Story editors Peter Calloway and Cliff Olin and staff writer Jason Wilborn are taking turns with this new Brothers & Sisters blog. This entry is from Peter Calloway.
Phew. What a relief. The show is back on the air. As Cliff "I like to make up nicknames" Olin mentioned in last week's blog, we've been waiting for this week since June. And now we get to share our work with everyone. One down.
"And 23 more to go." That was what Mark said after we finished talking through the first episode and Monica and Allison went off to write. You see, Mark is a realist. All the writers were happy and relaxed — we were proud of the story for the first episode, knew Monica and Allison would knock it out of the park, but the truth of the matter was we needed to get back to work. There's no time to spare. Literally. Writing for television is like running on a treadmill: If you slow down, you fall off. And then you tumble backwards, slam your face on the edge of the belt, and knock your shin on a 100-lb. dumbbell that some huge gym bunny forgot to rack. When you stand up on your sprained ankle and look around, everyone is looking at you, wanting to laugh, but trying to spare you your dignity. Not that that has happened to me, or anything.
For today, however, everyone around here is pleased with the ratings, so the well of anxiety from last week has dried up. We get to tell the story of the Walkers for a little bit longer — saying goodbye to them now would hurt too damn much. And we're employed, which is nice.
Well, employed for the moment anyway. Truth is, although the pre-premiere jitters are gone, they've been replaced by the prestrike jitters. I'm not sure how much the outside world keeps up with the nitty-gritty details of the entertainment industry, but the Writers Guild (of which every employed writer in Hollywood is a member) is in the middle of renegotiating a contract with the networks and studios. And the negotiations are not going well. No one knows when the strike will happen, but most people believe that it's only a matter of time. We, the writers, having established ourselves impressively adept at finding things to worry about, spent a good chunk of our lunch forecasting the horrible jobs we're going to have to get if the strike lasts a long time. I mean, besides writing and worrying, we're not really qualified to do anything.
That's the backdrop for the week. But to cheer us up and distract us, we have a great episode coming up this Sunday, written by David "all you heterosexuals are so predictable" Marshall Grant and Molly "vote for Obama" Newman. We learn about what happened to Justin in Iraq and deal with the repercussions for the family. Oh, and Kitty gets into a wee bit of trouble with McCallister. Well, it's more like a lot.
I'd tell you more, but then I'm pretty sure ABC would fire me before I even get the chance to strike....
— Peter
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