to be wary.

If you do decide to hire someone to look at your script, my main advice would be to be wary. Looking for positive reviews online would be a good precautionary step to take, but keep in mind people don’t like admitting that they got taken. Lots of monsters prey on hopeful aspiring writers and may be running scams. Some people inflate their credits so they sound more qualified than they actually are. And though a script doctor may come from a position of authority, they may not necessarily have the best notes for you.

So much of this comes down to subjective opinion. Yes, there is structure and there are ways to write that work and have worked for a very long time. Stuff you should know if you’re writing a script. But every single person, no matter how many scripts they’ve sold, brings their own biases with them wherever they go. Even when you’re paying somebody, the best advice I can give you is to go with your own instincts. I don’t want to make it sound like all — or even most — script doctors are charlatans. Just be careful.

When is my script done?

You can probably always find something to change about your pilot script. Some minor dialogue word choice to adjust or nitpick. But your script is finished whenever it feels like it’s finished to you. A lot of this stuff is based purely on your instinct. Whenever the moment is that you feel like you can do no more to make your script better, you’re finished. Congratulations. Celebrate. You’ve earned it.

I’m being a little sarcastic, but it really is a milestone worth celebrating. Most people do not get this far. It’s hard to finish a script, especially your very first. It takes a lot of emotional and mental energy to see something like this to conclusion. That being said…

Okay, what do I do next?

So you have a polished half-hour television pilot — what do you do now? How do you get a job as a writer? Well, that’s the big question. That’s the question I have every time I wrap up on a show. It’s a question that there’s no straight answer to. Everybody has a different story for how they broke in to the business. Which is simultaneously comforting and terrifying.

The fact that there is no clear path to breaking in as a staff writer is both a help and a hindrance. Mostly a hindrance. But not all is lost. The good thing is that there are multiple pathways you can take. Here are a few of them that I know of:

• If there is a defined career path to becoming a TV staff writer, it’s by becoming a writer’s assistant. Writer’s assistants type all the stuff down that the writers say in the room and do a lot of thankless grunt work. The good thing is that a lot of the time, a show’s writers assistants will usually get to write at least one of the scripts from that season. Writer’s assistants usually start off as office production assistants who work their way up. Being a writer’s assistant is no guarantee you’ll get promoted to a writer and many stay as writer’s assistants or script coordinators for years and never get promoted. But it is at least a path to get there. Here is a Splitsider article about how to get a writer’s assistant job which I assume is all good advice because I was lucky and never had to be a writer’s assistant. Take their word for it.
• You should also look into submitting your scripts to festivals. Like script doctors, you should be skeptical of the legitimacy of festivals — especially the ones that require a submission fee. But a lot of them are on the level and offer grand prizes that include cash and face time with industry people, agents, and managers. Do your research before submitting and especially before giving somebody your money.
• If you qualify for them, you should definitely submit your scripts to diversity programs and writer’s fellowships. Most of the television networks and major TV production companies have one of the two. Most of the diversity programs, for instance, guarantee a few spots from the program to be hired as staff writers on various shows by that production company or network. The Writers Guild website has a big list of a bunch of diversity programs and writer’s fellowships for you to peruse.
• Especially if you’re writing comedy, become involved at comedy theaters like the Upright Citizens Brigade. Network and talent management go to places like the UCB to scout for new talent, including writers. So even if performance or improv isn’t your thing, it might be helpful (if expensive) to enroll in their sketch writing program. Becoming known as a performer — sketch, improv, stand-up — is how a lot of writers become known and staffed.

But above all, keep writing. Get your work out there. Write as much as possible so the most amount of people can see it. Expand your network. Collaborate with people whose goals are parallel to yours. Post your stuff online. Tweet, blog, do stuff on YouTube. Produce a webseries. Do everything you can. Discipline yourself so that you make yourself write and work every single day. You increase your odds of exposure and as a side effect you also get better as a writer.

Do everything you can. Discipline yourself so that you make yourself write and work every single day. You increase your odds of exposure and as a side effect you also get better as a writer.

It is very difficult to break through as a screenwriter so it makes sense to use every possible tool at your disposal. I have a career as a writer because I knew somebody who knew somebody. When my shot came up I had material to show. And I’ve been hanging on by my fingertips ever since.

The work doesn’t stop when you’ve written your pilot. It’s unfortunately only the beginning of a lot more work, rejection, and frustration. And the work that you do is the only thing that you can actually control. So if you’ve been waiting, start writing now and don’t stop until you have enough money where you don’t have to anymore.

Which, yes, should be the ultimate goal. Oh, artistic fulfillment, too. But mostly money.

Part 1: Concept & Considerations
Part 2: Character
Part 3: Structure
Part 4: Pre-writing & Outlining
Part 5: Writing the Script
Part 6: Re-writing, Editing & What to Do Next

How to Write a TV Pilot, pt. 6: Re-writing, Editing & What to Do Next was originally published in Sitcom World on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Now that you’ve put in all the necessary groundwork, you’re ready to start writing your script. Like I said in the last section, this part of the process is the easiest and most enjoyable for me. It can take me several weeks to outline and work out all the various story problems. But I can write a thirty page television script in a couple of days. I don’t get stuck because I’ve worked out the difficult parts already.

