Alan Sepinwall > Quotes

“Once upon a time, mystery fans had to solve puzzles on their own; now, you not only didn’t need to be the one to solve it, you didn’t even need to be hanging around on the website where someone else had solved it. An Ana Lucia flashback episode in the second season showed Jack’s father, Christian, visiting a blonde Australian woman. Not long after it aired, I saw someone on the Television Without Pity message boards passing along a theory they had read on a different site suggesting that this woman was Claire’s mother, that Christian was her father, and that Jack and Claire were unwitting half-siblings. I hadn’t connected those dots myself, but the theory immediately made sense to me. When I interviewed Cuse that summer, he mentioned Christian Shephard, and I said, “And he’s Claire’s father, too, right?” Cuse looked like he was about to have a heart attack.”
― Alan Sepinwall, The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever

“We’d been going home with television every night for years, but suddenly we had reason to respect it in the morning.”
― Alan Sepinwall, The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever

“Milch had a bigger cast, a bigger set (on the Melody Ranch studio, where Gene Autry had filmed very different Westerns decades earlier), and more creative freedom than he’d ever had before. There were no advertisers to answer to, and HBO was far more hands-off than the executives at NBC or ABC had been. And as a result, there was even less pretense of planning than there had been on NYPD Blue, and more improvisation. There were scripts for the first four episodes of Season 1, and after that, most of the series was written on the fly, with the cast and crew often not learning what they would be doing until the day before (if that). As Jody Worth recalls, the Deadwood writers would gather each morning for a long conversation: “We would talk about where we were going in the episode, and a lot of talk that had nothing to do with anything, a lot of Professor Milch talk, all over the map talk, which I enjoyed.” Out of those daily conversations came the decisions on what scenes to write that day, to be filmed the day after. There was no system to it, no order, and the actors would be given scenes completely out of context from the rest of the episode.”
― Alan Sepinwall, The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever

“Don hits rock bottom in the series’ finest hour, “The Suitcase,” which is essentially a two-character play about Don and Peggy stuck in the office through a tumultuous night. She wants to leave for a birthday dinner with her boyfriend, while he needs company to avoid placing the phone call that will tell him that Anna Draper — the widow of the real Don, and the one person on Earth with whom this Don feels truly comfortable and safe — has died of cancer. Over the course of the episode, Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss are asked to play every emotion possible: rage and despair, joy and humiliation, companionship and absolute contempt. In the most iconic moment, Peggy complains that Don took all the credit for an award-winning campaign she helped conceive. “It’s your job,” he tells her, his voice dripping with condescension. “I give you money. You give me ideas.” “And you never say, ‘Thank you,’” she complains, fighting back tears. “That’s what the money is for!” he screams.”
― Alan Sepinwall

“In that season’s finale, Milch wanted Sipowicz — who by this point had suffered the deaths of his eldest son, his partner Bobby, and his wife, and whose young son Theo was facing a medical crisis — to enter the hospital chapel and rant about all that God has taken from him. Tinker was on set. Franz was on set. The entire crew was on set. And, as usual by that point, there was no script. Milch ambled onto the set, realized everyone was waiting on him, announced that he needed someone to take dictation, and launched into a stream-of-consciousness assault on the Almighty, sounding very much like Sipowicz. Minutes later, Franz performed it word-for-word.”
― Alan Sepinwall, The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever

“With Milch fully in charge of the writing process — or, in many cases, the rewriting process — it became all-consuming. When Milch and Lewis replaced Bochco on Hill Street, Milch had developed a working method that he would continue to use for the next several decades: he would lie on the floor of the writers’ room (Milch has a bad back, which can make sitting for long periods difficult) while a typist scrolled through each script at his instruction; Milch made changes line by line, word by word. By the early days of NYPD Blue, it was understood that regardless of whose name was on the script, the bulk of the words — and, almost as importantly, their order— came from Milch.”
― Alan Sepinwall, The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever

“Pablo Neruda said laughter is the language of the soul.” (To which Bart replies, “I am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda.”)”
― Alan Sepinwall, TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time

