the pilot climaxes with an assassin blowing up a passenger jet in midair. fox orders this. fox schedules it. 9/11 happens. suddenly the show which seemed like this goofy thing about keifer sutherland chasing after middle eastern terrorists becomes the most timely show on television because that is all that anyone in america can talk about after september 11th. >> the name for the series comes from the idea that it's 24 episodes in a season. each episode is one hour in a day. and jack bauer just has the worst days. >> we are running out of time. pull the trigger. >> please don't make me do this. >> i know how hard this is for you but if you care about me at all, you'll pull the trigger. >> i'm sorry, i can't. >> pull the trigger, damn you! >> the commercial breaks in that show were almost welcome so that you could catch your breath.

>> "24" was really the first binge show, if you think about it. there were a lot of people in the later years of "24" that would only buy the dvds. >> you think he'll come after you? >> yes. >> and a lot of the subtleties and complexities, it's a, my god, this is blowing my mind, i can see it because i just watched three in a row. >> "battlestar galactica" was a show from the '80s. years later, sci-fi channel looked at it and said, what if we take it seriously? >> madam president, we have to eliminate the olympic carrier immediately. >> there are 1,300 people on that ship. >> "star wars" feels like fantasy and fable in the best possible sense.

this felt like war. >> do it. >> the photography was shot very much like world war ii combat cameramen work. >> fire on my mark. >> no frackin' way, lee. lee, come on! >> it was as if someone was floating in space with an old world war ii film rolling and oh, here comes a cylon, i want to get this shot. i really was riveted by it. >> it's classic sci-fi in that it's using the robots and the spaceships and the clones to comment on the world we live in right now. >> i can't die. when this body is destroyed, my memory, my consciousness will be transmitted to a new one. >> the cylons look and act and feel like humans. by the time you get to the middle of "battlestar galactica," you don't know who you're rooting for anymore. >> it was like "west wing" in

space. >> madam president, without you we wouldn't have made it. >> it was just a very rich world. it felt lived-in. it felt real. and the stakes could not have been higher. >> i think "lost" is the first huge cinematic tv show i saw. i remember gathering at a friend's house to watch. and it was long enough ago and the internet was still young enough and social media was i mean -- it was what, friendster? >> j.j. abrams' ambition for the "lost" pilot was grandiose. he always talked about it as making a movie every week. i think when we say the word "cinematic," what we really mean is opening it up a little more but also the ambition of an action set piece. j.j. was very aggressive. he was like, if you want me to do this pilot you're going to need to give me the resource in

order to do it and i want to shoot it as a movie, and then we have to keep that bar up. >> you start off, you think, this is just a survival drama. here's these people, the plane is crashed, how are they going to get by, how are they going to find food, et cetera? >> we hunt. >> and on top of that, there's this whole mystery, where are we, why can't we get a rescue signal, why is there a polar bear, what is going on here? >> the show averages more than 15.5 million viewers each week and spawned countless web locations where millions of avid fans can obsess. >> the fan base is saying, when are you going to answer these mysteries? personally i started feeling hamstrung story-wise almost instantly, because we had to do 25 hours of "lost" in the first

season. so we started communicating to abc, we're going to run out of flashback stories. >> call it, jack. >> you call it. >> and abc was adamant in saying, no, like the show is a hit show, people love the flashbacks, don't worry, you guys are great at it, just keep it up. >> you okay, freckles? >> at the beginning of the third season of the show, we had our characters locked in cages. and i think looking back on it now, damon and i are like, that's metaphorically how we felt, we felt we were locked in cages. >> around halfway through the third season, abc says, okay, we will let you end the show. we're like, yes, thank god. they said, after ten seasons. >> "desperate housewives" and "lost" launched the same year. it was a huge boost for the network. they had a huge show that everybody was talking about. >> in truth, i spent the day as i spent every other day, quietly polishing the routine of my life

until it gleamed with perfection. >> i had a lot to say about women who go into the iconic roles of wife and mother and are unfulfilled. >> i think the good news it brought is women who are not perfect, who are not young, are viable. and the fan base was amazing. there were t-shirts, i remember going into a store and there was "i am lynette, are you saying i'm a bad mother?" "i am gabby." "i am susan." "i am bree." we stood on the shoulders of those who came before, you know, strong women characters in television. but in the wake of "desperate housewives," a lot more shows with older women came on the air. >> what you doin'?

