Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Nude, Wet, & Delicate | Ep. 351

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

Daniel mourns the loss of a beloved bit after a new ferry terminal prevents him from shouting embarrassing encouragement at his wife. Then Soren admits he’s taken some unusually big swings in his latest script, prompting the guys to compare the strange jokes they couldn’t believe survived — including Daniel’s extremely long fantasy about living nude and wet inside an egg. They also discover the horrifying usefulness of simply letting another writer look at your work.Thanks so much to Larine for sponsoring this episode! Get up to 50% off at http://BUYLARINE.com/QQFollow the guys on Bluesky!https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.socialBonus episodes 2x/month at patreon.com/quickquestion OR Apple Podcasts

So, what's your favorite? So I know what's on your mind. Soran, it's the podcast. And it's a mournful one today. It's a sad one. Oh, half-masday. What's up? Yeah.

I think I think I had. to retire a long-running personal bit that I love very much. I've dawned on me this morning. I'll tell you all about it. So my wife, that bit's not retiring. That bit is, that bit stick her out. Hashtag uncillable. My wife commutes into the city two days a week.

She takes a ferry to get there. I drive her to the ferry in the morning and pick her up in the evening. in the morning, the ferry terminal, there is always, it's a smaller terminal. There's always a long line of people outside of the terminal. A whole bunch of people always waiting to get on the boat. I would drop my wife off and let her walk a few feet. And then I'd roll down the window and say something encouraging the way a parent would say to a kid in like a baseball game or like on first day of school. It was a lot of like, knock them dead, babe, you got this, be a superstar,

real corny shit. In front of, for all of the other adults to look and see who, what's happening, what is this situation, who is giving this encouragement. And then, and then I drive away. And I let my wife just like walk onto this line. And I, I know she doesn't like it. I know that there's no part of her that likes it. But she likes me enough that she has never told me to stop. I know she, because there are plenty of bits that I've done that she's been like, hey, you cannot do that anymore. And this one I think she knows that it would hurt me too much to part with it.

So she is just like dealt with it for years now. So the ferry, we don't need to get into too much of the, Weeds on this, but the... Rarely weeds out on a ferry, but go ahead. The ferry company that secured the contract for this route from New Jersey to New York, they lost their contract. The courts overturned it, and it reverted back to another different ferry company. And that ferry operates out of a different terminal that is still close to a

our home. There's two different terminals that we could have used. It doesn't meaningfully impact our life in any way because the time we leave the house is the same. And the time of her commute is the same. And it's still a boat. And everything's fine. Except the outline of this new terminal is such that there is never a crowd gathered. It's just, it's too big a terminal. Everyone's inside. There's kind of a long, walk to get from the parking lot to the terminal itself and I can't drive up there to shout encouraging nonsense to my wife. I tried it today to like a smattering of people in the parking lot who happened to be getting out at the same time that I was dropping her off. It's just not the same.

It's it sucks so bad. I loved it so much. Can you park come in with her? Yeah. Get her in line. and once she's in line and you're walking away from her, both hand wave and give her one of like a, you got this. At this point, I believe in you. I'm dropping her off and then I'm taking my son to daycare. So I can't.

Oh, you've got the kid in the car. I've got the kid in the car. I don't want to take too much time. It's really like even on the occasional morning where we were snapping at each other a little bit because we didn't sleep well, Or, you know, whatever. The mornings get away from people all the time.

And there was friction. I would still roll down my window and say, be the change you want to see in the world. Yeah. And sometimes that's even better when they're a little angry at you doing you. I think there were times that I had considered, like if we were having friction and I was in a foul mood, I had considered not doing that. And then I thought, no, then she's going to think I'm really mad at her. Like, that's the worst thing I could do is not do it. I need to let her know before she gets on that boat and goes to work that, no matter what's going on, we're still fine.

We're still good. And you still wish her namaste all day? Yeah. How else could I do that? The shouting namaste all day. Nice dress. Stay blessed. Oh, that's really nice.

That's a good one. It's fun to just, like, cook them up, I imagine. Like, on the way there, you've got, you're like, great. Here we go. Opportunity knocking. getting, uh, would get really mad at myself for repeating things.

Like there, there was, uh, it's an old Scrubs episode. Scrubs is back, but there's an old episode. Uh, a hallmark of that show is that J.D.

narrates everything. He's doing the voiceover for everything. But like once a season, uh, a couple seasons in, someone else would take over the narration. Turk would have an episode where it was his story. And we got his Vio and his internal monologue.