I’m assuming pretty much everyone reading this is vaguely familiar with how a script is put together. But let’s go through this anyway because I think there are a few things you might not know. Or even if you do, it’s helpful to touch on them again before you sit down and write.

Scriptwriting Software

You could probably write your script in Microsoft Word using macros and custom indents, but I wouldn’t recommend it. There are several different solutions for scriptwriting software — some good, some bad, some free:

Final Draft is the industry standard for screenwriting software. It’s also a horrible buggy mess that I would not recommend buying unless you can’t avoid it (if this is true for you, congratulations on your writing job). I hate Final Draft. Don’t give them money.

Movie Magic Screenwriter was my personal favorite back in the day and a much better and less frustrating experience than Final Draft. But I’ve never heard of anyone else in the industry using it in my five years as a working writer. And if you’re gonna spend two hundred dollars on a screenwriting word processor (don’t), it might as well be the one everyone uses.

CeltX is a free program a lot of people use because it’s free. I haven’t used it at all myself, but from reading scripts written with the program, it does seem to lack a lot of functionality and sometimes it formats scripts weird. So I would beware. But a lot of people talk up its collaborative and cloud functionalities. So I could be completely in the wrong here.

Amazon has an in-browser screenwriting app called Storywriter that was totally barebones in terms of functionality last time I played around with it. But it’s another possible free solution worth checking out.

Fade In is a program I’ve started using recently since I got fed up with Final Draft for the last time. A lot of professionals and industry people have been talking it up as the new industry standard. Apparently, Rian Johnson used it to write The Last Jedi. It can do everything Final Draft can do and more (including importing and exporting in the Final Draft format). Plus it apparently won’t crash on you at critical moments. I’m happy with my experience so far, though I have not done much work with the program yet. The best thing about it is it’s only fifty dollars as opposed to two hundred. Final Draft wants to charge me $79.95 to upgrade from Final Draft 9 to Final Draft 10.

General Tips for Screenwriting

Every rule for how you write a script generally centers around the notion that you make it as easy as possible to read. Because if you get that far, your script will be read by agents, managers, assistants, and executives — people who hate reading and are bad at it. That being said, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Because television and film are primarily visual, action will be more effective at communicating what you want to say to the audience than dialogue will be. And in a fraction of the time. The adages “show, don’t tell” and “a picture is worth a thousand words” are both things to keep in mind.
• Every action and line of dialogue should move the story forward, reveal something about character, or (in a comedy) be funny. Preferably some combination of the three. Moving the story ahead always takes precedence.
• Multicam scenes are generally longer and stagier, so this doesn’t apply to them, but you don’t want too many scenes going longer than three pages. Two pages is about the average scene length you should be shooting for. You don’t want to be too hard and fast about this rule because sometimes, especially in a big important scene, you’re gonna need to go five pages or so. Perhaps even longer. Just use this as a general guideline to keep your script moving.
• Write visually. Only use scene directions to write what the viewer can see, not what is in the character’s head. There are slight exceptions. Like if you wrote “Helen has a secret she’s not telling Ted” in the scene directions, that would be fine because the actor can play that moment.
• Write beat by beat and moment by moment. You can’t write a minute’s worth of action in a single sentence. You don’t have to write every single blow thrown in an action scene (though it’s great if you can), but the point of a screenplay is to be a guideline for everything that happens on screen. Don’t summarize.
• You also shouldn’t spend too much time describing details of the set or the actor’s physical attributes unless they are details that the plot absolutely depends on. The actor will inevitably not look like how you describe them and how to decorate a set is the set designer’s job. Writing “the apartment is a complete disgusting mess” will be just as effective as painstakingly describing every detail. If it’s crucial to the plot that a character has red hair, then describe it. Otherwise, just give us a general feel for what we need to know.
• Dialogue should generally be pretty short as well. A monologue should seldom go more than five lines. If you do need a character to talk for a long time, it’s good to break it up with action to keep things moving forward.
• Don’t overuse parentheticals in dialogue. They’re helpful if it’s not clear how a line should be delivered, but are mostly unnecessary and generally annoy actors. Most people will probably get that a sarcastic line should be said sarcastically.
• It’s the generally accepted rule to use underlines for emphasis rather than bold or italics. I think the reason for this is that it’s more difficult to read bold/italic in the Courier New font. Also, I think you want your script to look like it was written on an old typewriter. But I have seen people use italics and bold type in screenplays so I don’t actually think this is a huge deal anymore. Just something to keep in mind.
• If you’re not sure how to convey something in screenwriting terms, like an intercut telephone conversation or a montage, the first thing you should do is google it because it is extremely likely that someone’s had the same question and someone else who knows more of what they’re talking about than me will have explained it in clear terms. But if you’re still not sure, just spell it out in the script. Just explain on the page what you’re trying to accomplish. That’s what a screenplay is for — you’re telling someone making your hypothetical television pilot what they need to do to make it happen. When in doubt, explain it to them.
• Just like with pretty much all writing, write in the active voice. Leave out connector words like “then.” Don’t have characters “begin” to do an action, just have them do it (unless beginning the action is all they’re doing). Anything that gets in the way of the story moving forward or pauses the reader, leave it out.

