The First author room I have ever worked in was considered freakishly small at that time. There were seven writers, a writer’s assistant, a script coordinator, a writer’s PA and a Falax of personal assistants, which was the category I fell into.
Pull up with my bright floral Topshop shift dresses and vibrates with Trader Joe’s Powerberries, I jumped at all times to submit to the authors’ assistant as a notes. Behind the authors’ room ImacI tried and failed not to laugh too hard at everyone’s joke, terribly off How Plot was broken and formed Between Zingy attacks by one-upmanship.
Every morning as I walked past a twee little set of Pluto’s paw prints on my way to work, I had a feeling of confirmation that felt the border Delirisk. My feet were on the road, so all I had to do now was to work hard for a while, write something good and fun and then Chyron: One year laterI would be on the other side of the iMac, pitching joke alt’s scribbled in a script that another writer’s assistant had gathered for me.
I would write on some comedies, and after my first big sale I would reward myself with a Cartier Panthère ring (see above: Delirium), and then I would continue to write TV until they had to roll me out of the room.
It was 2012!
When I grew up in Australia I used to download America -Current “Friends” script As transcribed by some energetic soul on geocities, and they were so valuable to me that I slept with them under my pillow. My obsession with NBC’s Bowling Alley-Advocate Dramedy “Ed” was so excessive that I convinced half a dozen other 13-year-olds to join a club that I created devoted to hate all the characters who got in the way of oath and love for his life, Carol.
But the concept of writing for television did not occur to me Until I started looking at the “office”, And then, like a baby dinosaur cast iron pan in the head, a thought struck me: this was a job I could have!
In my early twenties, adrift in Sydney, some magic happened. A writer for the “office” that my sister met in a bar and became friends with on Facebook published that he was looking for an assistant. From the entire Pacific I responded at manic speed. He interviewed me over Skype and when he offered me the job I logged off, walked around my neighborhood five times and burst into tears.
Within a month I was in Los Angeles and my visa was in progress – bananas. We went for dinner to celebrate and end at the same restaurant as Jenna Fischer; She stopped at our table to say hello to my new boss, who introduced me to her. My ears rang out of my head. I couldn’t believe I had done it.
(But I was already too late. I should have chased the “friends” sections back to LA when I had the chance. I should have Doogie Hows had my way into the “Will & Grace” room. I should have been born in 1978.)
The rooms I worked in after the first were “normal” sized: network comedies that ran for eight months during the year with 14 to 15 authors and their care support staff. We shot at the party and walked rewritten laps around the sound ladder at lunch. Even when we stared into the barrel in a fourth draft about rebreak under green fluorescent light, even when we migrated lots to zoom and the fun factor dipped with the free lunches, even then it was something happy in the wear.
But: I remember that July that I competed home from pool parties to sit in my apartment, blinds closed against the sun to watch “Orange is the new black” on my laptop. Almost overnight, the desire for speculative script samples of existing shows disappeared, replaced by the demand for original pilot samples.
Then “pilot season” as a concept faded to black; Performances can be picked up all year round. Originally this seemed like a blessingAnd people chatted excited about how a note calls Netflix Execs would not leave you with countless non-negotiable change-during a time that its appeal replaced the promised country HBO.
But as the years spun, we looked up and saw that the majority of the authors worked with streaming shows for shorter periods and less money, while production took place abroad, available for only a few. Now seven writers in a room sound luxurious! It was like one of the Tiktoks where someone’s older parent has taken home a stray dog that is actually a coyote.
It was possible that we had made a mistake.
Ok, so we had some vessels on theseus decade, and we were partly guilty for our own passing. A labor dispute seemed to be a natural way to be course properly. When I read “The influence of the strikes ‘and actors’ strikes,” I try to remind myself that this is short for the contraction that feels about the city in recent years, not an accusation, since writers and actors are not the reason why Los Angeles is currently free to the abyss. Asking the networks to see more of the profits we generate for them and would not use robots to make our jobs not got us here!
But here we are all, the landscape literally charred and hovering over our e -mail messages for Intel about something, whatever. I belong to a new room that opens once in a blue moon. A friend who develops a show for Netflix has worked with the pilot for over a calendar year. I have not had any kind of job in a writer’s room since August 2022, and I can’t be sure I will ever again -I am afraid that our superiors are too busy picking Splashback plates for their third homes while considering which 9/11 is COP drama to start during Q3 of 2026 to create some new work today.
Yet the prospect of a hard pivot sits as badly with me as a certain Aquariated passengers of Oceanic Flight 815. How do you go away from a dream? Where do you go when all kinds of writing work melts in the sea? When I inspect my delight, I think it lives here, on this parche wonderful slope with its stupid crooked letters.
The question is: Will TV ever recover to the Halcyon Powerberry days? No one can say. A sensible person would call it. And maybe soon I have to.
We could Have TV again, and not just an endless season of “The Circle is Blind Queer Island”, about the multimedia-yecons that make Conglom-O Corporation look like an old-fashioned Candy Shoppe wanted TV and not a chart with a large green arrow.
I actually think people would like it. All the hot gen-z people that I know are watching and watching eight seasons on 24 episodes on loop; There is a comfort and a rhythm for them. I know we can do them – we have all the pieces that sit right there in the box. It would be very meaningful, narrative.