>> knocked myself out, naked. >> oh. >> and then i fell. so how are you? ♪ how are you? hello grandma! for every family going home for the holidays, there are countless people working to help them get there. thank you to everyone we rely on to get us home to the ones we love. ♪ get the perfectly grilled flavors of an outdoor grill indoors, and because it's a ninja foodi, it can do even more, like transform into an air fryer. the ninja foodi grill, the grill that sears, sizzles, and air fry crisps. i am totally blind. and non-24 can throw my days and nights out of sync, keeping me from the things i love to do. talk to your doctor, and call 844-214-2424.

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it is game day, people. and i have never felt this kind of electricity, not in years. this town of dillon, texas is on fire. >> i loved "friday night

lights." i grew up in colorado. it's set in texas, but i knew every person who was on that show. and they weren't on the air anyplace else. >> let's get them! >> the pilot of "friday night lights" is one of the best pilots of any television show ever. jason street is the greatest quarterback that dillon high school has ever had. >> i've been scouting quarterbacks for notre dame for 27 years. your son may be the best i've ever seen. >> 35 or 40 minutes into the episode, while trying to make a tackle, jason street is hit and he's paralyzed. it is devastating because you

get just far enough into the episode to think that maybe the bad thing will not happen to this person. but then the show wouldn't be the show. >> i am going to stay in dillon. i'm going to be a father to this baby. and to this family. i'm going to coach high school football and you and i are going to stay together. and that's the way it is. yes? >> no. >> what do you mean, no? >> you've got to go to austin. this is your dream. >> that's what i'm telling you. >> what we wanted it to feel like was that the audience was just being invited in to a very small town, very intimate setting. >> i don't want to be responsible, nor do i want to have this baby be responsible for you not living out your dream. >> that's what i'm saying. you are my dream. >> i have walked with you all these years to get to this place. you and i together. >> this is about just a couple trying to actually be in a marriage and make it work

instead of what we always see on television. and then i felt a very strong, deep desire to not just have her be the sideline supporting wife. >> it looks to me like on your sojourn, tim, you missed two biology exams and what looks like a pretty important term paper. >> i don't know what a sojourn is. >> it's going to keep you back a year if you don't keep it together. that's what a sojourn is. the rest of it you can look up. >> "glee" was a really interesting show, because it was about high school. and they take pop songs that are already out there and make them part of the story. ♪ i'm dancing with myself >> it's about these misfits in high school and they're in the glee club. there's a lot of themes about,

a, not fitting in, but b, homophobia. ♪ i'm through with playing by the rules so someone else is game ♪ >> it was so specific to my childhood. whoever thought that, you know, a bunch of misfit show choir losers would become a global thing. i never did. ♪ don't stop >> i think "glee" and ryan murphy really got the general public understanding that, oh, there is a person behind this, and there is a person's sensibility that is driving this show. >> now be like a sister. >> this is the point at which the showrunners are almost as famous or more famous than some of the people on their shows, because we care so much about the creative process. >> so is it the drama and the story that usually comes first? >> yes. >> and then the medicine later? >> the theme and the drama of every episode comes first. then we try to find medicine that relates to or reflects that

theme. >> mr. and mrs. glass, i understand how difficult this is. >> no disrespect, but like hell you do. >> you're going to have to make a decision as to how you want to proceed. >> you mean my baby's life or my own? >> yes. >> it revealed what a good story teller she is. >> i love you. in a really, really big, pretend to like your taste in music, let you eat the last piece of cheesecake, hold a radio over my head outside your window, unfortunate way that makes me hate you/love you. so pick me. ? her case, it's fantastic because finally a woman, a person of color is doing this. >> anything that opens door for more women and more african-americans and more diverse casting and more diverse

