I was a big fan of 'Six Feet Under.' So, I got a bootleg copy of the first four episodes on videotape, watched them and was instantly into it. During the first episode, I was like, 'Eh.' By the time I got to the second one, I couldn't watch them fast enough. I got on the phone that night, called Time Warner cable and ordered HBO right then.
You just never know what the grand plan is on 'Dexter,' so I didn't know if I was going to make it to the next episode, let alone the next season!
There are shows that are monolithic successes on TV that nobody in the business ever watches one episode of.
Because I tend to kind of hide under the sheets when it comes to reality television. I've seen probably one episode of maybe five different shows, and that's about it.
If you keep hearing the same thing over and over again from your fan base, you should pay attention to that. But that's just another bunch of loud voices in your ear. I would imagine it makes it very hard to stay in touch with your own gut. You try to think of it as just another episode, but that never works. It just isn't.
I hate recording all the shows for the week in one day, because I want to be able to mention current events and pop culture. If Madonna punches Britney in the face today, I want to reference that on 'Wine Library TV' tomorrow. Monday's episode is always the best, because it's hot off the press.
'Game of Thrones' is a good one to binge-watch, except you realize at the end of every episode that you've been holding your breath for, like, 30 minutes, which is probably not good for your brain.
I am such a huge fan of both of those shows - I've seen every episode of 'Sex in the City' and every episode of 'Girls' at least once, some multiple times.
I love nineties stuff like Alice in Chains and Nine Inch Nails. It'd be my dream to have a Radiohead-themed episode of 'Glee.' I also love jazz greats like Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Herbie Hancock.
Businesses that have gone through an episode of hyperinflation become understandably alert to the threat of it: at the first hint of inflation, they're likely to increase prices, since they've learned that if they don't, and inflation hits, their businesses will be wrecked.
I feel like every first episode of a TV show is bad, you know, and it always improves.
'Leverage' is meant to be based in Boston. But in one episode we're in New York, then another in Chicago, Florida, and Eastern Europe.
Here's the thing: I did one episode of Deep Space Nine, and I loved everybody that I worked with. People couldn't have been kinder... But I had a really, really difficult time with the prosthetics.
Even with an improperly ground mirror, the Hubble delivered extraordinary images. When the flaw was corrected, the Hubble delivered images of transcendent beauty and value for many years. So too 'Terra Nova.' Even in its flawed first season, each episode was full of marvelous moments and beautiful images.
All Internet comedy is niche comedy. If you do an Internet video about Halo, every Halo fan will send it to every other Halo fan. But if you did an episode of a network comedy that parodied Halo, most of your audience wouldn't even get it.
I love the NBC comedies. I DVR 'Parks and Recreation,' 'Community,' 'The Office,' '30 Rock.' I love most of the HBO shows. I love 'Archer.' 'Archer's a great show. I'm big on Netflix; I've seen every episode of 'Freaks and Geeks.' We need more shows like that.
I have friends at home who love 'The Tonight Show' with Jimmy Fallon. They live in the U.K., and they've never seen an episode, but they love it.
In the guest star situation on a show, it has a feel of a foreign exchange student - you're worrying the night before where you're going to sit for lunch. 'The Big Bang Theory' was like that. I was supposed to only do one episode. What was different was the cast and production staff was so welcoming, even though I was only scheduled for a week.
'Animal Ark', was when I was fourteen years old, and it was an ITV children's program, and I did an episode called, 'Bunnies in the Bathroom.' And I'm not sure if it was my finest hour.
When we filmed the premiere episode of 'United Shades of America,' it was like we were turning over a rock in the woods. The KKK was not part of the national conversation. They were really just a punchline for comedians when you needed to let the audience know something was really, really, really racist.
When movie people go over into television, it's a little bit of a shock. It's much faster-paced. Everything is really last-minute. You won't know your schedule for the next episode until the last minute.
The interpretive element of 'Lost' - the fact that you immediately need, as soon as the episode is over, to seek out a community of people to express your own thoughts about it, understand what they thought about it and form an opinion - that's the bread and butter of the show.
Sometimes I look back and think, 'Good. I'd love to go in and bang out a good episode of 'Talk Soup' today.'
The amount of coordination it takes to shoot a television show is mind-numbing. There are so many things that have to be exactly right to create the correct environment for a single shot, let alone a whole scene or the full episode.
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.
We have a full writers' room, and with something like 'MyMusic,' we've scripted it out with professional writers. There is some very basic improv from the actors, but everything is very to the letter, so it's easy to edit down to an episode. There are fun little things an actor might throw in there.
Life isn't like a 'Full House' episode.
Most people know me from 'The Office,' where I played a guy who grunted out three or four words an episode and was kind of a knucklehead, and so I think it's surprising for people to see me do something like this. But Shakespeare is what I grew up wanting to do.
It used to annoy and frustrate me to have to come in and audition. I would say to my agents, 'Haven't they seen this film and this film and this film? They know what I look like... They must.' Until I directed an episode of 'Roswell.' And all of a sudden, I realized why that was such an important thing.
I guess one that wouldn't be obvious is - well, maybe it's super obvious, I can't tell - 'I Love Lucy' is my favorite show, going back to when I was 4. I've watched every episode I don't know how many times. It was something to watch women being funny when I was young.
When I was starting to get noticed as an actor in the 1970s for something other than the third cowboy on the right who ended up dying in every movie or episode, Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in the world.
For 'The Haunting Hour,' I thought it would be a lot of fun. It was great to play this cool kid role. My episode is called 'The Intruders' and my character is this mean, angry teenager because her younger brother was just born and he gets all of the attention. She's always playing tricks on her family, and there are some cool twists.
It's one of the things that 'Everwood' - what makes a great 'Everwood' episode is when it makes you laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time. From the first season, we've always had the chance to deal with death in a very real way, in a way that a lot of other shows can't or don't.
When we were doing 'The West Wing,' the hardest thing about doing 'The West Wing' was being compared to yourself. You go out there and want every episode to be as good as your best episode. I wrote 88 episodes of 'The West Wing,' and when you do that, one of them is going to be your 88th best, so your 88th best better be pretty good.
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.
This idea that you can watch a show like 'True Detective,' and it was awesome, but is it really ruined for you if the finale is not your favorite episode of it? It's just odd to me.
