now, september 27, 2014, he mears amal. now, that's good karma, right there. >> we're all in this. all of it, together. we're only as good as,, you know -- we're only successful as humans as how we look out for the people who can't look out for themselves. we're drawn to heroic characters, whether they're more traditional or otherwise, because there's a fundamental appetite for a savior. >> he's part hero, he's part every man. >> he's definitely one of those people who believes if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. >> he is that, that american trope of, i will not take no for an answer, i will do what i think is justifiable. part righteous do-gooder. >> he always has a tendency to go a little too far. >> they are off the grid,

outside of the normal thought patterns. always holding the unpopular theories. >> they have a code that they live by. when they make a promise, they keep a promise. >> who doesn't want to be able to step outside and look in and then say, i'm going to change something big here? >> we are traattracted to this d of, you know, certainty. >> it's compelling when somebody has that passion and that drive to find an answer for something. >> television is most certainly here to stay. new eyes, new vision for the world. >> all right. take it easy. just take it easy.

i think we all feel a little bit concerned about what's going to happen today and are we safe? it's just comforting to know that there's somebody out there who is devoting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to fighting the good fight. >> i'm just making sure we don't get hit again. >> i'm glad someone's looking out for the country, carrie. >> i'm serious. i missed something once before. i won't -- i can't let that happen again! >> that seminole event on that day when those towers came down, you know, having formed everything about her. >> it was ten years ago. everyone missed something that day. >> yeah, everyone's not me. >> and as writers sitting around in the writer's room, that is the thing that is ringing in our ears. carrie is somebody who is who got into the intelligence business quite early in her life and her genius resides in her illness. she has bipolar disease. >> she always felt that this disease she had kept her from

having intimate relationships. so her relationship has been being in the cia. >> she feels that there's something in that condition that helps her access a kind of premonition and when she's on medication, she feels removed from that genius a little bit. and that's dangerous for her as a character. >> those people didn't die because you were taking your meds. >> it was right in front of my eyes. and i never saw it coming. >> we get to see her in that constant struggle. >> we do an annual field trip down in d.c., where we entertain a parade of intelligence officers, white house staffers, and state department people and the question we always ask everybody who comes into that room is, what keeps you up at night? >> what's your biggest nightmare. and that's usually where the season comes from. >> president obama puts new restrictions on america's secretive drone program. >> it is a hard fact that u.s.

strikes have resulted in civilian casualties. >> there was a lot of questioning when season 4 was airing about the value of our anti-terror campaign overseas. and carrie became emblematic of that. when we made her the station chief in kabul, she was really on the front lines. >> how confident are we that gandhi's in the farmhouse? >> one of those vehicles outfront, we've seen it. >> all the techniques that america is now using in taking out al qaeda and isis, that is, you know, the drone strikes, the special ops teams. >> well, obviously anybody inside the farmhouse will be collateral damage. >> yeah. >> i would feel a lot better if we weren't so blind on such a short clock. >> these all began to weigh on her. >> any friendlies in the area? >> no. >> send them in. >> if you talk to drone pilots and if you talk to real special ops guys, they're going to live with this for the rest of their lives. >> mr. hakani was attending a wedding at the time of the

attack and that over 40 members of his family were also killed. >> is it true what they're saying? it was a wedding party? >> i don't know. even if i did, i couldn't tell you. >> that's an interesting dynamic that has provided just, you know, so much rich storytelling as we've moved forward in the series. >> well, i feel sick to my stomach about it. you ever feel that? sick to your stomach? >> sometimes. >> what part of your psyche do you have to make a deal with the devil to be able to do that? >> carrie began to feel the collective weight and guilt of those actions. >> you can't atone for that much blood, for that many souls! >> she realized that, you know, what she had done may not have made the world any safer. and actually may have made things worse.

