What is the Hardest Show to Write For?
 

What do you guys think? The two off the top of my head would be the Simpsons and 24. I only say the Simpsons because it's been on for SO long that it has to be very hard to come up with fresh storylines and jokes that haven't been done before. Does anyone know if they get new writers every year or two?

I also say 24 because it has to be extremely hard to write a show like that. I think that's evident when we see the show decline in quality over the course of the season, become extremely contrived and very unrealistic. I think part of that problem is also that they only plot out four episodes to write at a time rather than attempting to see the big, 24-episode picture from the get go.

I would say a show like Carnivale, where there is a lot of attention to the period. They would also have to bring in the supernatural elements without the humor and tongue-in-cheekness of a show like Buffy, which I think would be hard to do well.

I would think The Wire would be pretty tough to write for. Not only do you need to come up with realistic scenarios and correct protocol for both the police and court aspects, but you also need to write good dialogue for the "street" characters that doesn't sound like it was copped from a UPN sitcom.

I don't think 24 would be that tough. You start by resolving the previous episode's cliffhanger, then you put either Jack, a supporting character, or the nation at some kind of risk and establish a time limit for some consequences (ie the ETA on this bomb is 45 minutes!!!11!!! we must hurry!!!), involve Jack in a conflict with another character where he gets to say "I need answers NOW, we're running out of time!" or his pronounced "dammit", have Jack advance towards enemy(ies) that stand in his way of killing the time limit, then prepare some sort of cliffhanger. This is obviously an overgeneralization, and coming out with interesting plot points for this show (since they seem to try to one up themselves each year) has got to be tough, but other than that I don't think in the grand scheme of things there is anything in 24 that would be extremely difficult to write

To dvd: Maybe, but I disagree. I think it's relatively easy to write for a show like, say, "The Sopranos" where you get ALL this off time to write only 13 episodes. And one episode could take play March 11, 2005, and the second episode could take place June 23, 2005. There's no need to constantly connect one thing to the other. You certainly drop hints and place in things later on down the road--for example, if it's episode 9 you may bring in something that happened in episode 1 to make the audience go "Oh yeah, I forgot, Tony still has to deal with that..."

I think 24 is a lot harder because you have 24 episodes that takes place in such a short amount of time. Every episode has to be meaningful and interesting. You have to say, "OK, Jack is going to do this in episode one which HAS to lead to this in episode two meanwhile Palmer in episode three directs this to happen so therefore in episode four this has to occur meanwhile at CTU we need this..." I just think all of the constant "cause and effect" in every single episode for 24 episodes is extremely hard to do. That's why I think the show struggles with quality every year.

Truth be told, I think if 24 was able to pull a "Sopranos" and have a good year or year and a half off to completely work on a script, we'd see a very good, consistent season of 24.

Survivor, The Real World, Amazing Race, Big Brother

;)

The way the scripts for "Arrested Development" work as a single story, while referring seamlessly to old events and recurring jokes, is pretty amazing. I think it would be hard to match that quality week after week.

:lol: at the Soprano's. On average they could take about a month per script if they wanted.

As for 24, the writers finished up Season 4 around March and have until around November. That is a good nine months.

My first thought was Arrested Development as well.

Dukes of Hazard. Do you jump the bridge first? Break out of jail? What about the car chase? Does Daisey fall in love with the villian or not?

How did they do it?

Any show that's original and fresh and airing on FOX. You write 13 to 18 excellent scripts and FOX only airs 4 episodes before canceling you. Now that's got to be tough!

Can we please refrain from using the word “fresh” when referring to TV shows? Other than that, I agree that anything on FOX is russian roulette but with only 1 empty chamber.

I wrote a short program to write scripts for Deadwood.

10 print "********er"
20 goto 10

:up: that's what I was thinking

Chappelle's Show must be tough if $50 million isn't enough to keep you at it.

Simpsons is what popped in my mind.

that was my 1st thought when I saw this thread

The first one that came to my mind was CSI. I would also put Arrested Development up there, how everything ties together is nothing short of amazing. I would say the easiest show by far is Lost. They just make that shit up as they go along.

Shows like CSI, Law & Order, etc. require immense research. And that's on top of intriguing characters. Not only that, the stories have to be "ripped from the headlines" enough to be fresh in people's minds, yet not so close to reality to be lawsuit-inducing.

while i get and appreciate the joke, i will say that 'deadwood' does things with language that i've never seen done before, and i honestly have no idea how the writers can do that. the mix of the victorian proper and slang vulgarity in a way that sounds like graffiti poetry.

the plotlines can get fairly messy, and utilize very heavy shakespearean themes, but in general i'm not sure they would be overly difficult to write. but the dialogue on that show is as unique as anything i've ever heard. there's a LOT more to it than just swearwords.

:thumbsup:

I love listening to the characters on Deadwood and agree that the dialogue is consistantly well done. While I appreciate the mileage it's gotten out of the word ********er, there's a lot more to the language than that.

I'm sorry. I blame it on watching too much WB.

indeed.

That network needs to be removed from the nations airwaves... :chainsaw:

On a slight tangent, it must have been hell trying to write unique and interesting scripts for Star Trek during the last several years. I'm surprised the Reeves-Stevens managed to get so much interesting stuff onscreen during Enterprise's last year. They must have had Rick Berman locked in a storage closet.

based on last season...i'd say 24!

Nah, last season was easy.

also