I don’t want to be an old man some day and look it up and see some episode of one of the shows I did and go, ‘ugh,’ and be disappointed in myself.
If you look closely at ‘Breaking Bad’ and any given episode of ‘The X Files,’ you will realise the structure is exactly the same.
There can be racism in a system even if a particular episode of injustice is not a manifestation of that racism. Every single thing in the criminal justice system is not a manifestation of racism, but many things are.
In America, Miramax are using a ‘New York Times’ review that said ‘Trainspotting’ makes ‘Kids’ look like a 1960s episode of ‘Sesame Street.’
We get so many requests like, ‘We want behind-the-scenes access,’ or ‘We’re going to show people what it’s really like to be on the campaign with Donald Trump.’ But there is just no way that a camera or an episode or a documentary could capture what has gone on.
But I’ve never tried writing an episode of ‘EastEnders’, even as an exercise.
With all the stuff that’s going on in the world – after I watch the news, read the news, and listen to my podcasts, at the end of the day, am I really going to watch an episode of murder and time travel?
I did a musical episode of ‘Scrubs.’
And when they brought me in for the first ever episode of ‘The Chase,’ they still hadn’t figured out the format so I was helping them to play test it and then come up with the right standard of questions. So it’s my fault they can be really tough!
If I was going to direct an episode of ‘Younger’, I wanted it to look like an episode of ‘Younger.’
I’m not somebody who goes online after every episode airs because that would be, for me, getting too much feedback and too much information.
RuPaul’s Drag Race’ is my favorite show on television, and I’ve never missed an episode. With season 4, I watched it as if Sharon Needles wasn’t me but was just another character.
There are different types of bullying; one of the biggest ones out there right now is cyberbullying. I had the privilege of filming an ‘Austin & Ally’ episode centered on cyberbullying, how it can get out of control, the ups and downs that you feel, and how to deal with it.
I grew up watching ‘The Lone Ranger.’ I would get up every Saturday morning, earlier than all the other kids, to watch a black and white western with Clayton Moore that hadn’t filmed a new episode since 1957.
Certainly, last year we did an episode about the census and sampling versus a direct statistic. You just said the word ‘census,’ and people fall asleep.
One of the problems with episodic television of any color is that everything has got to be okay at the end of the episode so it can start again next week.
Well, I must tell you I write the scripts very close to the bone. So I’m writing episode seven now and couldn’t tell you what happens in episode eight.
You have to be careful what you say in front of comedy writers because they will absolutely make fun of it in the next episode.
My guilty pleasure is ‘Revenge.’ I’ve watched it from the very first episode.
When I’m working in finite serials, I always think in terms of the entire book rather than the individual episode because, by far, the vaster sector of the project’s lifespan will be in complete book form rather than the singles.
For Democrats, nothing is any less complex than a ‘West Wing’ episode.
I have caught eels from Loch Ness, as we did a River Monsters episode which started off there. They weren’t very big – just 18 inches. I’m sure there may be bigger eels, but you’re only talking about 10lbs.
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.
I remember that during ‘Ek Hasina Thi,’ a fan of the show had a king-size poster of me in her bedroom, which she would attack after every episode!
There are shows that are monolithic successes on TV that nobody in the business ever watches one episode of.
I believe that 99 percent of successful TV shows change an immense amount from the pilot to the tenth or twelfth episode.
Episodic TV is notoriously brutal because just when you think ‘I’ve got this, I know this character’ you can pick up the script for series four and you die in the first episode – or your character suddenly transitions from a woman to a man.
I lost my father four years ago to what was the culmination of a manic episode that seemingly, to my family, came completely out of the blue after 59 years on this earth with no issues that we knew about, at least – sort of a normal run-of-the-mill guy who did his job and came home and had a family.
When I was making films, we had a lot of time for the fighting scenes. But in TV, we don’t have much time to think about how to do the fighting, because there are only seven days for an episode. You have to hurry. This is a challenge.
My family sits around and tells all these amazing stories of pirates and the wa. Then one day I’m having a beer after shooting an episode of ‘Thank God You’re Here,’ and started telling Dave Hughes some stories, and he said, ‘You’ve gotta turn this into a book.’
One of the tricky things about running a TV show is that you just never know how good the guest stars you cast on a weekly basis, how good they’re going to be in the episode. Sometimes they surprise you in good ways and sometimes they surprise you in disappointing ways.
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.
It’s been such a nice journey doing ‘When Calls the Heart’ from Episode 1 to Episode 12. It’s been a really, really nice journey.
We got kind of into a rhythm at ‘Parks’ because there were so many characters that we had an A story, a B story, and a C story just about every episode. So by the middle of that show’s run, we always had three stories, and it worked really well.
Many people don’t know our famous ‘soup kitchen’ episode on Seinfeld was inspired by an actual soup restaurant off 8th Avenue in New York.
We had great comic mileage in the ‘SG-1’ episode ‘The Swarm,’ where Woolsey is running away faster than anybody else.
‘Bionic Woman’ changed direction too much from episode to episode, which I think is why it lost momentum.
I pitched a storyline, and as far as I know it’s been picked up. It’s for the third and final episode I’m contracted to do. But I can’t give any spoilers.
Nothing surprises me on ‘Happy Endings,’ because the show – I think one of the awesome things about the show is that it’s so open to doing anything. We could do a genre episode. We have the green light to do whatever we want. Mostly because no one’s watching.
What I would love to do is more telly comedy. I did a tiny bit in ‘Toast of London’ and was in one episode of Catherine Tate’s ‘Nan.’ I was crying with laughter.
I’ve never watched an episode of ‘Star Trek.’ For real.
If you just stay with it and take it scene by scene, episode by episode, all of the questions that I have, as an actor, tend to answer themselves.
Human divisions would be child’s play for any reasonably competent alien overlord to exploit – check the masterful ‘Twilight Zone’ episode ‘The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street’ for an example of how that might play out.
I remember watching the premiere of the pilot episode of ‘Next Gen’ when I was a teenager.
I have enough to keep me going, and I love watching ‘Bigg Boss.’ I totally enjoy that. I don’t miss any episode.
You’re on set more when you produce an episode, and it’s long hours, but you learn so much.
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.
How many times have you been watching an episode of ‘South Park’ and thought, ‘I’d like to be able to watch this on my television while hooked into my mobile device, which is being controlled by my tablet device which is hooked into my oven, all while sitting in the refrigerator?’
The entire economy relies on the suspension of disbelief. So does a fairy story or an animated cartoon. This means that no matter how soberly the financial experts dress, no matter how dry their language, the economy they worship can only ever be as plausible as an episode of ‘SpongeBob SquarePants.’
I feel like every first episode of a TV show is bad, you know, and it always improves.
We don’t sit down and look at the news pages and think, ‘How could we do an episode about that?’
There are a few things for the New York actor that you hope to one day cross off the bucket list. One of them was I got to do an episode of ‘Blue Bloods,’ which was really fun.
In one notorious episode in 2002, in the holy city of Mecca, the religious police prevented girls from fleeing a school that was on fire because they were not properly dressed.
Mara Casey gave me my first job. I saw something online, and it was for a part in a ‘Gilmore Girls’ episode, and I thought I was right for it.
I never really see entertainment as a noble pursuit necessarily, but people really want a sense of normalcy, even if it’s being delivered to them in a ‘Hot Ones’ episode.