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download the xfinity my account app or go online today. fired a gun or the ocean or off the ground. >> it's an accident of history that television came of age in 1948, 1949, 1950, just after world war ii. to me, the 15 years after world war ii was a very strange cultural backwash about what took place in world war ii. and certain things were accepted as a given that, in fact, needed to be questioned. and one of them had to do with the idea of male heroism. the fact that television was

overtaken by westerns in the 1950s, and all these guys were these rugged heros. >> am i breaking the law? am i doing something wrong? >> just your being here is wrong. >> i was growing up in the '50s. at that point in america, we were feeling so muscular after world war ii and that the american way of life was the only way of life and the best way of life. >> truth, justice, and the american way. >> there were these expectations, since we had won the war and we had acted heroically and all of that, that all men were supposed to be heroic. >> kind of, i think, reinforce what had we all believed about america at that point. >> that's what a man was. he was a guy who did the upright thing and stood up and was brave and strong and knew everything. but i think most men did not experience that in their lives. >> matt dillen, john wayne, you don't worry about it.

but i don't know how realistic that is. >> and that's probably why they were popular, because we wanted our folk heros, our tv heros to be reflective of our own image of ourselves as a country. >> i was a boy during the second world war. and pretty much what you saw in the movies was the heroics. it simply would not be done to show an image of -- of the day-to-day suffering that goes into it. >> to say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic if unsatisfactory conclusion. ♪ >> "m.a.s.h." is to me still a phenomenon that in the middle of

the vietnam war, that we would watch a show about another war set in asia, as brutal as vietnam was. >> i was watching "m.a.s.h." at 5 or 6 years old. it was all about war and people dying and i wonder how i interpreted it. >> i'll take him first. put him ahead of him. >> hawkeye didn't want people to die and he tried to keep them from dying. >> step on it! >> how dare you contradict me! >> hey, hold it. he's a commie. north korean. haas he doing ahead of my buddy? >> diagnosying. >> it was very anti-war, but with this character like groucho. >> he tried to kill us and now you're going to save him? >> yeah, the whole thing's ridiculous, isn't it? >> on some level i knew, this is someone who's speaking out against hypocrisy and that it's wrong to hurt people, and i assume it just wired my brain for almost a compassionate way of looking at the world, that seems kind of full of crap, but

it is true. when you're watching "m.a.s.h." two times a day from the time you're like 5 years old for 10 or 12 years, you know, what you're soaking in is the humanity ofgillbart and his way of looking at the world. >> some people think he was very liberal, but he was also a traditional conservative. he wanted nothing more than to have people leave him alone so he could enjoy his martini, you know? government should get out of his liquor cabinet. >> oh, this is sensational. >> you're my kind of girl, nancy. drunk. >> there's no better doctor than hawkeye. i remember thinking, even him drunk, i would rather him be my doctor than somebody sober. >> when authority got ridiculous, he -- he reacted to that. he didn't like the idea that he was sewing them up so they could be sent back into the sausage mill and get shot up again. >> we're really not so far

apart. >> no, he's got a point. we're all in the same business. as surgeons, we'll sacrifice some tissues in order to save the whole body. you'll sacrifice a few men in order to, uh -- to -- >> there was an officer that kept taking his soldiers into battle unnecessarily. so we took out his appendix, just to keep him sidelined for a while. well, at the rehearsal for this, mike ferrell said, i'm playing a doctor who takes this seriously and i will not operate on a patient who doesn't need the operation. that's mutilation. and we started an argument that lasted about an hour that day. and at a certain point, we said, you know what, this is what we ought to be doing on camera, because this is a serious conflict. >> all right, suppose you get him relieved of his command, what about the guy they send to replace him. >> he's got to be better than this guy, doesn't he? >> you don't know that? >> i'll take them one at a time. what do i have to lose?

