xtcian

1,001 arabian reruns

10/6/04

Tessa has been really sick for the last couple of days, so when we got a meeting on the ABC lot yesterday, I had to perform our act solo. Here's the thing about being in a pitch meeting, or even a meet'n'greet scenario: it is exponentially better if you are part of a team. It's exactly like going to a bar - alone, you are Creepy McStalky, but with a pal or two, you're a gregarious man about town.

A husband-and-wife writing team is not without historical precedent in this town, but it is a throwback, or at least an oddity, in a town full of white 30-year-olds wearing the same Banana Republic untucked shirts, peddling their wares with a like-minded college buddy. I think the missus and I give a pretty damned good meeting, and I know this because I actually have fun at these things, and my bar is set pretty high.

No offense to the movie industry, but people in TV have their shit together. We have traveled through many barred gates, worn many guest badges, and broken bread with lots of people making your favorite TV shows, and I have found them to be among the sharpest tools in the shed. You can complain all you want about television, but making a show is an honest day's work, and it never ends until you get 100 shows in the can. These people know what they're doing.

I used to deride television, mostly because I felt betrayed by it. At some point in the early 1990s, some episode of "Home Improvement" or "Full House" made the whole medium go sour for me, and I swore it off for a decade. But I admit to being humbled by it of late, because I discovered the following:
a) even making a bad show is unbelievably hard
b) we are entering a mini-Renaissance of quality TV
c) like Scheherazade, you only get to live another day if the story you tell has a really good cliffhanger.