Casting is a very inexact process. What we were missing on this show was the office politic.

When the stories come easily and the writing process doesn't feel laboring, that's usually a good sign for me.

Last year, most of the episodes tended to be more on the self-contained side of the fence. This year, we'll probably look for a balance where it will be more serialized. And we can thank series like 'Desperate Housewives' and 'Lost' and others that have introduced the audience back to the serialization of television programs. I believe, personally, storytelling can be much richer when you can count on your constituency being more habitual about watching week in and week out.

We discovered that the series really wants to be a comedy more than a drama.

You're looking for characters to tell particular stories, and then on top of that, you're looking for a populace that you can achieve an interaction with. We discovered that the series really wants to be a comedy more than a drama. So we are looking for characters and actors with strong comedic skills as well as dramatic skills.

If a knife is plunged into someone's sternum, you pay attention. But for shows that don't depend on violence or melodramatic scenes, it's tougher to compete in a six-act show than in four acts, or in 41 minutes instead of 45 minutes.