>> just your self-respect. you cut into a healthy body, you'll hate yourself for the rest of your life. >> i hate myself right now. i hate me. i hate you, and this whole life. and if i can keep that maniac off the line with a simple appendectomy, i'll be able to clear my conscious. >> the great appeal of it is that it sort of stayed in pace with the zeitgeist of the cup and was asking the same questions that we were all asking. >> we openly dealt with all the sides of war. and we were exploring things that were not neat. there was no right and there was no wrong. but it came out of passion and disgust and anger and upset at being where they were and going through what they were going through. and that's, i think, more useful to know than to see what i saw as a kid, where when they would

shoot down an enemy plane and they'd all laugh and cheer. there's more interest, human interest in looking at the real cost than there is in just skimming across the surface. >> i loved hawkeye. >> you know, people fall in love with characters. people fall in love with shows. and when that happens, people then become fierce in their devotion. (victoria vo) when i was twelve, i started volunteering for national parks. i go out and demonstrate to people what life was like in the eighteenth century. you can have almost a spiritual experience with the beauty of nature or with a connection with the past. there's no better place to find that than a national park, which preserves that beauty and the history. (vo) the subaru share the love event has donated over six-point-five million dollars to help the national parks. get a new subaru and we'll donate two hundred fifty dollars more. (victoria) ♪ put a little love in your heart. ♪

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"the avengers" was a show that i loved. and in a way, you can see a little bit of a similarity between mulder and scully and john steed and emma peel. >> at the very beginning, not sure many people know this, but i was meant to walk a few paces behind mulder when we got out of our cars, when we were going up

to a house to expose our fbi badges. i was meant to be a few paces behind him as he walked up the step to the house. you think, you've got to be kidding me. that was the antithesis of the character that chris carter created, which was this young woman with incredible chutzpah. and eventually, over time, it just became natural that we reached the front door at the same time. >> even though mulder is really the sort of hero in the show, it's really scully's point of view in which the stories are told from. it's the skeptic's point of view. it's the rational point of view. >> she's a medical doctor. she's a scientist. she's a forensic pathologist. sha she's sure of herself. her belief about the world of the paranormal or extra terrestrithe resext

extraterrestrials or whatever it was, it was not real. there was no question about it. >> you don't honestly believe this is some sort of an extraterrestri extraterrestrial, this is someone's sick joke. >> i'm not crazy, scully. i have the same doubts you do. >> but at the base of these two very different, very disparate characters was, you know, ultimately, a desire to get to the bottom of something. to get of truth of the matter. >> we are interested by the don quixote characters that have great drive, great passion to do something. and against all odds, they proceed toward their goals. i think that is always going to be interesting to an audience, whether it was back in the '50s or the '30s or 3,000 years ago or today or tomorrow or a thousand years from now. >> what are you going to do? >> i'm not going to give up. i can't give up.

not as long as the truth is out there. >> we saw them, despite their differences, drawing closer and closer together, to the point where they were each the only person that the other could trust. there was something very romantic about this platonic, mostly platonic duo. >> i've always said that the secret to th"the x-files" was simply this, mulder loves scully and scully loves mulder. >> just the image of seeing them in their two different apartments on opposite sides of town, what it did is it developed this longing. it added to the desire for the two of them to come closer together in that loneliness.

>> loneliness is a very compelling element to a lot of lead characters. there's not a ton of drama in happiness. and you see that in life all the time. you see people who just don't know how to get out of their own way. >> there was a wonderful poem by stanley kunitz. at times like our, the heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking. >> and it's not an accident that over time, the most compelling character in "nypd blue" is the one guy who was always trying to connect to life and always coming up short. >> leann, hurt me, boys.

>> this has got to stop, ed. >> i don't want to recall requesting any career counseling from you. >> sipowitz was a guy who was a trailblazer in some very old clothes. >> i think it's pretty apparent that he is not your average hero. >> with some very bad habits. >> he comes across as such a shnook. he's an alcoholic, a womanizer, a racist. that's not your typical hero. >> he's a bigot. and he's a slob. and he's a drunk. well, i'm a bigot and a slob and a drunk, so it was very easy for me to write the character. but which is to say let me retract so that i'm allowed into my home tonight. i am capable of imagining myself as a bigot and a slob and a