The Screenplay Format

I imagine if you’ve read this far, you’re at least vaguely familiar with the screenplay format. I’ll lay it out for you, but a scan of a few script pages is really enough to get the gist of it.

The best way to learn the format and to learn how to write scripts is by reading scripts. That’s how you learn the language of film and how a screenplay moves. You can’t be a writer if you don’t read.

A “FADE IN:” is the traditional way to mark that the script has started, but has fallen out of use because it’s pretty much assumed by the fact that you’re reading the first page of a script. Plus, it takes up precious lines of script space that you’ll need to get your script down to the correct page length (the #1 struggle of a working writer). FADE IN is pretty unnecessary, especially in a television script.

Every scene begins with the scene heading, whether INT. (interior) or EXT. (you know what). Give us the location of the scene and the time of day it takes place. Other than time of day (i.e. MORNING, DAY, EVENING, NIGHT, etc.), you can also specify CONTINUOUS, MOMENTS LATER, AT THE SAME TIME, THE NEXT DAY, and more, depending on how it follows the previous scene. A lot of those slugs will be available in the auto-fill in your screenwriting program. But also feel free to make up a new one if you feel like it will help you convey what is going on.

The first time a character is introduced, you put their name in all-caps. But this can be true for any time you introduce a new element into the script that demands the audience’s attention. The character’s approximate age as well as a quick description of her so you get her general essence is all I included here. What she looks like is not especially important for this particular character and I feel like the reader can infer how she dresses and carries herself based on this description.

I also described the set in broad strokes, as I advised above. I’m assuming everyone should be familiar with how dialogue is formatted in a script. I also included descriptors for the character’s action that inform how the character would perform it.

Because Beth last spoke before the above line of action, your script program will automatically include a “cont’d” tag. Even though this particular line of dialogue is pretty clear, I included a parenthetical to instruct how the actor should read the dialogue just to show how it’s done. You can also give characters physical action in parentheticals rather than in scene directions for actions they perform while speaking.

Tom speaks from off-screen so we give him an (O.S.) tag. I used an underline for word emphasis as I explained before. As with Beth, I described Tom very quick and generally so you get his type without getting hung up on needless specifics.

Beth’s last line is a voiceover so we give her a (V.O.) tag.

If you have a specific gesture you want the actor to play, spell it out in a quotation like I did with “hey, watch it!”

I move to a new scene without using a “CUT TO:.” Similar to “FADE IN:,” it’s implied that we cut when we go to a new scene and it just takes up space to describe something that is instantaneous. You should only specify a scene transition if it’s important to the script. For instance, if you want to go from a scene right to a very important visual with lots of impact, “SMASH CUT TO:” is an effective tool. Or if you want to show time has passed with cuts, you use “JUMP CUT TO:.”

The first line of dialogue in this section features a parenthetical in the middle of the dialogue. There’s a playable action for Beth as well as how the line should be delivered. Other helpful mid-dialogue parentheticals to use are “beat” to indicate a short pause (“beat” is used all over scripts including in scene directions for that purpose) and “then” to denote a change in the character’s tone or a pause that is even quicker than a beat.

I’ve also included one way to write a montage in a script. This particular montage doesn’t include scene headings because it would take up so much space to set every individual scene up. I employed the use of caps to direct the reader’s attention to all the new scenes and elements introduced quickly and visually within the montage. If you want a particular piece of music (or style of music) to play during the montage, indicate it at the beginning of the montage. You can do it right before or in the first bullet point.

Above all else, the rule is explain this stuff in a way that the reader can understand it. If you go into production and you need scene headings for each beat of your montage, you can come back and add them. Also, if you’re that far, this is a very minor problem to have.

I included a “DISSOLVE TO:” scene transition because a dissolve is specifically used to indicate passage of time between two scenes. Use it if you want to call attention to something.

I also demonstrate how to write an intercut phone conversation between two different characters in different settings. This is so you don’t have to keep writing scene headings every time you want to show the other character speaking.

At the end of the script, I include a “FADE OUT.” transition. I think this is still standard in movie scripts, but unnecessary in television scripts. I’ll tell you why in a second.

There’s stuff I didn’t cover. If a character is talking from a television broadcast you can put an (ON TV) tag beside the name like you would (V.O.). Same for (SUBTITLE). For sound effects, write in something like “SFX: Loud boom!”

If you want to set a scene in a car driving down the road and want to describe what’s going on inside and outside simultaneously, use the scene heading “INT./EXT.” For example, “INT./EXT. BETH’S CAR / COUNTRY ROAD — DAY.”

If you want to do something tricky that you’re not fully sure how to convey, Google will probably have an answer for you.

Formatting for Television (Single Cam)

The single camera television format is really just the standard screenplay format. There are a couple things you need to know. If you’re writing a twenty-two minute pilot, you should aim for you page count to be about thirty. You can go a little longer or a little shorter, but try to keep it at around thirty. One of my sample pilots is thirty-five pages and I always feel like I’m really pushing it.