And there's one with, uh, Dr. Cox where another hallmark of the show is that he would call J.D. a girl's name every time he sees her. And in the episode where we got his internal monologue, he sees J.D. coming. And his internal monologue is like Cynthia, Megan, Brittany, Brittany, Brittany. And then he says, hey, Britney, how you doing? And J.D. goes, you use Brittany already. And Dr. Cox out loud says, I don't give a damn. And his brain, damn it. That's what I would do sometimes.

when Shea would drive away. And I'd be like, you got this rock star. Fucking idiot. Just take a day and go home and write them down. Come up with 10. Come up with 10. And then just you'll have them. And then you won't have to think on your feet.

Ah, yeah. I mean, but if she really wanted to hurt you, she really wanted this to stop. She wouldn't even have to say stop. She would just have to say, you're recycling the old ones. Should we just? Yeah.

What do you want to do? Do you want to come up with some new ones or do you want to just quit? That's true. That would hurt you more than anything in your head. It would be so deeply painful. I like this bit though. I'm sorry for you to lose it. I thought you'd like it.

I thought you'd really enjoy it too. I don't know if you knew this, but I don't, where did I even hear it? You know, Amy Sedaris. Amy Sedaris is, she's got a brother, it turns out. What? less famous brother. The name's Dave. David, maybe.

And they would meet on the train a lot because they go to get lunch or something like that together. So there was always a moment where he had his stop was later than hers and she would get off the train. And she would shout things to him. But they were not nearly as encouraging. She would be getting off the train. And she would be like, I really hope you beat those charges and then would get off the train. and something that he'd have to then sit in for a while where everyone is like,

they're filling in the blanks of what's actually happened. And I think that's great. I like it too. I like it a lot. I like ruining her morning. She's about to take two ferries and a subway to her office for what is like a three and a half hour round trip commute. I'm about to go back home.

and sit on the couch and do my computer job. Yeah, my dad when I was a child would say every single morning, every fucking morning. He would leave for work before all of us went to school, and he would say,

well, I'm off to war. Oh. Every day as a child. And then the only other thing he would, would do every single time was an effort to embarrass my mom, which would be wherever we were and it was time for, he felt it was time to go. And it was always he was eager to go before anyone else, didn't want to stick around it for social occasions. He would slap his legs and go to my mom.

He'd go, well, old horse, should we head out? I love that. I love your father's nickname for your mother. It's, it's, I've always found it very endearing. And then we get a laugh. We get a laugh. There was a guy that, I guess we can name him. Good for him. Shout out Mike Schaver,

who was like a grip when we made sketches at crack.com. A delightful guy to have on set. He was a buddy and like, oh, good, Schaub's here that we're going to have fun doing jokes and bits and stuff. He is now Academy Award nominated editor of sinners and the Black Panther movies. He's a frequent collaborator of Ryan Coogler. I'm sure he would disavowed knowledge of us at this point. But Shav, his girlfriend at the time, whose name was something like Amanda or Kristen.

And his nickname for her was mega nuts. And I loved it so much. I stress that it's Amanda or Kristen because I don't want anyone to think for a second that it was Megan. It was nothing close to Megan Nuts. But Megan Nuts is a really wonderful nickname. I used to have a nickname for my wife. And I don't know. It just fell away.

It was stretch, wasn't it? Yeah, stretch. I don't know why. I don't know why. I just maybe stopped referring to her in an endearing way. I when Shay and I started dating um nicknames were

were fun for me and like there were some a spiritual cousin to meganuts uh she I called her spicy Pete for a while yeah which she didn't like but but warmed up to and I was always like and part of the fun was like inventing new bad nicknames for her and then I think you just get

get comfortable enough and you're with each other enough that it's sort of like I default a lot to honey and sweetie and baby and that kind of thing. It's just it's just easier.

And now everything in my house is honey. The boy is honey, the dog is honey and the wife is honey. Oh yeah? Yeah. The boy is honey. Yeah, I've got a, my boss at my job,

he's got sons who are in college age and he calls them honey. It's, it's, I find it in my, I think broken brain. I find it difficult when that one of them will walk into the room because they've got something they need to say to him because they haven't to be at work that day. He's like,

what do you need, honey? I'm like, but that one's a boy. Yeah, I'm not sure. It'll persist. Yeah, my daughter is still busy.

And everyone always asked. I was like, busy. When do you call her busy? I'm like, fucking obvious. Look at her. Yeah.

Spend five minutes with her. She's late. She's all. She's always married. I've got 50 things going on. I kind of wish I named her busy at this point. I really, I love the name too. It's a fun name.

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you have a bit, you have a bit, that you're trying out constantly. It's to no success. Yeah. And I want to talk to you about that, actually something very similar in writing. Hmm. Because I just finished my script for the season.