drunk. i have been all of those things, but i try not to be them simultaneously, because it's just too busy a world. >> get your hands off me. get your hands off of me! >> let's go somewhere and dedebget -- >> dave had such a sense of that character and such an affinity for him. andy sipowitz is representative of a certain kind of cop. they're not tolerant of the tolerance of police work. >> a little girl was taken from washington square park this morning, we know you were involved. >> i don't know what you're talking about! >> now, you are going to tell me what happened to that little girl. >> i want a lawyer! you can't do this! >> no, this is just us, ken. there ain't going to be no lawyer, no court, no wrongful conviction. because you're going to take care of this right here! >> he's not, under certain circumstances, averse to beating a suspect. and he'll justify on the grounds that he never beats a suspect that he doesn't know did the crime. >> cops are asked to shield

society from certain of its most fundamental contradictions. you know, we hold these truths to be self-evident, all people are created equal. nobody believes that. >> so are you going to tell me the truth now? a or are you going to make me happy? tickto tickto ticktock, victor, what's it going to be? >> i'm missing happy hour. >> the truth is, what a cop is taught is, you know, if the guy says "i want a lawyer," you know, and the cop says, i always wanted to bang marilyn monroe. you know, i never got to bang marilyn monroe and you ain't getting a lawyer. now, that isn't what always happens, but it's been known to happen. a soul pays the price for that sort of thing. >> the exposure to that reality

grinds characters, you know, like stones. >> paeople were able to recognie in sipowitz a spirit which spun against the way it drove. it was the portrayal of a soul very much in conflict with itself. in his irreconcilable complexities, we came close to experiencing a character as a member of our family. there was an old woman who lived in a shoe. she had so many children she had to buy lots of groceries. while she was shopping for organic fruits and veggies, burglars broke into her shoe. they stole her kids' mountain bikes and tablets along with her new juice press.

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out to african-american voters. joined on the stump by senator cory booker and congressman terry seewell. and in california, new evacuations were ordered as massive wildfires continue to scorch a southern california fueled by whipping is santa ana winds, pitting thousands of firefighters against the blazes. now back to "america in prime-time: the crusader." there is something sort of satisfying about good defeating evil. i think there's something very viscerally satisfying about that. >> we were always trying to examine whether pure evil existed or can you blame it all on something psychological? or is there something much more

inherent, much more tribal about violence and murder? i like to believe that certainly the shows that i do, that character trumps everything. for me, the process of discovering who that character is is, you have to go, okay, how does he or she think. what kind of education, lack of education -- you start here, you go here, what do they believe? what makes them cry? what makes them laugh? then you go a little lower, you go, who do they want to sleep, and, you know. if you can answer those three pieces of a character, you pretty much can write him or her after that. >> the work itself is the most important thing. what we do is important. we speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves. >> we were dealing with some characters who were quite interesting, you know.

and we' and were motivated by things that weren't on the surface and didn't seem to be kind of archetypes, cop archetypes, you know. they were moody and suspicious and petulant and, you know, and sort of like -- very much like real people. >> i'll meet you in the garage. >> oh, happy day. >> hamilton doesn't play well with others. >> he's prickly, you know what i mean? and self-righteous and stuck up. >> he is the kind of most righteous, you know, blindly righteous character that we hav have. [ speaking foreign language ] >> what's that? >> with god on our side, who can stand against us? >> pembleton's sense of justice evolved over the life of the series. he started out being there for the dead, bringing justice to those who had been murdered. >> there's a kind of, um,

youthful belief in right and wrong. and a belief, somehow, that pembleton has the power to make things right. his need to speak for the dead comes out of his own sense of inquiry about the meaning of lulu life. and so each death is a reflection of his own search. >> there's something about the fact that you believe that you know what's right, and life is just so complex that i can't be what you think it is. it's not simple. >> god, please, i swear, i will do anything. >> we were trying to explore -- >> let him live. >> -- what is the moment where they go, i can't do this anymore? >> i'm done.

