You're Sure This Is How Shakespeare Did It?

By Joel Stein

I didn't know how much people hated television. This may be because whenever I walk into anyone's house, they leave the TV on the entire time we're talking. That may, upon reflection, be a subtle hint I'm not catching. Still, I got some sense of how much they hated it when I left TIME to write for a sitcom. People thought I was selling out or too lazy for journalism or, like all good Americans, desperate to meet Ryan Seacrest.

But I didn't feel like I was selling out, since I've always loved television, far more than I love movies. So last year I begged for a job writing for Crumbs, a new pilot I liked because it was about a family that lied about every facet of its members' lives until the mom went crazy. Luckily, Crumbs wanted to hire me because, after eight years in journalism, I could be had cheap. This still didn't work out well for them. Which is why I'm trying to make it up by plugging the show. It premieres this Thursday! 9:30 p.m. E.T.! ABC! Jane Curtin! Fred Savage! William Devane! Tell your friends with Nielsen boxes!

On my first day at the new job, having absolutely no experience, I was panicked about the prospect of being sent off to write. So I was glad when our morning meeting stretched past the two-hour mark. But by 4 o'clock, after we had ordered lunch and eaten it around the conference table, I was a little freaked out. G-8 meetings don't last that long.

That's when Marco Pennette, the creator of the show, informed me this wasn't a meeting. All sitcom writing, it turns out, is done by committee. One of the writers eventually says something that makes everybody laugh. Then Marco approves it, and a writers' assistant, who sits at a nearby desk and never talks, types it into the script, which appears on huge TVs on either side of our table. This, I was surprised to learn, is exactly how Shakespeare wrote.

At the meetings, Marco asks us for ideas, and we bore him with personal stories that have nothing to do with any of the characters but serve as therapy for us. I have learned so much about my fellow writers' demented parents and deceitful exes that I am certain when this ends none of us can be friends. After we've wasted time on that, Marco gives us a really bad premise, such as an episode in which the mother-in-law comes. We all pretend it's a good idea and spend most of the day figuring out funny stuff that our characters would do with a mother-in-law and whether Bea Arthur or Cloris Leachman would be funnier playing her. Our concepts are so bad that Marco eventually realizes what a horrible idea a mother-in-law episode would be. Then he yells, "Come on, guys, we have to get this! Focus!"

When we do finally come up with something, we spend another day or two working on a detailed, seven-page outline that we show to our studio, Touchstone, and then to ABC. They make improvements along the lines of asking "Could it be a Ukrainian baby instead of a Chinese baby?" Then Marco sends the "writer" of the episode off to "write" the dialogue, although every line will be completely rewritten around the conference table.

Throughout all this nonwriting, we're eating meals we have ordered or nervously snacking on nuts and candy or sending out production assistants to buy us complicated coffee drinks and, at least on two occasions, Slurpees. In six months, I have gained 10 lbs. The other thing I was unprepared for, besides the amount of eating we do, is the way my fellow scribes choose to converse. At TIME, I was the guy who said inappropriate things at meetings. That was not only a lot of fun but also prevented me from being invited to a lot of meetings. But at Crumbs, I'm like the nun sent to Deadwood. I did not imagine my next job after TIME would involve extended daily discussions about the two female writers' labia.

Although I'm not very good at the group-writing part, I believe that at our Friday-night tapings, I add a certain amount of enthusiasm, which the other writers refer to as "annoying behavior." My excitement, however, is dwarfed by the audience wrangler, who entertains tourists who have volunteered to sit through a 4-hr. taping of a 22-min. show they've never heard of. To keep them engaged, he juggles, practices hypnosis and occasionally interrupts their fun to watch our actors perform. This is why laughter on sitcoms is so inappropriately loud. We actually have a laugh-track guy whose main job is to lower and remove audience response. Also because the few times my lines make it into the script, I tend to yell, "Oh, man, now that's a good one!"