Episode Report Card 4 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT "Everybody knows about Television Without Pity."
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 13 | Aired on 08.29.2005
Cool. Do you think you're spoiled for your next show? I've kind of decided that I didn't really want to be on a show unless it's my own show. Okay. So, hopefully…I think that if I went to work on somebody else's show, I think that I would be in trouble soon. Uh-oh. When you're writing an episode, how much of a framework or how much freedom do you get as far as… We get a three-page outline. [Jill explains that the outline specifies how the episode fits into the overall season arc, but my cheap-ass tape recorder doesn't pick up her exact words.] I mean, you have to follow your outline. Who determines the arc, is it Alan Ball? No, all the writers sit around and talk about it every season. So it wasn't like Joss Whedon claims to do, having the whole run of the show planned out? No. No, Alan doesn't work that way. I read in TV Guide that there was kind of a different plan for the final season before Rachel Griffiths came in and said she was pregnant? Yeah, well, we were gonna have a…I think there was another…[long pause] I don't want to spoil [the finale]. You haven't watched it yet, have you? No, I haven't. Why don't we say that there was gonna be another miscarriage. And some of these problems with the baby that are now being bandied about? We had another storyline where there was yet another pregnancy. You know how we had the two pregnancies this season? Right. Before we found out Rachel was pregnant there were three pregnancies. And the middle one was, I think, a second miscarriage, and then the third one was gonna be, like, some of these problems and an abortion. And it was just going to be a lot more complicated. Wow. And, uh, she did not want to play an abortion scene. She was willing to play the first miscarriage, because, you know, certain stuff. It was early on. But she didn't want to be playing anything involving the death of the baby. I don't blame her at all. Yes. How did you get into writing for TV? I created a play with my sister called The Real Life Brady Bunch that became a big hit, and I got an agent, and I got my first TV writing job at The Steve Harvey Show. Do you remember that show? Yes, I do [by which I mean that I remember when it was on]. So how did you…is that how you got into Six Feet Under, through your agent?