The loose rule is that one page equals about one minute of screentime. That’s not exactly true and a lot depends on the style of show, how much action there on a page versus how much dialogue is on a page, and other factors. I find that a page is usually a little bit shorter than a minute. But it’s another good general guideline to keep in your head.

Where a single cam script differs from a film script is it needs center-aligned titles for the beginning and end of each act, like so:

Like I said in previous sections, your acts will be roughly ten pages each. Your third act will usually be the shortest, but I wouldn’t worry about sticking to specific page counts. Do what feels right.

You can put “FADE IN:” and “FADE OUT.” at the beginning and end of your acts. But like I said, it’s already implied by the act headings, so you can leave them out. Also, at the end of each act, insert a page break so you can start the next act at the top of the next page.

Depending on how many acts you have, at the end of your final act, rather than writing “END OF ACT THREE” for instance, you would write “END OF SHOW.” Similarly, for a cold open, your headings would read “COLD OPEN” and “END OF COLD OPEN.” For a tag, if you have one, it would be “TAG” and then “END OF SHOW.”

Formatting for Television (Multicam)

A multicam script looks a bit different from a standard television or movie script. It’s mostly the same with a few key differences. Your scriptwriting program should have a built-in setting for multicam scripts and will do a lot of this for you. I’ll sum some of the differences up here, but again, the best way to learn is by reading multicam scripts.

• Scene directions are in ALL CAPS. When you would caps a character’s name at their first appearance in a normal script, instead you underline.
• Dialogue is double-spaced. I think this is for purposes of being able to easily scribble in the margins to make changes, but I’m honestly not sure.
• In addition to the act break headings, each scene will have an additional heading of a letter. So you would start with “ACT ONE” and an underlined heading directly below it reading “SCENE A.” You insert a page break at the end of every scene to start the next scene at the top of a page.
• Parentheticals are in all caps and go in-line with the dialogue rather than getting their own separate lines.
• Because of all the page breaks and double-spacing, a multicam script will run somewhere around forty-five pages.

Here’s a real script page from The Big Bang Theory to illustrate what I mean:

If you’ve read scripts, familiarized yourself with the format, know dramatic structure in and out, thought hard about what you want to communicate and what you want your show to be, and written down a detailed outline — congratulations, you’re ready to write your television pilot.

But when you finish your script, that doesn’t mean your work is done — oh no. Some of your most important, crucial work is just about to begin. How you transform the word vomit you hastily got down on the page in your first draft into something great. Or at least something that works.

Next time in Part 6: Re-writing, Editing & What to Do Next

Part 1: Concept & Considerations
Part 2: Character
Part 3: Structure
Part 4: Pre-writing & Outlining
Part 5: Writing the Script
Part 6: Re-writing, Editing & What to Do Next

How to Write a TV Pilot, pt. 5: Writing the Script was originally published in Sitcom World on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Writing the script is the most enjoyable part of the process for me. One, because I’m actually doing the work that I set out to do when I started all this. And two, since I’ve worked out all of the script’s problems in the outlining stage, most of the difficult work is done and I can focus on the fun stuff.

I’d recommend outlining your script with as much detail as you feel is necessary. Since this is your pilot, your outline is only for you. So how detailed you are and how you organize the information should be entirely dependent on what will make your script stronger, as well as easier to write. If you want to be very detailed, be very detailed. You can plot out every beat of your script, every line of dialogue, every minute detail. But if you just want the bare skeleton of the structure down on paper, that works, too.

Outlining is especially important so when you’re writing your script, you know where you’re going. If you don’t know how your story is going to end, you run into the trouble of maybe not starting off with the right beginning to properly fulfill the ending you come out with. You may find out halfway through of a critical flaw in your story that makes the whole thing not work that you probably would have caught if you did an outline.

With a well-considered and detailed outline, you have the opportunity to iron out most of your story problems ahead of time so there’s less of a chance of having to go back to do a page one rewrite because you’ve screwed yourself.

Before You Outline

Even before you start outlining your story, consider what I wrote in the first part of this series. Know as much as you can about your protagonist and everyone populating your world before you begin. Know what your show is tonally. Know what themes, if any, that you want to convey. If you want to write something big and dumb and raucous, know that. Know things about every facet of your story — stuff that won’t even make it to the page.

The more information you arm yourself with, the fuller and more real your world seems — even if your world isn’t real at all. Small touches that inform the characters will give them depth and help them connect to the audience. Characters might come naturally to you, but the more work you put in ahead of time, the more you will get out of it in the end.

And Now You Can Outline

So once you feel like you know enough about your world, your characters, and the show you want to create, you can begin the outlining process. Personally, the way I do it is by creating a Word document, splitting up the story into three acts with headings and writing a short paragraph describing each scene. This is what works for me.

What also is helpful for me is mapping out the major story beats ahead of time. You start with your first and second act breaks, your midpoint, and your third act’s climax so you know what you’re working towards and then fill in the rest. Once you have it all down, you can examine the story and see if it all hangs together and makes sense.

When you’re in too deep with a story and you don’t give yourself a break, you can become blind to otherwise glaring problems and plot holes.

