Viewpoint: You're Sure This Is How Shakespeare Did It?

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.