Thank goodness. You've been breaking it for so long, and I know what that does. It's been a long time. To you. There was all, so for people who don't understand breaking a script, you spend a lot of time in the room with other people, and you're deciding on every single scene. Like what it's going to, what the game is of the scene, what it's doing to advance the plot, what the overall arc, emotional arc of the story is. And then you're deciding on the, where, like, the action should terminate, you know, like deciding like, oh, this would be like, like, like a good actor. And so you're building it. You're building the whole thing without actually

writing it yet. Right. Probably the most important part of writing slash the least fun part of writing. And I did not make it fun. I certainly did not make it fun the same. There are ways that you can really, it's so hard in the breaking because it's your job as if you're, it's your episode, you're keeping it all in your head. So you're juggling a lot of things in your head at once. funny is so far down the list in terms of like what you're getting to be gaining from it. But that's the right job of everybody else in the room is everybody else is like they can look at it from outside, from an outside perspective. And they can like just like pop in jokes everywhere. And you're just like, yes, I will use that.

I'm going to use that. I'm using that. And but as you're trying to figure it out, you're saying like, I'm stuck on this section. I don't know. I don't know what we do here. And so you're getting suggestions from people. and you're not giving them the right social cues back because you're so invested in like,

well, does that work? Doesn't that, won't that break this stuff later? So, like, people are suggesting things and you're just like, yeah, because all you're thinking is, well, that's going to undo all this other stuff. But they're right. I mean, they're always right. But you're not giving them the proper responses. So if you're not really good at, like, staying high level,

if you're just like down in it the whole time, then at the end, people are like, man, that was like pulling teeth. That was a really tough break. And you're like, yeah, I didn't do anything to help. Just thank you for all your help. But I was not. Yeah.

Yeah, it gets the dark almost, which is for comedy. It's fine in the end because it ends up being right. But in the breaking, it could be pretty rough. And I just had a break that was rough, where I wasn't doing, anybody any favors in it. And I was just like, we'd get to a section and I'd be like, I kind of want, like,

I want this kind of thing to happen. And like, people are pitching things. And they're pitching really good things. And I'm, I'm not being gentle or anything. I'm just like, no, no. No. And it made me realize afterwards, I was like, I can't do a better job of breaking. Anyway, I don't know if that had any sort of relationship to the, the,

to the actual writing itself. But the writing itself this time was tough. It was a tough episode. And in writing it, generally, you turn something in. We used to do this with our columns all the time. And maybe you still do it on your shows, but I don't know if you're writing like, you're writing entire sections, right?

Entire like a feature, right? I like to think of it as an episode of television. What do you mean sections? Are you writing, are you not writing the entire episode, are you? Yeah. Oh, really? Sometimes. Oh, I think I say what you mean, because, like, our show will be top of show, quick recap of the week. Yeah. A few beats on whatever happened and some jokes. And then sometimes you have a lead story generally.

And now, like an interstitial thing. And then our main story, which is the 22 to 30 minute main block that we do. sometimes I will write the main story and top of show but sometimes just one or the other I see what you mean yeah yeah recent sections for some reason I was thinking like does he think I does this motherfucker think I do like the intro for Brazilian elections that I write like three jokes in the top quadrant No, I mean that your show is broken up into multiple. I understand now.

So I write this thing and generally you write something and you're like, okay, I generally think that that's good or I think that that's sort of like a mixed bag or whatever. And then there are some where you just take a bunch of gambles where you like take a bunch of shots and you turn it in, you're like, boy, I think this is funny. But I have been wrong before. and there's nothing more vulnerable and like turning in something where you're like I don't know how anyone's going to respond to this I don't know if these jokes are going to land for anybody

but me like is this my bit? Is this just me saying goodbye to my wife at the airport in different ways over and over and everybody else hates it but me? Like I and so recently I turned in a script like that and we're going to see man

we're going to see if any of it lands and I was going to ask you can you remember like the biggest gamble you took on a joke or on a like just an entire episode or anything that you were like I don't I have no idea if this is going to work or not um I feel like I think so and we might have even talked about this on the show before but this was maybe 2020 or 2021 like we were pretty deep in uh COVID, which is famously still happening. And there was, I was getting weirder and weirder in my joke writing as I'd gotten more comfortable at the show. And there was some, the, I clocked this as a COVID piece because it was something about a conspiracy theory that had to do with Bill Gates, was still married to Melinda Gates at the time, and there was no hint that there was friction