crew is a good thing. >> shonda stood up and said, yes, i'm going to be a showrunner and i'm going to be a juggernaut. >> i'll put 20 on a total meltdown. >> 50 says he pulls the whole thing off. >> that's one of us down there. the first one of us. where's your loyalty? >> above and beyond the cultural aspect, which is important and great, we need to remember that she created a bunch of shows that are terrific fun to watch. >> you can do this. so, we got jean-pierre. but one thing we could both agree on was getting geico to help with renters insurance. ♪ yeah, geico did make it easy to switch and save. ♪ oh no. there's a wall there now. that's too bad. visit geico.com and see how easy

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i don't want to mess this up again >> me neither, okay? we're done being stupid. >> okay. this is it. >> this is it. unless we're on a break. don't make jokes now. >> by the time "frazier" and "friends" went off the air, there was a feeling among the networks that the multicamera format filmed in front of a live studio audience -- >> so i guess this is it. >> -- was getting kind of tired

and getting kind of stale. >> you guys play the most important part. the live studio audience. >> now, there is no form of television that makes as much money for the networks as multicamera tv shows. we write a four-camera show. we write it, direct it, perform it, rehearse it like a play in front of a studio audience. when someone gets a laugh on that stage, they actually hold, as you do not in real life, as you do not in single camera, you are holding for that laugh. >> it's an abstract. >> not abstract enough. >> you've done an amazing job. >> it looks like something, though. what does it look like? >> if you get close, you can

even touch it. >> i'm fine. >> this is bugging me. where have i seen this before? >> we started studying what phil rosenthal was doing with "raymond." he was embracing the very best of what the genre could do. which was interesting characters. he provided me with a very, very loud reminder that i didn't need to fix anything. i didn't need to knock any boundaries or walls over. i just need you to embrace what was there. >> i had been in so many shows that had failed spectacularly that i became known as the show killer. ♪ men, men, manly men >> that's not a great thing to be known as in show business. >> on the sly, i had him come in and read for me, and he was brilliant. >> how much is a hooker?

>> what? what are you going to do with a hooker? >> well, i would like to pay her to have sex with me. >> how much are you looking to spend? >> as you know, i am a bit of a bargain hunter. >> unfortunately they don't stock hookers at the 99 cent store. give me a number. >> okay. well, what could i get in the $200 range? >> crabs. and carjacked. >> i have an enormous sense of pride to have done a multicamera sitcom that people really took to their hearts for 12 years. >> okay. let's start in first position. jake, do you know first position? >> is that like missionary position? >> i mean, that was the longest that a sitcom had been on broadcast television in the history of broadcast television at the time. i think "big bang" is going to beat it. but still, that's amazing.

>> two people talking is the essence of a four-camera sitcom. lighting is not really an issue. there is no music that's going to help the material. >> checkmate. >> there is no specific effects. >> again? >> hopefully good words with good actors. >> it must be humbling to suck on so many different levels. >> "big bang" had this weird hurdle, it seemed, not only are you fighting the natural fight that every show does about getting an audience, trying to stay on the air and keep your job, yadda yadda. >> make way for the fastest man alive! >> see, this is why i wanted to have a costume meeting. >> but then there was also this weird wave of energy coming in like, you're in a genre that's passe, we're done with this, we don't want to see this anymore. >> and the emmy goes to -- >> jim parsons, "the big bang theory."