“Ben McKenzie (Ryan Atwood): I thought it was completely ridiculous—and also awesome. It’s one of those moments where you’re like, At least it’ll be fun, you can throw yourself into it. Gave me a reason to exercise, although I don’t think I had much advance notice. Like, Oh, I guess I’m a cage fighter now.”
― Alan Sepinwall, Welcome to the O.C.: The Oral History – The Definitive Behind-the-Scenes Book by Creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage with Alan Sepinwall

“Barney’s movie had heart, but Football in the Groin had a football in the groin.”
― Alan Sepinwall, TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time

“I was as gentle as I was able, and that’s the last we’ll fuckin’ speak of it, Johnny,” Al replies, then returns to the bloodstain, muttering, “Wants me to tell him somethin’ pretty.”
― Alan Sepinwall, TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time

“The Wire presented itself as “a novel for television,” and while that meant David Simon and company were embracing the power of ongoing narratives like nobody ever had before, their work was, indeed, structured more like a book than a TV show, where all the pieces made each other better, but few of them could function in isolation.”
― Alan Sepinwall, Breaking Bad 101: The Complete Critical Companion

“This is perhaps the biggest departure from the science fiction norm. We do not have ‘the cocky guy,’ ‘the fast-talker,’ ‘the brain,’ ‘the wacky alien sidekick’ or any of the other usual characters who populate a space series. Our characters are living, breathing people with all the emotional complexity and contradictions present in quality dramas like The West Wing or The Sopranos. In this way, we hope to challenge our audience in ways that other genre pieces do not. We want the audience to connect with the characters of Galactica as people. Our characters are not super-heroes. They are not an elite. They are everyday people caught up in an enormous cataclysm and trying to survive it as best they can. “They are you and me.”
― Alan Sepinwall, The Revolution Was Televised: How The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Lost, and Other Groundbreaking Dramas Changed TV Forever

“Whatever looks ahead of grievous abominations and disorder, you and me walk into it together like always.”
― Alan Sepinwall, TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time

“What a type you must consort with, that you not fear beating for such an insult”—dreamed”
― Alan Sepinwall, TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time

“Stanley Kowalski one”
― Alan Sepinwall, TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time

“There’s already a school of thought—one that a book like this admittedly plays into—arguing that true quality television didn’t exist before The Sopranos”
― Alan Sepinwall, The Revolution Was Televised: How The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Lost, and Other Groundbreaking Dramas Changed TV Forever

“Over time, your quickness with a cocky rejoinder must have gotten you many punches in the face,” and”
― Alan Sepinwall, TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time

“Tuco—a man who ends the abbreviated season by beating one of his soldiers half to death for the crime of presuming to speak for him.”
― Alan Sepinwall, Breaking Bad 101: The Complete Critical Companion

“You run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole; you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.”
― Alan Sepinwall, TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time

“Mischa Barton: I remember after Marissa died, people being pretty hysterical and coming up to me in airports, crying about it. I thought that was shocking, because it’s TV, you know?”
― Alan Sepinwall, Welcome to the O.C.: The Oral History – The Definitive Behind-the-Scenes Book by Creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage with Alan Sepinwall

“Walt, is that you?” Is it? At this stage of our viewership, it doesn’t seem like it. It seems like the two death sentences our man receives in this hour—first from the oncologist, then from Krazy-8—have woken him up from years of slumber, and made him act in ways his wife couldn’t imagine. But as Breaking Bad moves along, we begin to see that this is who Walter White was all along, and it’s only his changed circumstances that have revealed him as a man capable of these things. The”
― Alan Sepinwall, Sepinwall On Mad Men and Breaking Bad: An eShort from the Updated Revolution Was Televised

“The Rorschach test episode for this question tends to be “Homer’s Enemy” from season 8, where new plant employee Frank Grimes is driven mad by the realization that Homer is an incompetent drowning in unearned privilege while Frank, a smarter, more hardworking, more ethical person, struggles and suffers.”
― Alan Sepinwall, TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time