For me, I find that if I step back from it for a couple days, it’s a big help to come back and look at it with fresh eyes. When you’re in too deep with a story and you don’t give yourself a break, you can become blind to otherwise glaring problems and plot holes. Unless you’ve got an unbelievable deadline, take your time. Write your outline and then examine it thoroughly.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park have a system for storytelling and structure based on the words “therefore” and “but” that is worth checking out in that link. Like I said in previous parts, you want to make sure there are clear stakes, that your protagonist is driving the action, that there is something in between him or her and what they want to achieve, and that there is some satisfying conclusion to the story.

Story Break

In a writers room when you break a story, you “put it on the board.” It’s literal in its meaning — the room will have probably one or several whiteboards and together the writers will split the story into acts and write down the story scene by scene to serve as a skeleton for a fuller outline. Here’s what something like that would look like for Haunted Bakery:

I put the major story beats in blue — the opening sequence, the first act break, the midpoint, the second act break, and the climax. This is certainly a story with its share of problem areas (and also crucial chunks of story missing), but I just wanted to get it down to give something resembling a complete story as an example.

But for all its faults, it meets all the criteria I laid out in previous parts of this series. It’s a three act story with a character arc that fully sets up the situations and conflicts of what this show would be. And if I were to write a full outline and a script after that, this could certainly serve as a solid foundation to build upon.

Going from a skeletal board break like this, a writing staff would use it as a basis to write an outline to give to the network executives. Areas would be filled in and expanded as needed. At my Netflix job, we would go straight to script on approval of a two page out. But at my current job, the next step would be to complete a full outline, with each scene getting a full paragraph, similar to what I described above. An outline like this would be something like a five-to-ten page Word document for a half hour of television.

Once you’ve completed your outline and feel like you’re comfortable moving ahead, it’s time for the script stage — the fun part!

Next time in Part 5: Writing the Script

Part 1: Concept & Considerations
Part 2: Character
Part 3: Structure
Part 4: Pre-writing & Outlining
Part 5: Writing the Script
Part 6: Re-writing, Editing & What to Do Next

How to Write a TV Pilot, pt. 4: Pre-writing & Outlining was originally published in Sitcom World on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In 2015 Louis C.K. filmed the final episode of his FX series, Louie. Five seasons and many Emmy nominations and awards later and it was time for a break. Not a total break, but with television projects like Baskets with Zach Galifianakis and Better Things with Pamela Adlon, and plans for a movie, Louis needed to stop Louie. He told Marc Maron, “I don’t know if I’ll make another one and it needs to be okay if I never do.”

“I walked away from Louie and I had a month where I didn’t know what I was going to do next,” Louis told Howard Stern. That’s okay, he added, because gaps are “where good ideas come from.”

Later that summer, Louis met his friend Dino Stamatopoulos and told him “I saw this little thing called Abigail’s Party.” This along with Annie Baker’s play, The Flick ,ignited what would become the web released show Horace and Pete.

It seems obvious that the comedian who pioneered concert ticket sales and downloads of stand-up specials, would reconstruct everything about a television show, but that process wasn’t bestowed upon Louis. It took luck, time, hustle, and a roster of talented people for Louis to pull the whole thing off. That’s the story we’ll look at, how Louis C.K. made Horace and Pete.

Clear the decks.

To start, Louis had to clear the decks. “I threw everything away,” he told Howard Stern. Abigail’s Party was so good, it inspired something that would take all his time. “God dammit, I’ve never seen anything like this,” Louis told Stern. “I want to make a show that operates on this frequency.” Louis considered making it for FX. He had just signed a new contract with the network and he wanted to do something for them, but Horace and Pete couldn’t be it.

The things that drew Louis to Abigail’s Party and The Flick were things that wouldn’t work on television. There were no ad breaks, ample profanity, and long scenes were the square peg that couldn’t fit in the round hole of television. Louis also didn’t want to promote it. “I didn’t want the audience to smell this show before they got it,” he told Marc Maron.

Once he decided it couldn’t work on FX, he thought about other options. “Originally I thought I’ll never cut,” Louis told Stern. He soon realized that wasn’t going to work, and “I let go of the never cutting thing.” Other ideas developed and faded. He wanted a single set, but two scenes. That meant a business below a residence. What kind of business? A family business. What kind of family business? A bar.

Louis told Charlie Rose, “I feel like I found this family in my head somewhere.” He just the “stenographer.” “I open the bar in the morning and just start writing what happens,” he explained to Marc Maron.

In episode 7, Louis’s character is perplexed. Another character teased something that could be true or not. Louis told Charlie Rose he still isn’t sure what the truth is. “Stories are found things, like fossils in the ground,” wrote Stephen King, and it’s an approximation for Louis’s process too.

Louis kept digging. He thought about it, refined it and turned it around. He told Charlie Rose, “before I write it I walk around, driving myself crazy thinking about it. I carve — I do all the carving up here. And I know what’s going to happen. I think about what it means in each interaction and what direction it’s going to go. And I think about all of that for a long time. It’s like being pregnant and finally I regurgitate it on to the page.”

As he carved a few things became clear.

He wanted a multi-camera show, unlike his FX show Louie, a single camera show. He told Marc Maron that with this type of filmmaking “you move on a dialogue or the moment a person’s mood shifts.” He told Charlie Rose he wanted that “live feeling.”