you hear the other people laughing. i think it ignites something that is in all of us. that's primal in us, the desire to gather in a group and hear a story. >> lauren, look. live from new york, it's saturday night! >> so every generation has their favorite "saturday night live," right, and it's usually the one that was on when they were in high school. so the people that were in high school during the 2000s won the jackpot. because over the course of that decade, you see some of the most extraordinary people come through that show. >> we should mention that although the waters above appear calm, below the surface there is

a frenzy of activity. >> one of the hallmarks of "snl" is you need somebody to play the president. and will's dubya was stellar. >> will ferrell's george w. >> can i get those antlers? >> there you go, son. and of course he was a will ferrell high point. >> cow bell was fantastic. not only because it's a great concept but because will really gets to be will. >> the last time i checked, we don't have a whole lot of songs that feature the cow bell. i got to have my cow bell, baby. i'll be doing myself a disservice and every member of this band if i didn't perform the hell out of this. >> "snl" in the 2000s is a great time for women.

>> it's my birthday! >> because there's a strong group of women that play off each other really well. >> are you part indian, are you cherokee? look those cheekbones, what are you, souix? are you chippewa? >> i believe diplomacy should be the cornerstone of any foreign policy. >> and i can see russia from my house. ♪ i like waterfalls ♪ i like butterflies ♪ i like chasing cars >> you are seeing creativity and wacky left field things that you wouldn't have seen before. >> the lonely island guys really helped make the transition for "snl" into the digital era. that's when things started to go

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welcome to [ bleep ] deadwood. >> david milch said i have a great idea about ancient rome. >> cops in ancient rome in the time of nero. >> because we're already doing this show about rome. >> thieves will be strangled. deserters will be crucified. >> david basically took the underlying theme of his rome show and put it in "deadwood." >> no law at all in deadwood. is that true? >> at the time of nero, there was a lot of order and no law. and "deadwood" was a similar environment. >> maybe you don't value keeping your [ bleep ] cuts inside your belly enough. >> those are the days behind us. >> no, those are the days to my

[ bleep ] left. >> ian mcshane's character steals the show, lock, stock, and barrel, away from anyone else. you want to go into that saloon and engage him in conversation. then you say to yourself, if i say something wrong, will i get my guts cut out with a bowie knife? he's a fascinating character in that he scares you and attracts you at the same time. that's kind of a rare thing. >> can we see your fangs? >> i always said daddy hated vampires. but we don't. >> i think that "true blood" was an enjoyable beach read with blood all over it. >> you could say, it wasn't meant to be taken seriously, it wasn't taking itself seriously, except it was such a big allegory for what was going on

with the gay community, with aids, with political backlash. it's like, there's monsters all over. but the scariest, most deadly characters in the whole show are the human beings. >> showtime looked at tony soprano and they said, you want an antihero? how about a mass murderer who is the hero of our show? >> "dexter" is about a blood spatter expert who is secretly a serial killer. >> soon he'll be packed into a few neatly wrapped hefties and my own small corner of the world will be a neater, happier place. >> he was raised by a policeman

to channel his sociopathic impulses to only kill other killers. so he is a bad guy but also a good guy. >> i kill reprehensible people. i mean, the idea of the show is that you're invited to identify with and maybe even root for a serial killer. >> that's right. >> he kills horrible people. if i were just killing people willy-nilly, i think all bets would be off. >> where's the fun in that? >> in the 2000s, the antihero really rose to prominence. >> my nephew has the same gun. don't point that there. >> nice work. >> and i think they were popular because they were surprising. >> you're a free woman. >> you struck a deal?

>> the d.a. dropped the charges. >> thank you. >> a show for me that was incredibly memorable was "damages." >> now where's the tape? >> it really was about following the twisted relationship of patty and ellen. >> what are you looking at it for? >> fraud. conspiracy. obstruction of justice. >> mr. nye tells us i may have reasons of your own for wanting to take down ms. hughes. >> yes. i do. >> i was just so taken with the fact that there was this incredibly dark, unapologetically, morally compromised lead character who was a woman. >> i told pete to have you killed. >> it was sort of the beginning of a real emergence of rich women on television.