between those two. But the setup had something to do with Bill not telling Melinda Gates something. And, you know, there's a hundred different avenues you can go down for how you joke off of that. And when we write scripts for the show, we take the whatever the setup is. And the, what makes a writer valuable is to provide more options for every punchline. Here is the setup. It's this video clip about Bill Gates, not telling the Lindy Gates something. Here are five jokes to come out of that clip, and you can pick your favorite one. And I try to throw in a bunch of jokes that are very familiar for the show, and I'll try to

throw in some that are like, this is, here is the quickest possible version of a joke I can right if we are concerned about time and we need quicker punchlines and then I'll throw in if I can something that is just the B sides yeah and this was that there's I think well this is where writers can stand out amongst other writers because you'll look at us we all have the same raw material of this bill Gates clip and we are all going to do some version of the same last week tonight joke You're going to get the same-ish ones in every script. And then there will be connections that a co-writer will make that I will never make, that I'm like, I don't know how they got there. That's really fun.

And for me on this one, for whatever reason, the path I went down was, of course Bill Gates didn't tell his wife, XYZ. There are some things that men just can't tell their wives, whether it's X or whether it's Y or whether it's Y or whether it's Y or whether it's. and then a very long, very slow fantasy that is, quote unquote, Bill Gates fantasy, but is like very clearly, because John is the one telling it, it's like very clearly his secret fantasy about wanting to live inside an egg and be protected but also fragile and be in the goo and like wanting to be shaken a little bit inside the egg. Like this thing that is like... You want to be turned, yeah.

Yeah. something that is like kind of kind of sexual but like not explicitly sexual but like it's clear like he has thought about the sensation of floating inside a fragile egg and being gently tossed around

and he likes it and it's his number one fantasy and all of it it just it took such a long time for it to even like be a joke like it couldn't just he couldn't say and one of my fantasies is to be an egg it needed to because no one would like that

it needed to be a whole long it needed to show how much thought and how much specific thought he had put into this fantasy and then for no clear reason at the end of it he was like the fantasy required him to say but of course I'm not bothered by any of those things

I'm an egg and then I had voice over whispered egg by the sea which like the the ocean hadn't come up there was no this was like just a fun thing

to add in that was like oh by the way audience there was another it's also there was another layer of this that you weren't even picturing and I wrote that just like

this is I'm in the throes of COVID madness I'm all alone in New York City I don't know what's going on this joke is too long it is too long too long for this piece that is essentially a public service announcement to get people to take the

vaccine. There's no way they're going to take it. And they took it. It was a joke that I put in there that was like, they're not going to take this. And also, I might get in trouble because this joke is like a page and a half long. And I think they're going to look at this and call me into a meeting and be like, you can only write long, weird jokes if the rest of your script is perfect. You're not, if your script is good and early, then sure, have so much fun doing your weird shit. Your egg shit.

No, that's, I mean, I like, it obviously has to be big. It has to be, because it's such a big swing that you're like, I'm going to continue to swing all the way around until my body lands all the way back around and hits the ball again. Like, it's important one that big that it's like as big as possible. Yeah.

I think the, the, the pseudo-sexuality of it is very fun. It's enough that we've done other... He doesn't consider it sexual, but it's, the nudity is important inside the egg. It's important that he is naked.

And he's wet, and like there's something sexual about red. He's covered in a viscera. Yeah. But it's like a lukewarm viscera. So it's not, it doesn't feel icky. Yeah.

Feels good. It's, it's thankfully now become like part of vocabulary of the show that he can occasionally do weird. long fantasies in a fun way. But I also get very, if I write a long joke like that, that they take and then I see it getting trimmed down for time,

I will jump and be like, just cut it. It can't be four lines. It is 16 lines or 200 lines or get rid of it. I will put it somewhere else. It can't be short. we so we have our

our separate joke room and there are frequently so what's happened after we write 10 or 12 jokes for a particular section we come and then read that to the story room

so if you weren't in the story room you're going to you're going to come in and you're going to present them so you're going to be reading them as the character essentially

and you're just one after another just like bang bang bang bang bang bang and generally to keep the interest of that room there's going to be a few in there

that are not usable, but they are just for the people in that room. Like, it's just jokes for writers. And it's something fun. Usually it's very long. And it is something like that where it's like, we're going to, what if we just did this crazy shit? And we'll do that. And so somebody will come in and read a joke, joke, joke, and then a three-page joke. Yeah.

