MIKE SCHUR: I had a list of six things on the wall that every episode had to do.
Number one: Is it funny? It’s a network comedy show. If it’s not funny, we are blowing it. My number one fear is that people watching the show would suddenly feel, “Why are you lecturing me on how to live my life?” That is not the point of the show. The point is to raise questions and we need to do that in a funny way. So if the episode idea wasn’t funny, if it didn’t have enough comedy in it, it would go away. It is a specific goal of the show to never seem like it’s homework.
Number two: Are the characters being developed? That was a huge deal for season one. Knowing what we were gonna reveal at the end of the year, by the time we got there, we’d had to have explained to the audience who these people were and essentially why they ended up in hell. That was the big thing. If you didn’t understand why all four of them were being tortured, then the twist would seem random. It had to be properly set up in the Usual Suspects way.
Number three: Does the episode ask and answer a question about ethics, about good or bad behavior? Obvious reasons for that.
Number four: Is it compelling? I had this real fear that we were gonna seem like we’re spinning our wheels. This is something Damon Lindelof talked to me about because I consulted him a lot before while I was working on the show in the early days. One of the things he said was that they ran into trouble with LOST when they felt like they were spinning their wheels. They were adding new characters and kinda running in place and you get out an episode where Jack gets a tattoo, and that’s not compelling. This show has to be endlessly compelling and full of momentum in order for it to feel vital and interesting.
Number five: Is it consistent with the long game? The long game being they are all in hell and are being tortured. We couldn’t ever do anything that would contradict the big picture, the big secret picture. It was at the level of “you can’t ever see Michael, Ted’s character, alone.” You can’t ever see him because if he were alone, he would not be in character. He’d be evilly chuckling and laughing hysterically at the foibles that the humans were undergoing. So we had all these really specific rules like “Is there any moment in the entire show where – if you went back and looked – you’d go ‘Oh that doesn’t make any sense’?” Which was hard but fun.
And the last one: Are we making use of the premise? We set this show in the afterlife. If we didn’t have one insane thing – a dog flying into the sun and exploding – or something magical, Janet popping in and out, something that couldn’t happen anywhere but in the afterlife, if we weren’t doing that at least once an episode, then again, we felt like we were blowing it.
These are the six things that every episode had to do.
MARC EVAN JACKSON: I think you have a bright future in television.
i'll apple your turnover 