>> all right. sure, take my last one. this will help. >> is this cab free? >> are you [ bleep ] nuts? >> i have heard nurse jackie" referred to as an antihero. she was at the mercy of her addiction that always got her attention. but beyond that, she really cared that there wasn't money in the budget for extra blankets for someone off the street and she would go and steal it from another department. she really wanted to be a good nurse. and she wanted to be married and she wanted these kids and she wanted to be a good wife and mother. >> why do you always have to work? >> yeah. >> and there was no way she could do all of them. >> mommy!

>> edie falco for me can do no wrong. here she is as the female antihero who has her own show. she's the one whose morals are questionable. >> my back, my back! >> she's having an affair. >> can't talk. love you. >> she's stealing drugs and is she an unfit mother and all those things. yet you feel for her. i love that women now get to be -- get to be the antihero and not just either the villain or the good girl. ♪ i want to know how you ever seen the rain ♪ >> i think that's something that the decade gave us, which is a move toward television really reflecting what america looks like. i'm not really "there." talk to your doctor, and call 844-234-2424. have you ever worked with dr. francis? oh yeah, he's ok. just ok? guess who just got reinstated!

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amc. people forget amc stood for american movie classics. then suddenly they figure out, let's stop paying for these other movies, let's make our own content. >> i was called in 2005 to come in and meet with the head of amc, because they were looking to do scripted programming for

the first time. a manager said, oh, i have this great script set in the advertising world in new york. it's been around for eight years. and nobody's bought it. everybody's passed. >> advertising is based on one thing. happiness. >> don draper is a master of the universe ad executive in mid-1960s manhattan. but he's stolen the identity of the real don draper due to an incident during the korean war. he's living another man's life but battling his demons at the same time. we're seeing him rise and fall over the course of the 1960s. in a lot of ways, the most interesting arc of the show is peggy olson's career. she goes from this little church mouse secretary to a really tough and bold and confident career woman. >> i like the way she's handing out the pops. >> who knows what to do and will try to get it even during a really sexist period for the industry when it was so hard for

women to get anything. >> peggy, can you get me some coffee? >> no. >> the female characters in "mad men" are great because they each represent different aspects of when women were going through at that time. >> daddy! >> i had this incredible experience of reading "the feminine mystique" and "sex and the single girl" in the same week. >> the heroes of mad men were the women. >> i'm here all day. outnumbered. >> what about carla? >> it's not her job to raise our children. >> it was incorporating the music of the times, the images of the times, the history of the times, and the attitudes of the times. >> what color panties are you wearing? >> what!

>> blue! who had blue? >> can i walk you home? >> "mad men" had absolutely no nostalgia for the period. it showed that people were jerks and adulterers and connivers even back in the glory days of the 1960s. >> what are you doing? >> how they communicated the kennedy assassination was actually exactly as it came to pass. >> they drew their pistols but the damage was done. >> everything stopped. nothing seemed important ever again. and it just so happened to be the weekend that roger's daughter was getting married, it was a big wedding. [ crying ] >> i would put "mad men" and

"sopranos" as the most important shows in the history of television. >> i was about to turn 40 years old. and this was about 2004, two years after the end of "the x files." i was at sea, wasn't sure what to do next. frankly, i was having trouble getting employed. my buddy tom had been on "the x files" too. he said, we should put a meth lab on the back of an rv, see america, make some dough on the

side. he's got a warped sense of humor more. when i heard that idea, i thought to myself, you know, what if i really did that, what would it take? and then i thought, well, i made money doing bad, why would i make money? we pitched "breaking bad" to not even a handful of places. some people liked it, some people not so much. it had kind of been dead for six months or a year or something like that. suddenly i hear, would you like to go meet the folks at amc, they're interested in doing "breaking bad." >> surprise! >> we absolutely were looking for an antihero show. and we wanted a guy that was going against the grain. >> dad, come check this out. come on, take it. >> they always tell you, you need to have a good one sentence pitch. i came up with, we're going to take mr. chips and we're going to turn him into scarface. what we were really going for was change. walter white says it in the first hour of the show.