>> i've seen too much. i know too much. i don't want to know anymore. >> look, this is not your fault. >> it is mine and i'll carry it. >> he's so certain about what's right and wrong. and each and every one of these episodes reveal to him more depth about our human journey. >> he had ended up becoming the ultimate priest who people went to confession to, but he could not absolve them. all he could do was give them prison time. >> the fixation on the belief that we're powerful, that we can do anything, like, i can keep crime down. >> we began to understand that justice is not an absolute. that it is an perfect thing. >> i can avenge, you know. that i'm doing god's work, that somehow i'm an instrument of his will on earth. well, i'm too fragile a vessel for that, you know? it's not possible.

♪ television has a long history of cop dramas, going back to "dragnet." there is a reason why those kinds of shows dominated tv for a long time. there's a wish fulfillment factor in an unpredictable world, you can turn it on and you can feel pretty comfortable that joe friday is going to handle that situation in the next half an hour. >> you know something, cop, i think i play the part better than you do. >> i'm going to tell you something, mister. >> they want to watch a character who's not going to let them down. and i think that's one of the bigger differences between it have of the last 15 to 20 years and tv that proceed it. i would say that the tv that pra proceeded it oftentimes showed its heros making a choice between right and wrong and the audience knew that the choice would be right. >> must be a hard choice, going

against your own kind. i would like to know what makes a man do that. >> it's far more interesting to put your main character into a position where your main character has to choose between two wrongs. >> whatever i did, it would have been wrong. >> those are the questions within the shows that get me excited. >> it's like you said, marshal, a man makes his choice. >> when you're on the edge, on those ethical boundaries, what is the right thing to do? ♪

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series, a long-running series, as opposed to writing a movie or a play, is that the scope is so much bigger. >> in a way, it's superior to film. i mean, how much can you learn about a character in two hours of a movie? it's the difference between a well-written novel and a well-written short story. >> the homicide is the show in which i learned to write television. and i learned it at the foot of tom fontana. tom is a playwright. and the guys working for him were either playwrights or television writers. they knew drama. and what they were trying to do was get to the human condition. and i really respect the end product. but tom's impulse was not journalistic, and mine kind of is. and what i'm interested in is politics and sociology and economics. "the wire" is an argument about who we've become as a people and what we're capable of and what we're no locker capable of. >> you the man with those jumbo

sixes? >> how many you want? >> take about 300 or 400. ha-ha! all in the game, yo. all in the game. >> it was a show about the rigged game of modern life. everybody was a participant in something of a fraud. and omar seems to recognize this. and he insists on operating on his own terms, for his own purposes. he's a guy who robs drug dealers. he's a gunslinger. >> he was a lone gun, a guy with a shotty. and he took on whoever he wanted to take on. >> you better open this door, man, before i huff and puff. come on, now, by the hairs of your chinny-chin-chin. >> omar, you better roll out. we up in here with a mac-10. >> i thinks not.

i thinks not. >> he's the most romanticized character because he's a man not beholden to an institution in a show about being beholden to an institution. >> it's pimps and hos, you know, you either got somebody on the corner or you on the corner. and he's like, since the game has been rigged to take, take, take, take from people, let me take from the game. >> so you're my eyeball witness, huh? so why'd you step up on this? >> i mean, don't get it twisted, i do some dirt, too, but i never put my gun on nobody who wasn't in the game. >> a man must have a code. >> oh, no doubt. >> he's beholden to nothing other than omar and his own code. without a code, he's a sociopath. i have not put my gun on anybody

who doesn't deserve it. if my gun is aimed at you, you're in the game. and if you're in the game, then we're playing and you can't complain. and your moral code is not superior to mine. he never robs a civilian. and he never shoots anybody for whom violence is not a last resort, as well. he's playing by the code of the west. he's playing fair, he's playing by the rules such as they are. >> some people may feel he was cleaning up the streets, but, you know, murder is murder. >> well, get on with it, mother -- [ gunfire ] >> we start from the reel when we're creating characters. that's our rule on all of these shows, write to the people who know the event. write to the homicide detectives, write to the corner boys if you're writing "the wire." >> unfortunately, growing up, i've seen death in my neighborhood, growing up in brooklyn. you have to desensitize yourself or you won't be able to deal with it.

