‘The Lord of the Rings,’ published in the mid-1950s, was intended as a prehistory to our own world. It was perceived by Tolkien to be a small but significant episode in a vast alternate mythology constructed entirely out of his own imagination.
It is impossible to watch a ‘Friends’ episode too many times. Phoebe is my favourite character. I used to play her songs on the guitar when I was a teenager. ‘Smelly Cat’ is very easy. It’s only about three chords.
One of the best parts of Thanksgiving for me is re-watching some of the classic holiday blunders that have been depicted on television. I remember laughing uncontrollably on the set of ‘That Girl’ back in 1967 when we shot the episode, ‘Thanksgiving Comes But Once A Year, Hopefully’ during our second season.
I have no choice but to admit that, for a while, I was a casual viewer of ‘American Idol.’ By ‘casual viewer,’ I mean I watched every episode aired between 2004 and 2007.
I tried out for ‘Tough Enough’ season 2 originally and made it to the final casting episode and got cut by Kevin Dunn, who said all I wanted to do was run and flip and jump.
Hurricane Katrina this past week was certainly the worst episode in what has become an all-too-familiar and tragic cycle, and our nation is now faced with a set of unprecedented challenges.
When I was 16, I filmed an episode of ‘Full House’ where my family goes to Disney World. I remember putting on baggy overalls just to hide my stomach. When I watched it, I was pretty disappointed and bummed out looking at myself… I didn’t feel good about my own body.
I have a lot of affection for those old shows. You can put on an episode of ‘Full House’ or ‘Family Matters’ or ‘Growing Pains’ now and I’ll watch it. And I’ll totally enjoy it.
I would definitely say the last episode is as epic as probably any episode that ‘Once Upon a Time’ has ever done. I mean, it’s massive; it’s huge. It’s like taking the best of all seasons and jamming it into one – literally.
Being asked to be in the last episode of ‘Seinfeld’ is not something you pass on. It was a great honor.
Six years ago, I completed the premier episode of Hawaii Five-O, and Jack Lord and I immediately realized that we had a good series, that this was a success such as we’d never hoped for!
That fight scene in episode two between Five, Hazel, and Cha-Cha at the department store was a lot of fun to shoot.
I’m not supposed to talk about the snail. The snail is, well, congratulations to whoever noticed it. It’s supposed to be a thing where you gotta look for it in every episode, and it’s there three times in every episode.
I was in a band called Episode Six with Roger Glover, which was more of a harmony band, really. At one gig, there were a few dodgy characters leaning up against the wall of the venue – and we ended up joining their band. Purple was the talk of every musician in the country – they had something new and very exciting.
On ‘Modern Family,’ we have outlines, really strong outlines, when we go off to draft, so you have a reasonable expectation that that will be the story of your episode.
You realise that, with ‘Rick and Morty,’ each episode is so deep and dense it is extraordinary. It slightly annoys me that it’s so good; it’s almost unbeatable as a TV show.
For the third season, we do a sit around on one episode where we were in character and then we commented on one episode just being ourselves, so – not really. I was comfortable, though. I wasn’t nervous.
We’re the guys who, if someone says you really shouldn’t do an episode making fun of Scientologists, we say, ‘Whatever.’ Someone says, ‘They might come try to burn your house down,’ we say, ‘We’ll just get another one.’
Any big televised event that starts at the crack of dawn is worth getting up for. I’ve done it all my life: big boxing matches, royal weddings, even TV-A.M.’s inaugural episode was enjoyed in pyjamas in my house.
My first ever-ever professional role was in a television show in England called ‘Love Soup.’ It starred Tamsin Greig. I just played a small role – I think officially my role was ‘teenage boy’ – it was one episode.
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.
I was convinced I had a giant brain tumour. I thought, ‘I don’t believe this. It’s like a bad episode of Brookside.’ That’s when I knew I didn’t want to die. When the chips were down I thought, ‘It’s not my time yet.’ I really wanted to live and be happy.