>> electrons. they change their energy levels. molecules. molecules change their bonds. >> "breaking bad" was a study in change. the change that happens to one character as he devolves from good to bad. >> you know the business. and i know the chemistry. >> there was definitely a shift after "mad men" and "breaking bad" that the phones started ringing and a ton of feature people wanted to start making tv shows. >> can you pass the butter, please? >> bad ass dad. >> now it really has taken over what the indie feature was. now it's being made in the tv sphere. >> walter.

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got it get off the stage. >> all that you dream. >> the same thing everyone is trying to accomplish in television, which is do something no one's ever seen before. ♪ tony is meeting the family at a restaurant and ear with rr listening to a journey song and watching as one by one the family members come in and there's sinister people lurking around. ♪ danger >> we with were wondering is tone itty going to survive this? was tony going to be shot? what was going to happen? they're can cutting to meadow parking her car. all these things that there completely normal but they're embued with this dread.

♪ don't stop believing hold on to that feeling ♪ >> they're enjoying a family meelt listening to journey and it's building and building. ♪ don't stop >> the long black in which everybody says did i just lose my hbo signal? i thought was kind of like the the cord at the end of sergeant pepper in which nine pianos just hit this long, long major bung and it goes on and on and on and on and on and on. that black was sort of like what the series needed. >> as for "sopranos" creator, david chase, he got whaked in the headlines and by the noes cartoonists and chase literally

got whacked online. >> three or four days later we were in new york talking to a couple of television critics about how amazeing it was. and they're like you know, there's lot of controversy about the "sopranos" finale. the whole dut back is pretentious. nobody knows what it means. they're all discussing whether tony is alive or dead? and we're like those are all the things that made it brilliant. and it was then that we realized we were totally with and completely [ bleep] . if you've been fortunate enough to be successful, they've gone on for a long ride with you. the viewer has through line for every character and the show. but you could never possibly have. >> you know i love you, right? more than anything. >> of course, honey. >> so it is a fool's errand to try and please anyone but

yourself when you're writing a series' finale. finales have become increasingly more important. if you don't do a really good finale to a really good series, the sear a ezcan sort of lose its luster. but "six feet under" comes up with a perfect ending and the show is enhanced a little bit. the end of "six feet under" has the daughter driving away in the car and music starts to play. it's sia's "breathe me." and she looks up in the rearview mirror, so she's looking backwards. but then the show looks ahead. ♪ i have lost myself lost

myself ♪ >> that ended and everybody died. and i thought it was brilliant. >> the work on tv is as good as any work that's on a big screen. and so that hierarchy of film and television, i think, has been changed dramatically. partially because of the great work that people did at hbo and also because of the work they did at a lot of other places. >> i've waited a long time for this. >> coming up as an actor tillm was the thing. tv was less than. >> i say. [ bleep] . >> so to suddenly be in an era where we could tell these rich stories.

>> and really create the suspense and the trajectory of them. >> get over whatever it is and do your job. >> in ways that maybe we couldn'tb necessarily in film. i do think that lead to where we are now where everybody wants to be in tv. >> sit down, you guys. >> no. >> oh, yeah, you can't sit there. >> why not? >> that's where sheldon sits. >> he can't sit somewhere else? >> no. you see the seat is close enough to the raidiator so he's warm enough but not so much that he sweats. and the television is at an angle that is directly but not so wide that the picture looks distorted. >> perhapts there's hope for you afterall.

ideo kill canned the radio star. now has the internet killed the record industry? and perhaps they're stealing from us straight up and i want to fight them to the death. >> may i have your attention, please. >> the dixie chicks. krl rr tell you what they want to say. >> i don't please anybody with who i am as a person. >> i love beyonce. >> that's not a working television, is it? >> empty shells are all you'll find at tower records. it's now out of business.

♪ this is a very special moment. the first of the mtv studios in the new millennium. please