i remember the last friend i loss, who got murdered. i was coming home from the movies and i saw his girlfriend, classic scene, she was screaming over his body, he caught a couple in the body and he's laid out. there's no dramatic music playing in the background to push the emotion. he's on the floor, you know, blood, chalk him out, put the yellow tape up, and keep it moving. >> the fairy tale of american existence is the transcended individual. going back to our view of our own manifest destiny. it's the guy who blazes the trail out west or who vanquishes the bad guy. there were moments where we actually used the western motif of the standoff, because omar is of that world. and in a war, it's as if we placed the myth of the american individual in the actual america. and then said, let the chips fall where they may. and for a while, he has a pretty good run. but eventually, what happens has to happen. he's not living in 1860 indian territory, he's living in baltimore in the 21st century. >> a pack of new pope.

soft pack. >> the way omar went out, you know, it goes back to that classic western scene, you know, live by the gun. i think that he done anything different, it would have rang false. >> let me get one of them, too. >> ahhhh! >> what i've tried to do is have violence be abrupt and uncertain and disturbing. i have no problem with the depiction of violence, but i want it to mean something. >> you know, the reality of the fact is, you have 12, 13-year-olds in baltimore running around with bodies on their belt. it's not fiction. >> it's a different america. it's not the america of manifest destiny. omar, he's doing all the things that usually triumph in an american story. he doesn't get to win. because few of us do in this world anymore. there's a better streak and more sophisticated streak in american

storytelling than the good guy beats the bad guy and gets the girl. this world is no longer kind of so simple, you know? it's changed. >> how far can you go in fighting evil? without becoming eefe ining evi? as it turns out, jack bauer will always go as far as he has to, but he always pays a price for that. >> it's one horrible decision after another, is what jack bauer's life is about. >> i gave him my word that we would protect him. >> i didn't. >> curtis, please, don't do this. >> so he does a lot of very, very difficult things. >> please. >> he is a dark character. but in another way, he's a very

cure character. >> i can't let this animal live. >> he will always do what needs to be done for the greater good. he will always do that. this is a man who's tortured, who's fighting inside himself as well as outside himself. >> i guess the best advice i can give you is try to make choices that you can live with. >> you try to tap into those complications, those emotional kpl complications and psychological complications that come along with doing things that normally are forbidden. >> did you torture mr. hadad? >> according to the definition set forth by the geneva convention, yes, i did.

>> there were several episodes of the season when 9/11 happened. we asked ourselves, first of all, is it even appropriate to have a show on this topic on tv when the real thing is happening, so tragically and so shockingly? and second of all, will people watch? >> the truth, senator, is i stopped that attack from happening. >> by torturing mr. hadad. >> by doing what i deem necessary to protect innocent lives. >> jack dramatized in one person those issues and questions that the country has been and continues to wrestle with. when crazy things are happening in the world or terrible things or shocking things, one of the ways we make sense out of it is by telling ourselves stories about. >> sorry, ryan, we've got to do this. >> i don't think you've seen traditional heros go as far as

jack has gone. >> all right, there's no way around this, all right, jack? we don't have any outs here. >> not that i can see. >> jack pabauer has to kill pau schultzy to stop a bomb from going off. >> you can almost say he takes the sins a bomb from going off. >> he does things that no one else will do to keep everyone else safe. >> god forgive me. ♪ ♪ think of your fellow man, ♪ lend him a helping hand, ♪ put a little love in your heart.♪ ♪ you'll see it's getting late, oh please don't hesitate...♪ ♪ put a little love in your heart.♪ ♪ in your heart... ♪ in your heart... ♪ in your heart... ♪ in your heart. (vo) going on now, our subaru share the love event will have donated over one hundred fifteen million dollars to those in need.

but having his parents over was enlightening. ♪ you don't like my lasagna? no, it's good. -hmm. -oh. huh. [ both laugh ] here, blow. blow on it. you see it, right? is there a draft in here? i'm telling you, it's so easy to get home insurance on progressive.com. progressive can't save you from becoming your parents. but we can save you money when you bundle home and auto.