And sometimes those get selected. Sometimes you're like, that's so weird and interesting. We have all this space. just cut a ton. Let's just do it. And put it in. And it's amazing when those jokes going, because it was never meant for the show. Yeah. It was meant for like, it was

meant because you write the same show so often, all your jokes, the jokes that are going to work on the show and that you know are funny are funny to you anymore. Yeah. You're just like, yeah, I mean, here would be a good one. This could go right there. But everyone

might agree with that, but nobody's having the actual sponsor. reaction of laughter. And so, like, trying to elicit that from people who are completely chanted by what they're working on is always, that's like the biggest get. If you can get laughter from everybody. And both of our shows for very different reasons have their wells that they need to go to. American Dad, there's 900,000 episodes.

And it needs to be a show that will play. play at any time for anyone who's going to turn on their TV and who hasn't, they're not tired of the jokes, they haven't seen them before. They need to like meet this family and get everyone's specific bucket. And, uh, you guys, it's a thing that you do so incredibly well that anyone can like join in in a way that I'm sure is like, annoying for the writers where it's like, but we've, we've seen, we've seen Jeff B. Dumb Slacker for 19 years. Can we see a different thing happen?

Can we try a different thing? The audience doesn't want that because the audience is coming in fresh. Hours, similar but different. A thing that we always need to be aware of is that we are taped in front of a live audience of people who waited in line or traveled or won the lottery to go to the John Oliver show. They want to see him do the John Oliver show. Oliver thing. We can surprise them a little bit, but like the thing that I, the comedy impulse that I have always followed my entire life, which is create the world, twist the world, break the world.

They don't want that. They emphatically don't want break the world. They powerfully don't want what I want, which is for John to yell at the audience or to talk about how the show is bad and they're stupid for liking it. They are uninterested in that because, and they're right. They're excited to be there. They want to see John Oliver to the John Oliver thing. And I'm just like, but we

have that. We have it on tape already. Let's let's just have John smoke a cigarette for a while and complain. Let's explore something else. What have we not seen him do? We haven't seen him inside an egg. We talk.

talked about it. We haven't seen him in there. You'd want like those little embryonic veins running through it. Like somebody's shining on a flashlight through the egg. We have not seen him nude and wet and loving it. Delicate. Very, very happy. Anyway, this has been, this was a big swing.

I turned in two days ago. Generally, I won't say that. I won't say, I'm going to walk this back. I was going to say that generally people will respond to your script. As soon as they read it, they'll sometimes send you a text and be like, hey, this was really funny. I really like this section. Whose people? Who are you? Who are you? Who? The other writers. Okay. They will read your script as soon as it comes in? No. That's usually because you're working on it. Usually we're on such a tight deadline in terms of turning in that like you are turning in a writer's draft the next day you are doing the rewrite on it. This one happens to be a little bit early. So it makes sense that I've gotten radio silence. I've gotten nothing back.

But then I was thinking back on it and I was like, no, you know what? That happens all the time. You'd think you turn in something and like that's the most vulnerable you will ever be. You're turning in 42, 42 pages of something that no one has seen, that you use some of their jokes from the room. But that's probably like 30% of the jokes. 70% is you. And also you've done a lot of changes along the way. You've like, you've, whatever you pitched, whatever you had in the outline, whatever you all broke together, you're going to find things along the way in the writing.

We're like, that doesn't totally work or we don't have time. And so you're pivoting and like you're changing some things and sometimes pretty dramatically. So you're turning in something that's brand new. And you're just sort of like, I'm so in the weeds on this because it's all I've worked on for two and a half weeks on my own that I don't know. I have no idea. And so like you get in the rewrite and so frequently someone will be like you'll get a note from one of the showrunners. The showruns will be like, hey, I think we should beat this section. And you'll be in the room with the other writers and you'll be like, is that true?

Because I don't know. And they'll be like, yeah, I think we can beat it. I think that's what there could be a better joke for that. But you're so relying on everybody else because you've lost all objectivity with it entirely. Those are the scary moments. I will put a draft, I'll write a script and I will write four to, punchlines for one joke. And they will assemble a draft based on my draft and my co-writer's draft.

And if they didn't like any of my four to eight or any of my co-writers four to eight, then that will remain a joke TK. We will read that script in a conference room full of a few staffers. They will do a little bit of work to it. And then they will kick it back to me and the other writer with a joke TK in that spot. So now I'm doing the punch-up. And I will... When I handed my script the first time,

I wrote every joke I could possibly think of for that thing. So now I'm doing the punch-up, and I will do two-two question mark, however many I can come up with. There's a little bit less pressure for volume on punch-ups, but I will still, like, try to come up with. All right, I... Let's think outside the box.

