A Quote by Alex Kurtzman

I think what people watch television for is the emotional continuity, from episode to episode, and feeling that the experience that they had, four episodes ago, has actually been building to an episode that comes later, and knowing that the characters are growing, as a result of that, and making mistakes, is really, really important to the way people connect to television.
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.
I wrote Steve Carell's last episode. I think it was a really good episode, but there's always a tension between what's good for the series and what's good for an episode, because the more closure you put on an episode, the more significant feeling it is.
The way history is currently taught in schools, jumping from Hitler to the Henrys, is like a nightmare vision of Star Wars, where you have episode four before you have episode one. The sense of going on a journey, of chronology and continuity, is incredibly important to the imagination.
During Christmas time, on German television they show films with three or four episodes, and I quite like the feeling of waiting for the next episode.
I was talking to Shonda Rhimes the other day and I said, "I. Do. Not. Know. How. You. Do. This." While we're writing episode 10, episode 6 is shooting, episode 3 is in the edit, and episode 2 is in its color session...You've got seven episodes in different parts! It's a wild, wild, wild ride, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was badass and amazing.
I never watch television, although, the other night, my wife and I caught an episode of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' from Season Six. It's the only series of which I've ever watched every single episode.
Television moves so fast. A series moves at such a rapid pace and things are changing, episode to episode, where you're going, "Wait, why am I doing this? This last episode, you told me I was doing this." You're shooting at a moving target.
The Netflix brand for TV shows is really all about binge viewing. The ability to get hooked and watch episode after episode.
It's interesting the whole Kardashian thing with 'Offspring' because really my choices - with my costume designer - for every single episode are based on the emotional journey of that episode for the character.
You can watch an episode of Friends or an episode of Law & Order and just drop in, but you're not going to in the middle of Season 4, Episode 5 of Lost. It's like picking up a Harry Potter book and flipping to a chapter. You have to read it from beginning to end.
In television, you make an hour-long episode every seven days; we used to make 'Party Down' in four days per episode. It's quick and with independent movies is the same: you gotta keep moving. It's very similar.
The one thing that we wanted to make sure in the pilot [of "Mary and Jane"] is that we could go everywhere. Part of the fun of them being a delivery service is that they go to different areas episode to episode. We do have an episode in the beach and there is an episode in the luxury rehab. It's all different kinds of things we are making fun of in LA.
The last episode of Dallas was in '1991.' Unfortunately, it was a terrible episode to end the show on: it was a sort of 'It's a Wonderful Life' with Larry as the Jimmy Stewart character. In that episode, I was an ineffectual-schlep kind of brother, who got divorced three or four times and was a Las Vegas reject.
I always thought it would be funny to have the Parents Television Council write an episode of 'Family Guy' and give them full creative control. Then see how good the episode is. That's something we've actually discussed in the writers' room. We haven't proposed it yet, but if somebody from the PTC reads this, it might be worth discussing.
Unless you're a directing producer of a television show, for the most part, the director comes in one week to direct and episode, and then leaves. I'd much rather produce television and occasionally direct an episode of a show I'm producing, then just come in as an outside director.
When we came to the network, it was a very interesting time where Portlandia had just come on the air and had been very, very successful. I think people had Portlandia-sized expectations for Comedy Bang! Bang!, especially after the first episode was sampled by quite a large number of people. I remember getting the ratings after the first episode, and the network was over the moon about it. And then the second episode tanked so hard. Like, no one watched it. It was a resounding, "Hey, a bunch of people tried your show, and they all hate it!"
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