♪ we live in a world that's grayer, less black and white. there's value in that that you don't get if you're presented with a pure villain or a pure hero. >> everybody has a shadow self.

everybody lies in bed thinking, oh, what if? what if i could get my revenge? what if i could get even? we have all thought that. the difference is we don't act upon that. dexter is a character that does act upon that. >> his shadow side is pretty significant. >> you better be a cop. >> no. forensics. i don't think he is targeting criminals because of some sort of sense of himself as a crusader. but dexter could be seen that way. >> cleaning up the messes that the justice system leaves behind. >> dexter in many ways is batman. can't tell the truth about who he is. forged in the depth of a parent. and is channelling his rage and compulsion for good. >> the mask he wears is more

during his day-to-day life and unmasked when he's doing his thing. >> all of the great comic book superheroes are a throwback to the classics. they're all very flawed characters. they all have their kryptonite. they all have been born out of some horrible tragedy. >> watching his mother get chain sawed into pieces in front of him when he was basically 4 or 5 years old. from that point on in his life, how do you make your life make sense? >> dexter recognizes this darkness in him. and instead of taking his own life he takes the lives of people who haven't taken the responsibility for their impulses and the way he imagines he has. >> the bluntness about the character being an overt serial killer, there's no hiding behind that fact. he's a sociopathic killer. he had this unwrenchible tlis to kill and ultimately dexter's

killing is compelling only because he can justify why he's killing that person. >> he needs to know this he's doing the right thing to the right person. not letting the people who deserve justice slip through the cracks. >> who doesn't want do get rid of all this kind of seemingly madness that goes on every once in a while? >> you kill me. what do you leave behind? >> a world without you. look at that. steady as a surgeon. ♪ >> you know, it is a very, very intriguing television series but

it is one of those shows you go like, ugh. >> early on in the show people who were watching it would approach me and say that they kind of felt guilty about the fact that they liked the show. >> god knows i have written a lot of serial killers in my time but i have never asked the audience to believe in the triumph 0 a serial killer. >> there's nothing wrong with depicting violence, it's part of the human condition. i understand the tongue in the cheek and it's an inside-out show but frankly as well as a show it may be made i don't want to be part of any show that would suggest that there's a catharsis in violence and serial killing. >> people talk about the moral ambiguity of the anti-hero and all that, but that's the world we're living in and i think the dexter's argument is valid and bad people who have escaped justice and he is making sure

that they dent. >> i don't care how well you tell that tale. there's nothing to commend that as an idea. and ideas are important to me. >> do some people deserve to die? and i don't know that the show comes down one way or another. but it's certain attempt to tempt you to feeling some people do and then you have to wrestle with the fact that you felt that way. the coin never really lands. it's just sort of spinning in the air. >> i'd like to know what makes a man do that. >> audiences create these guidelines by what they choose to watch. artdists need to be in a position to sort of push the boundaries and let the audience speak back to them. >> most writers have always wanted to delve into the soul and what makes us tick.

bad guys don't think they're bad guys. and good guys are good guys but they're human beings, too, and they're complicated. >> doesn't really matter to an audience as much as it used to. whether the character's a hero or a villain. full of sin or full of virtue, doesn't matter what they're trying to do as long as we feel their passion. >> storytelling is like making everyone part of a big family. so that members of the audience are able to identify with characters in their full complexity. >> television is part drug. it's part stimulation. it's part love. it's part affection. >> that type of deep emotional attachment is what television at its best is capable of generating. >> ultimately, every great story

is know thy self and discover thaiself. we're all trying to figure out if we're living this life fully but also if we're living it meaningfully. >> that's the way it works. that's the way art's supposed to work. deputies respond to a possible gang beating inside a cell. but outside the view of surveillance cameras. >> it appears there's a physical altercation that's transpiring at this time. you can see the bodies jerking back and forth. >> the inmates say it was nothing. >> it was just rough housing, that's all. >> that's for children.