Let's look at the piece as a whole, too, and let's see what kind of joke this thing might need. and I will come up with two or three or however many more joke options, and the co-writer will do the same thing in his or her draft. And then, lo and behold, they assemble it with the punch-up notes, and it is still a joke TK. And then it will get kicked to gangs, where it's me and the co-writer,

and whatever other writers are available, we are all looking at these jokes sort of sans context. So they're just looking at set up language, a clip, and then joke decay. and at that point I'm I'm on another planet and I'm watching the other writers who are new to this

write jokes what I think are like reasonable logically intuitive jokes off of this clip and I'm just like guys you don't you haven't seen what I've seen we've tried that

they don't want that they don't want anything I don't know what they want but I've tried every possible joke that there could be. And then some other writer will, like, throw in something perfect and concise. And it was like, oh, fuck. Oh, yeah, that'll do it.

That feeling is rough, where you're like, you were in the wrong, you were on the wrong planet when you were, like, writing the jokes for it. Where you're like, these are, these are, these are all kind of in the same vein, but I don't think there's another way to do it. And you're like, just stuck in this one area, this one orbit. And you're like, this is, this is it. Right. I'm a professional.

By the time it comes to gangs, I'm like, listen, if a joke could have been written, I would have, I would have figured it out. So the setup is broken or the bosses are wrong. And then someone's like, what's that type, type, type, type, type, type. Well, sure. Well, of course. I mean, that happens with more than just jokes, especially on our show where you're, it's all plot driven. So, like, you get to a section where you're stuck. And when you're on your own, you're particularly stuck.

It's only you solving it. And so, like, you come up with a way through, but it's not direct. And it's kind of like all over the place. But in some ways, that's nice. I mean, it's the other ways you can, like, make a lot of jokes off of that. But you show up on the day and it like meanders and somebody bumps on it. Somebody's like, I don't know about this. And then they pitch a solution that's so right in a way you're like, but that's so, that was so easy.

Listen, listen, guys, I know it seems clunky, but there's no way for him to get from New York to Massachusetts other than the way I've outlined I've come at this from every angle I know it's longer, it's like, and then someone just like train. Oh fuck yeah. Fucking trains.

Okay, you know I completely forgot trains exist that'll do it, yeah. It's, it really there's nothing more frustrating because you're in it. You're so in it that you can't see anything else, yeah. And that's what happens a lot of times. That happens a lot of times when people are breaking a story. Like they're, they're sitting there at the board, at the whiteboard, and they're just like staring at it.

And somebody's like, what's the issue? What do you want to work on? And they're like, well, I just don't, I don't see how this is going to work with this and this and this. And somebody will be like, oh, it's just, this is the energy. Or like, this is what they're saying. This is how they're saying it. And the person will go, oh, fuck. Yeah.

Okay. It's like somebody else just had it. Yeah. Because they had like, they had the ability to just touch something from the top. And you couldn't do that from down in the trenches. that happens all the time. And so I guarantee you what's going to happen with the script. It's very helpful.

It's very helpful to have collaborators and co-writers. That's what I hope people take away from this. Like another set of eyes to read a thing that you did and articulate back to you what is happening. And then you can take that into. edits because they see something that you hadn't seen before. Or they write a perfect joke. I don't think I've ever given you your flowers for this, but the pilot that I wrote that I'm proud of that I'm shopping around,

I gave to you for fresh eyes at one point. Just like, look at this thing and like, and tell me that it makes sense. It was at that stage of the writing of this thing. It was like, does it hang together? Do you know what's going on? And you had really great encouraging notes. and you told me the parts that that weren't working. And you had like one, this is certainly trading on your experience as a writer of narrative episodic

television for the last nine years that I don't have, where you were like, the blow at the end of this scene needs to be sharper. And it's not, it kind of trails off, which is certainly a thing that I do. I meander until like I just need someone to to fade out the lights and the sound of every scene that I'm doing. Put me out of my misery. And you're like, this blow needs to be a little bit harder to end of this scene because it'll be like an act break or a commercial break. And you said, here's something that like is not good, but here is an example of a way it could end. And I took your not good thing.

It's my favorite fucking joke. and other people who've read it have also liked it and he was like, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's technically mine because I picked it and Soren wouldn't have written it had I not given him the rest of the show to look at but yeah, it's a sore joke. It's the best joke in the piece.

It's an expert way out of the scene. Oh, thanks, man. No, thank you. Yeah, it makes me think people who have writing partners probably never deal with this. People who have writing partners have at least another brain who's sitting there who's like, you can just bounce a thing off of or you're,

they're looking over what you've just done to make sure that you're not insane now. And so when I first wrote my, when I wrote my very first episode for America Dad, I was terrified. And I was just like, I have no idea what this is. Like what I'm turning in is my first episode of television. This is the first thing I've written. It's this long. It's like, I was just turning in.

