I’ve been following this discussion of how some writers are miffed that younger writers in the room haven’t “done their homework” by watching the classics. This conversation happens in EVERY room. The older writers find out some LL writer hasn’t seen Dick Van Dyke or whatever...

And then the older writers go on a rant about the KIDS THESE DAYS! How can they claim to be REAL writers if they haven’t seen every episode of Gilligan’s Island?! I think there’s a couple things going on here...

First, if you’re of a certain age, there were very few choices for after school viewing and you watched every episode of the Brady Bunch because YOU HAD NO CHOICE! All those classic shows are great education for comedy writing but it’s not like we all were DOING OUR HOMEWORK...

We were just watching what was available in reruns. So great education but largely unintentional. But second, I think older writers are just shocked that there are writers on staff who are adults born in the 90s. It does seem weird if you graduated college before they were born!

So obviously someone born in 1995 isn’t going to have the same childhood of watching Three’s Company. But that doesn’t mean they have failed in some metaphysical way to prepare for their careers.

We’ve all watched a lot of TV and guess what? Viewing patterns differ. So maybe UL writers don’t yell at LLs if they haven’t watched your formative show. Invite them to watch a couple episodes. One room I was in we’d watch old shows during lunch.

And LLs try to cut the old timers some slack. Consider the possibility that the ULs are just coming to terms with how old they really are! #writing