The Final Blog
Well, this is it. The final blog. I want to thank our many loyal fans. All five of you. My mother being one. I did get many emails from friends and family after the premiere. Those kind words meant a lot to me. Of course I did expect to hear from two people in my life and didn't. That only showed me that they're still too caught up in their own self-involvement to send even a simple message. But before I get too emotional, I want to take this opportunity to address of few rumors, innuendos and conspiracy theories I've heard at parties, the Abbey, and the message boards. (Sorry Lauren Graham. I know I said I wouldn't read 'em, but I'm too curious a person) So here we go --
1) The series was NOT a big set up by the reality folks. Sean & Todd really wanted this to be more of a documentary. To show "the good, the bad and the ugly" of the pilot process. Some things are out of order, but pretty much what you saw, was what happened. But even the writers thought certain things were staged. Like me giving that 9 PM deadline. I came up with that since I like to read and do notes at night, rather than the next morning. Especially since we started shooting at 7:45 every day. Of course all the competition stuff was a bit hokey. And Maxx and I never liked the term "State of the Union", much less having to do them.
2) I HAVE had a tv job in the past fifteen years. I was working full time as a writer/producer on "Gilmore Girls" while shooting "Situation:Comedy". That's why I am in not in some scenes. Although I was consulted via phone on most major issues. Thank you Amy Sherman-Palladino for letting me do both shows. And a big thanks to Jim Berg for covering for me and not complaining about it. But I was not tired because of "GG", Andrew. I just knew you guys could come up with better jokes. And you did.
3) I did NOT pick "The Retailer" as my wild card because I thought Sean Michael Birmingham was cute. Although he is adorable (he might consider the Queer Eye guys to give him a new haircut), we had no idea who wrote what scripts when we were reading them. They were identified by number only. I just loved that his script didn't use typical sitcom structure and thought it could bring young people back to network tv.
4) Some of the criticism we got was that we didn't make pilots that broke the mold. I tried (see #3). But we can't change the system. That's up to the networks. And remember, NBC picked the final two. It should be noted, Maxine and I were crushed when our number one choice got eliminated at the last minute due to a technicality. We're hoping to take that script out for this pilot season.
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