And I was like, I don't know if this is good. and then found out later that generally first-time writers will give their episodes to a writer that they trust first just to like look it over. And I was like, that was an option. I could have not lived like this. It's still an option and it's something that I still forget. Like we, it's, it's even helpful. You don't necessarily need to send someone a script and have them give notes on it, although of course you shouldn't. That's very helpful.

but when you're in an earlier stage just to to say out loud to someone else what you're trying to do is so much more helpful even though I could technically just like write it in a paragraph in a Google Doc for myself to read

I won't do that it's I need if I'm thinking about a Hallmark movie about Santa Claus's college roommate I'm not going to think about it as hard as I am when I'm telling you what I'm thinking about for the movie. You know, even though I'm like constantly in the back of my mind, uh,

noodling on this idea, I never have to, uh, articulate it really. I never have to like actually sell someone on it. And I never have to try to say like what I'm hoping to accomplish with it. Unless I'm literally saying out loud to another person. And then as I'm doing that and I'm hearing it, I'm just like, oh, okay. Yeah.

This is more helpful than me having an open Google doc called Santa's roommate and then a bunch of names for elves. This is actually, this is. This might in fact be closer to writing than what I've been doing. Yeah, it's really interesting how you can't. There's like certain premises that you just can't quite get crystallized in your head. You can get close to it. And you know that there's something good about it. and you can sense all like why it's funny and stuff,

but trying to like really bring it into something that everyone would just understand immediately is really tough until somebody will say a single word and you're like, that's the word. That's what we're talking about. Like sometimes you just need like one word that explains it and you're like, oh, yes. Ah, obsessive.

That's what I was looking for. But yeah. So anyway, wish me luck. We don't know how this will go. We're rewriting tomorrow, most likely. Well, you know what? This is actually a good litmus test because I'm not available to rewrite it the day before our table. So we're going to have to rewrite it.

If it's a script that needs a lot of work, we'll spend two days on it. And if it's a script that doesn't need a ton of work, then we'll spend one day. And so when we begin this, we'll inform whether it's going to need a lot or whether everyone will be like, no, I get it. That's funny. That's great. You don't think with all your experience right now, you have any sense that, like you're that deep in it that you don't know for sure right now if it's going to be a two day or one day not this time wow every most other times i'm so exciting i would say every other time i do but this one

is well so you're this way you're talking about is absolutely right where you're talking about if you're going to give jokes suggestions you're going to give a lot that are just right for the show but that don't make you happy but like they're yeah this is what the show show this is the structure that we would use yeah and then you got like like like that's what the show show this is the structure that we would use. Yeah. And then you've got like a couple others where you're like, and what about these?

What about like some B-sides? Does anybody like any of these? You, when we're writing a show, we're not putting in a bunch of different joke options. I'm just like, this is it. This is the one that I like the best. This is the one that I think is great. And if it comes to it where people are like, oh, we should beat this, then you're like, well, I have these others.

Yeah, yeah. Well, of course, I have a separate doc of like, perfect jokes. But what that means is that... But I wanted to be bold. What that means is that you are writing an episode with a lot of the hits, with a lot of the stuff. The characters doing exactly what they should be. Raj is being very sexual. And Prince Louis likes drugs a lot.

And like you're getting that stuff out of the way. But then you're also like, you're going to put in maybe like 15% of your stuff that is a little weirder and that you're like, I like this a lot. So within that you can kind of like, the average is right. And maybe they'll allow you to have these other ones and maybe people will really like these other ones. This one is the averages are skewed. Like the averages are weird on this one. So I don't, this is one where I just can't tell.

I've definitely had jokes before where I was like, I fight for a joke that I thought, no, I like this one. I think this is really funny. I want to do it this way. And then it just dies in the table read. And then you're still like, I think I'd like to keep it. and then it dies in the animatic screening. You're like, okay, all right, all right, I get it.

This is a just me thing. Sorry, everyone. That's interesting. I've never fought for a joke. Oh, really? No. I don't know that it's in my nature to push back. And like, it, I guess because I, because no one has done it.

No one on the show has done it. Like, it has never come up in rewrite where we're trying to figure out a joke for the show that's about to tape in an hour. And someone say, you know what I think was great was a joke that I wrote in my draft a week ago? No one's ever said that. Oh, no, we wouldn't do that. We wouldn't like revisit something. We wouldn't be like, well, let's go, let's revert back to that. But if you are, the way our show runs is that sometimes neither showrunner, but usually only one showrunner,

will be in the rewrite with you. So the other one will have given notes. And if there's an arrow next to anything, that means punch it. That means like this, just a better joke than this. Let's think of something better than this. And we usually adhere to that.