He wanted no laughter. It “discredits a sitcom,” he told Bill Simmons. Or explicit jokes. The show could be funny, but not Jokey. “Jokes are conversation stoppers,” Louis Simmons, “jokes have a corrosive nature to them.”

He wanted no promotion. Whether for experimentation, financial, productivity, or other reasons — I couldn’t find — Louis didn’t want to feel “beholden” to promote the show.

He wanted to experiment with the distribution. “I kept it a secret,” he told Charlie Rose. Louis and Simmons joked that releasing it on a Saturday was even more obscure than a Friday afternoon news dump because it wasn’t part of the workweek.

As he worked, Louis kept asking “does this write?” He told Rose, “I have had a lot of ideas for different kinds of shows but there is this test — does it write? Like can you actually get out the scripts? And I started writing it this summer. And it just kept coming. Episode after episode. And I realized I’m writing something that is worth shooting. So, I started to get it under works producing it.”

Louis had scripts for episodes 1 and 2, now he just needed actors, a place to film, crew, the rest of the scripts, and everything else. There was still a lot of work to be done.

The Who and Where.

Louis asked his Louie producer to see if the Penn Hotel Studio was available. It was. He put down a deposit and figured it was a win win. He would use it, or sell it to someone else for a — speculative — profit.

First to join the crew was Steve Buscemi. Boardwalk Empire had just ended and Buscemi called Louis to ask if he’d volunteer for a charity Buscemi worked with. Louis said sure, and hung up. A moment later he rang Buscemi back and asked “do you want to do this show that I’m doing?” Buscemi said sure.

It was good timing, Louis pointed out to Charlie Rose. “If I come up this idea a year before it wouldn’t have existed. But he (Buscemi) had just come off this big show and I said, what are you doing. And he said ‘nothing, I’m looking for stuff to do.’”

Next on Louis’s radar was Edie Falco, and it had to be Falco. Louis read an interview in the June issue of Variety where Falco said she loved to work, but that she wanted to choose the right thing.

“I need to be moved,” Falco said. “There are people who can feed their whole soul with comedy. I really need to feel like there’s some deeper subterranean movement in the piece… I’m reading all kinds of stuff… but nothing’s grabbing me.”

The interviewer asked about theater. “I love the idea of doing stage,” Falco said, “But my standards have changed. Theater in particular is really grueling. You’re never home in the evening, you never get to say goodnight to your kids. Your weekends are blown. That schedule is hard on a family.”

Imagine Louis as he read this. He has a script with deep subterranean movements. It’s like theater, only it’s filmed. Louis wants Falco for the part, and she, like Buscemi, likes to work but wasn’t working. Louis joked to Marc Maron, “I looked at her face in the magazine and said, out loud like a psycho, ‘you’re going to be on my show.’”

September rolled around and Louis saw Falco at the Emmy Awards. There was an open seat next to her. “I thought fuck it and I sat down,” Louis told Howard Stern. He explained the show, and she said to mail her a script.

Then Louis ran into Jessica Lange. This wasn’t uncommon, both were actors on FX shows. “She liked sitting next to me because I would make her laugh,” Louis told Bill Simmons. “There’s always a kind of even exchange between glamorous actresses and comedians, which is that, we’re happy to sit next to you if you’re a glamorous actress and she gets entertained.”

After the Emmy Awards Louis dropped off scripts for Falco and Lange, with a note and his number. Two days later he got this message; “Hi, this Edie, I’m in. When do we start?” Lange was in too.

Things were going well, three characters written, three characters cast. Up next, Joe Pesci. Unlike Buscemi, Falco, and Lange — Pesci said ‘no.’ Not without adding a few ideas though. Louis spent an entire day with Pesci, and used some things from their conversation on the show. The problem, Pesci said, was that the show was too good. “I think your show is going to be very successful,” Pesci told Louis, “and for that reason I’m going to decline it.”

After he declined, Pesci still helped. Louis told Marc Maron: “I still sent him a couple of scripts and he would call me and go, ‘listen you dummy, you’re going to write Archie Bunker again? This character has no depth and is a fucking idiot and it’s been done, so are you going to listen to me?’ And I’m like ‘Yes Joe, tell me what’s wrong with Uncle Pete.’”

Louis’s second choice was Jack Nicholson. He asked Lorne Michaels to arrange a call. One day Louis’s phone rang and a voice said, “I’m looking for Louis C.K.. I’m calling for Jack Nicholson. If this isn’t you, I’m hanging up immediately.” Louis said he was Louis and got on the phone with Nicholson. “The writing’s terrific,” Nicholson said, “but I’m not going to do it.” Louis tried to convince him, but Nicholson countered, “do you know what I did today? I went out to the tree in my yard, and I sat under it, and I read a book, and when I was done I went back inside.”

No Pesci, no Nicholson. Louis asked Christopher Walken. He liked it too, but thought it was too similar to other guys he’d portrayed. Walken suggested Louis find someone unexpected for the part. Walken and Lange’s agent was Toni Howard, who suggested Alan Alda.