I hardly ever watch TV and when I do it’s sports. I’ll occasionally stick on some old episode of ‘Fawlty Towers’ or something.
Now I’m seen by more people in one episode than I was in 20 years of theatre and movies. It’s gratifying to have an impact on 25 million people a night, but I can say goodbye to my lunch-pail life as a working actor. I’m scared I might be a celebrity.
I know, on ‘Rick and Morty,’ we had the time where they unfreeze time, and they’re in trouble because of it. The time starts splitting. That episode, we got a little too focused on ‘how,’ the hows and the science behind it, and oh my God, it was – it was spiraling us for sure.
I don’t know that Michael J Fox had done anything prior to that ‘Curb’ episode where he got to comically play up the whole subject of his Parkinson’s. There must have been something very liberating in doing that.
Personally, I like to yearn a little and long for the next episode. On the other hand, I’m also a glutton. My kids love to dive in and eat whole series at once.
I’ve decided ‘Breaking Bad’ may be one of the best TV shows ever, but I had to watch every last episode of the first four seasons to come to that conclusion.
Comedy comes out of everyone’s worst day. No one writes a sitcom episode about everyone having a good day. It’s always about someone being locked out of their house or someone being dumped or whatever.
I grew up in a pretty strict household in the sense that we just didn’t have cable, so I wasn’t familiar with what stand-up comedy was. I remember telling my friends that I thought stand-up comedy was like the thing that happened before the episode of ‘Seinfeld.’
People see a ‘South Park’ episode, and there’s racially insensitive jokes – nobody bats an eye because they’re expecting that in that context. In hip-hop, they don’t expect that kind of thing because it’s a white person in a predominantly black world.
I’m a sucker for two things: Adam Lambert and songs that start out as emo as a sad episode of ‘Felicity’ and then drop. That. Beat.
The TV show ‘How It’s Made’ brings the intricate details of assembly lines to numerous North American living rooms. But if the series were to ever branch into exposing the secrets of music production, Colin Stetson’s ‘New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges’ would make for a mind-bending episode.
I remember watching an episode of ‘Seinfeld’ in which George can’t understand why security guards can’t sit down. He gets obsessed with it and eventually buys a chair for a security guard who sits down and goes to sleep. The shop gets robbed. That’s a brilliant extrapolation of what is essentially observational comedy.
It’s rare that you sit down for an episode of ‘Psych’ and think, ‘Oh, that was just okay.’ For the most part, we’re either really knocking the ball around, or we’re striking out and failing miserably, but you don’t ever want to be anywhere in between.
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.
I was sober for, like, a year and a half, and I was 25, and I actually did have a manic episode, and I was diagnosed as bipolar.
In a totalitarian state like North Korea, a group of neighbors gathering once a week to watch the latest episode of a forbidden soap opera is committing a political act, and forming, with the market traders who deliver them this treasure, a rudimentary civil society.
Television is instant gratification. We do an episode and we instantly get a reaction for the same. Theatre on the other hand is very satisfying as an actor. It is purely a few thousand people who come to watch the theatre.
People like continuity, and the good old cliffhanger every week is something they enjoy. I enjoy it – I don’t want to dip into just one episode when I turn on the TV.
I did an episode on the TV show ‘Awake,’ and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really hard.’ To do that so fast and to do that, if it’s very successful, for nine months out of the year, for a bunch of good years, that’s challenging. But, it was interesting. It’s a good show. You’d have to have a very good character, I guess.
I can’t say too much about it because I don’t know a lot. We’re not told what’s in store for our characters until we turn up to shoot the episode. But it’s fair to say that Betty and her son bring a brand new mystery to the street and they will be around all season.
‘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.
‘Vegas’ was something very close to me. I had such a blast doing that. I’m still a little upset that we never really got to shoot that final episode. So many people were invested in it. I’ll always be sad about that.