But occasionally, you'll be in the room and you'll be like, you'll get to that section and you'll go, I'd like to give this one a try. And everyone will be like, okay. Man, sure. Even that, I feel like one of my favorite writing processes was way more passive aggressive than that.

When I worked on Agents of Cracked with Michael Swam, the way that we did the first few seasons of that show, we would divide up the episodes in half. I would write mine and he would write his. Then we would swap scripts, punch each other's scripts up, and then give them back to the original writer for like,

there's anything else you want to punch up or just like give final say because this is going to be your episode. I would write something, put a joke into it, Swame would take it, cut a joke, put a different joke in there, I would take it back, cut his joke and put the original joke back. That would...

Not always. It's not, like, I wouldn't, like, completely undermine the process of what we were doing. But there were times where I was like, no, no, he's wrong, he's too sensitive, this is the joke that needs to go in here, this is what I want to do. And he wouldn't, we'd never talk about it or fight about it, because he would do the same thing on his own scripts. And I would see the final thing. all right looks like I was out voted two to one both of the two were Michael but still I mean that's democracy I think it was a different that was more collaborative in a way where it was like the writing of scripts at the at cracked were somebody was just giving more options basically they're like I don't know this one can maybe be punched and so you're you're just like giving

other options and if nobody the original writer is like I don't want that you're like well okay great there's no it's not it doesn't hurt yeah and no and no You're only giving more jokes. No one was really boss for so many years in video. We were all just writers making stuff. So it never felt like someone was going to come in with final say. Yeah. I think it's certainly different now.

But the writer still is, whoever's episode it is, does have a lot of say in what their episodes ends up being. What you see in the show. I mean, the American Dead, all the episodes feel so. different. There's, I can't write a Robert and Brett episode. I can't write a Nicole episode. I can't write a, uh, uh, a Zach episode. Like, they're, and I would hope that they can't write one of mine. But like, there's, their, your fingerprints as a writer are all over those episodes. I can watch them now. And if I didn't have anything to do with it, I can still look at an episode and be like, I think this is a Jeff. This has got to be Jeff. And then, yeah, you're right. I can do that with, um, with Joe. There are some jokes that other, because our episodes are like are very much last week tonight voiced episodes. But there are jokes within it that I'm like, that is a, that's a Chrissy joke. There's something about it that makes it a Chrissy joke that I could not write. Or that's an Owen joke.

I don't know why I'm coming up with other examples of names. None of you know these people. But I will occasionally see something in someone else's script and be like, hmm, Liz wrote a Daniel joke. Interesting, interesting. Let's see how that plays. But you feel yourself doing it too. I mean, you're right. You'll find an area where you're like, oh, a really good joke here would be this.

Yeah. That is not my signature. No, this is a Joanna joke for sure. I hope she's not mad. People are going to watch this and tag her in it online and like, sure. She deserves it. It's a Joanna joke. Yeah, so anyway, we'll see.

We'll see how it goes, man. It could be. And the other thing is that no one, the only way that I'll know that this has not gone well is how big the rewrite ends up being. Because everyone will say the same stuff at the beginning. And even your bosses will say the same stuff at the beginning. But then if you start tinkering, just like the cold open,

if all of a sudden the cold open is getting a bunch of changes, you can pretty much guarantee like, oh, I fucked up. Yeah. I am on the edge of my seat. feel like this is going to be huge and very good. I think it's going to be I think it's going to be electrifying.

Well, we'll see. All right, everybody. Thank you for listening to the show, maybe even watching it. Appreciate you. If you do want to watch it, you can do that on YouTube. If you liked listening to it,

but you were like, I really are like listening to that theme song at the beginning. That's by me, Rex. And if you like Daniel and me enough that you want to see more of us or hear more of us,

So you can do that through Patreon. We have a Patreon exclusive podcast that we do. Which is a lot more of fucking a lot more of this, man. Yeah, there are a bunch of names of last week tonight writers that I did not say. And if you want to hear them, you got to subscribe. We're going to get to them all. And if you like us in general and you like the cut of this jib, that's all McKenzie Mazzell. She's got a podcast of her own.

It's called Don't Make It Worse. She's our producer. Thank you, everybody. Goodbye. Bye. question for you all right I want to hear your thoughts on to know what's on your mind I've got a quick quick question for you all right the answer's not important I'm just glad that we can talk tonight so what's your favorite who did you get

do your best friends and common heroes if there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you love a great time here I think you love