No, Louis thought, that won’t work. Just talk to him, Howard said, “Alan loves to work.” Louis relented. They men met and Louis asked how Alda might play it. Alda said he doesn’t work like that, he’s more of an in-the-moment actor.

Louis was concerned, “I’m trying to see Uncle Pete in him,” he told Marc Maron, but he relented because, “I love every single thing he’s done and he wants this, so I said, let’s just do it.” It worked out well. “He invented that fucking character, it’s not what I had in my head, it’s something a billion times better.”

The set was booked, the actors had committed, all that was left was the music. Louis wanted Paul Simon. “You asked Paul Simon?” exclaimed Howard Stern. How? “I have this new method,” Louis explained. “I write an email to a guy like Paul Simon, saying, ’I’m making a new show. I want you to write the theme song, it’d set the tone perfectly.’”

“That’s it?” asked Stern. “That’s all, just ask,” advised Louis.

All the while Louis kept writing. He wrote episodes 3–8, and had ideas for 9 and 10, but wanted to hold off to see if something better came to him. He also got more details for the show.

He visited bars during the day. He “talked to a doctor of psychology to run some of this shit by him,” Louis told Maron. He wanted his character to be “a nothing guy.” “I wanted to play a guy who makes terrible choices and blew it with his kids,” Louis told Maron.

Charlie Rose asked how Louis’s writing was so relatable. Louis said it’s because he’s an “ordinary guy.” Really asked Rose. “Yes,” Louis said. “You know, my gut is hanging out of my t-shirt half the time. I will put ice cream on my chest like Tony Soprano and eat and watch, you know, Shark Tank.” You know, Louis told Bill Simmons, “I was poor for 40 years, I’ve been better off for 5.”

Louis talked to experts, drew on his own experiences, and talked with other writers. “The biggest help,” Louis told Simmons “is when someone sits on my couch.” He expanded on this with his interview with Marc Maron, “The way that I use help as a writer is to have somebody sit on my couch to talk to.” Sometimes it was Vernon Chapman, Steven Wright, or Pamela Adlon. For Horace and Pete the biggest help was Annie Baker, who helped Louis figure out a key character and idea for episode three.

As he wrote, Louis also wanted a way for the show to feel current, so he left sections open for discussions of current events, trusting the actors he had. Scripts 1–8 were ready, now it was just time to film the thing.

It’s time to film the thing.

Louis had given up on the no-cutting idea, but there were still problems. Louis’s FX show Louie was shot with one camera, and the episode was stitched together after. Horace and Pete had four, and Louis wanted long takes. To untangle this mess, Louis went through the script with four different colored highlighters, one color for each camera. Each highlighted line of dialogue had a camera assigned to it.

He told Charlie Rose, that Horace and Pete was “so different” from Louie:

“It was indoors in a studio, all day…Louie was a single camera which means that you shoot little pieces… and then you sew them together through the magic of editing. This thing we shot like 20 pages without stopping. We did it like a play. We let people feel like they were at a play performance…so it was about rehearsing and preparing and then just letting it happen. It’s a completely different kind of directing.”

Louis’s dislike for laugher also helped move things along. His friend Dino Stamatopoulos helped out and observed, “I never saw more than three or four takes being done. Because there’s no audience, you don’t have to do it again and tell the audience to laugh again.”

Another perk of no laughter was the flexibility of pace. “The laughs are so disruptive to me when I watch a sitcom,” Louis told Howard Stern. “If you take the laughs out you can get faster and slower, faster and slower.”

With the cameras aligned and lack of laughter, it was fertile ground for the actors to shine. Louis repeated over and over how great everyone was. Somedays he would tell actors that this take was it, and if they wanted to do something good they should do it now. “Pressure is really good for good actors,” Louis told Simmons.

Stamatopoulos added, “I know the actors all loved working on it. It was such a fun experience. When I was there they would finish shooting halfway through the day, which is unheard of. Louis would look around and say, ‘I guess that’s it, we can all go home!’ It went so smoothly.”

Efficient filming was good, because it was expensive. Louis’s initial plan was to film four episodes, at a cost of $500,000 each. “I can spend two million bucks on this show, and it’ll hurt, and it’ll leave me with no cushion in life,” Louis said, “but I’ll go on the road after that and make it back.”

Easy and simple enough. Then 4 episodes became 10, and Louis had to take out a line of credit to pay for the show. Making it, Louis said, was like being an ATM machine. Howard Stern summarized it as “money shooting out of your asshole.”

It wasn’t as if he couldn’t get the money. Stern asks why he didn’t just take Horace and Pete to FX. Lorne Michaels begged him to get financial backers. Louis wanted to do this on his own for a few reasons.

Experimentation. What if this is released on a Saturday? What if it’s only available from a website? What if each episode is filmed in a week? What if a season is filmed in ten? What is it like to own a TV show? Louis wanted to experiment his way to these answers.

Beholden to executives. While Louis liked FX, he didn’t want to answer to anyone for this show. Television, Louis noted to Marc Maron, has a certain economic structure.

