"Extremely Emotionally Complicated"

AN INTERESTING AND candid interview with Greg Berlanti in Forbes. (H/T to Jaime Weinman @ Macleans) Ostensibly, it's about his new show, Eli Stone (which means this season he's resp. for Brothers & Sisters, Dirty Sexy Money, AND Eli Stone. Whoa.) He also, for you trivia buffs, is the guy who came up with "Pacey Kisses Joey," which Jeffrey Stepakoff describes in his excellent memoir Billion Dollar Kiss (coming out soon in trade paperback!)

Some excerpts that caught my eye:

Eli Stone is premiering at a time when there is little scripted competition on the airwaves. Do you feel even a little guilty about taking advantage of the strike?

It's interesting because I think people sort of see it that way, but I don't think the strike is good at all. I think there's almost no good that can come out of it, because the reality is yes, there's not that much competition, but it's also harder to promote your show since there are less talk shows to go on and less people are talking about TV. Given the choice of premiering in a strike or non-strike environment, hands down I would have chosen a non-strike one. It's made the whole thing extremely emotionally complicated.

So it's not just Canadian shows that are putting people in complicated positions. And when you're a writer/viewer, too. I was really interested to see Eli Stone. I've heard from some people who watched it that it was good. And I wanted to watch Lost, too. But I just couldn't bring myself to watch either one. I watched House the other night and it just felt wrong to me -- it felt like I was doing something wrong. I know that's not logical. But I don't want to write about Eli Stone or watch it til this thing is settled. And I know that's not consistent, because I did write about Breaking Bad -- but maybe that's because AMC seems like it's a bit of a maverick right now.

I guess it's just extremely emotionally complicated. More from Berlanti in Forbes:

There's been a lot of talk about the strike being used to overhaul some of the inefficiencies of the current television model, whether it's pilot season, the traditional TV season or the upfront ad bazaar. If you were at the helm, what would you fix first?

I do think that how pilots get made is an antiquated system. The reality is everyone is making the majority of network pilots at the same time, so you're grabbing for the same actors at the same time, the same directors at the same time and the same crews at the same time. It just creates a sort of craziness. I've done four or five pilots over the last four or five years, and it makes the process more sort of luck of the draw--it's not designed for quality.

What do you think television will be like after the strike? Will it change much?

Television is always kind of changing. I've been writing TV for about nine years, and I've already seen a few different changes. There was a time when I first got into the business where feature writers were just starting to write their own TV shows, that first sort of crossover. And then a few years later, people started spending more and more money on pilots to make them bigger events to capture people's attention.

So I'm sure it will change again, and I'm not so certain that it will happen as a result of the strike, or it would have just sort of happened anyway. I think the biggest--or at least the most interesting--change to me that is on the horizon: what it means to be a hit these days. Shows that are doing much lower in the [ratings] than their predecessors are deemed hits. And there are younger shows where 50% of your audience is watching online and how do you register success there. As television becomes more and more niche, what defines a hit will be the next question that comes up.

Hey, Henshaw, your whole thing about ratings for Canadian shows -- hmm -- sounds like the on-the-fly "hit or no hit?" thing isn't just a Canadian problem.

It's almost like we ... face some of the same problems? Ooooh.