“I want to do this show for years I thought, but every time I took a big dramatic or tragic turn on the show, I thought, the only thing that keeps you from doing that in a sitcom or any series is that you need to stay within the margins so the show stays the same and so it can stay on the air. The decision to make big moves on a television show is economic.” Louis didn’t want the show’s path to be dictated by the reins of advertising.

Louis added, that the content was extreme, and “I didn’t want to convince anyone of anything or risk their money when I knew I was taking a deep risk.”

Responsible to employees. When Louis said he wouldn’t return for another seasons of Louie it was hard. He was the center of a universe of employees. If he left, that universe would collapse.

He kept doing Louie for so long because, “I wanted to pay them off as long as I could and once we were getting Emmys and stuff, that means a lot to them. So I milked that as long as I could and some of the people that worked for me, that make a living working on my show…. It was very hard to tell them you’re all fired. And tell all these people, I quit. That’s very hard to do. That’s a lot of pressure.”

Louis’s go-it-alone loan was risky, but he had a plan. For starters, there was no promotion budget, which can exceed the production budget. More important, Louis owns a television show.

In his interview, Bill Simmons called it the current media alley “an Anchorman style fight for content.” Louis framed it like an investment. One that looks to be doing well. “By the summer, the whole show will have paid itself off,” Louis told Howard Stern.

The initial media hullabaloo missed these nuances Simmons joked about buying Louis lunch, and he responded, “I’m so not broke,” however, “it’s not a bad place for the story to start.” Louis expected this response, “Louis C.K. lost all his money on Horace and Pete and it was a total failure is a very clickable story.” Normally a network will have someone that enlightens the media about what’s going on, Louis kept them in the dark.

What’s money for anyway? Louis told Charlie Rose, “to me it’s more interesting to do something than to have it stored up somewhere, you know, sitting, accruing interest. I could be dead tomorrow.”

This all only worked the way it did because of the confluence of Louis’s skills. He knows how write, produce, film, act, direct, edit, and publish shows. He may be the only one. Louis told Charlie Rose that he thinks of his set of skills like merit badges or a more techno-friendly metaphor, like the Matrix.

“When there is a helicopter and he says to her, you know how to play helicopter. And she goes wait a minute and she loads the program. Now I do. Well, anyone can do that. It just takes longer. You can just load a program. So, now I know how to create a multi-camera drama and mount it the same week that I shot it. And how to direct many great actors which I had never done before.”

This “loading” took a lot of time to learn. Louis and Marc Maron reminisced about how long they struggled to make it.

“We fucking slogged,” Louis said, “with no hope of reaching it, for each of us, 25–30 years of running in place, of building skill and not know if anything was going to work out and that the odds were very against us.”

With the right skills, money in the bank, actors on set, and — highlighted — scripts in hand, what did a normal week look like?

They found this rhythm in the first week, thanks in part to the skills of the actors. The cast did a table read on Monday, rehearsals on Tuesday, shooting Wednesday, Thursday, edits on Friday and each episode was emailed out on Saturday.

Saturday was a very deliberate choice. Louis told Bill Simmons that it’s even more obscure that a ‘Friday news dump’ because it’s not even part of the workweek. Charlie Rose questioned this choice too, saying, “you didn’t roll this out with a lot of fanfare.” No, said Louis, “it was the opposite, I made it a secret.” Why?

Louis told Bill Simmons, “the event of the show was meant to be an intimate experience.” If you were watching along you weren’t supposed to know if an episode would come, or when, or how long it would be. Louis explained to Charlie Rose, “one of the things they liked about ‘Horace and Pete’ was that they got an email from me, that I sent to them saying the next episode is ready…it was very bespoke.”

This intimate release was exemplified by the ending. Episode 10 was the final episode, but no one knew this when it was published. Louis wanted people to watch the ending without knowing it. The last episode was emotional for the cast too.

Louis told Rose: “When we shot the last episode it took me awhile to recover from it. I never had an experience like that. Because I didn’t have to act, I didn’t have to conjure something from my past or figure out how to get there. I was just very upset for real. And all of us, we traded e-mails me and Alan and Edie and Steve, traded e-mails.”

The process also stirred up other ideas. “It really inspired me. When I got off that show, I came back to my studio and wrote a whole screenplay,” Louis said.

Louis’s experiment will continue. After releasing the final episode on April 2, he appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. He did an interview tour too, sitting with; Marc Maron, Bill Simmons, Charlie Rose, and Howard Stern. Louis has plans to eventually sell the show to a network or online distributor. He also submitted the show for an Emmy.

Awards and money don’t really matter though. If this doesn’t become a critical or financial success, that’s okay. Louis isn’t worried about failing at something new. “I’ve done other things I haven’t done before,” Louis told Charlie Rose, “And also if this doesn’t go well, what’s the big deal?”

For now, Louis says he needs to get back into standup. “I’m going on the road now for a year. I’m clearing the decks,” Louis told Rose, because “I haven’t been as good at stand-up as I was in like 2008 to ‘10.”

This bothers Louis because he feels like his profession is stand-up comedian. “It’s an awful feeling, yes. It feels like I’m betraying the audience and also I’m betraying the thing I’m doing.”

Thanks for reading.

How Louis C.K. made Horace and Pete was originally published in Sitcom World on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.