Maybe.  So I’m curious, this season for the people who don’t know, how many episodes were you picked up for when you came in.

Josh Friedman: 13.

Okay, so did you arc out 13 or did you arc out for the 22?  I mean, how did you write the stuff?

Josh Friedman: I’ve arced out for 22.  But you know you’re always sort of…I mean in terms of like football analogy I always think of 13 as like around half-time—I mean it’s a little past half-time but you always want something right at the end… before you go to the half so it’s your mid-season kind of break or whatever.  So we always try to arc the 13 and the 22. I think 13 always feels like there should be something significant should happen at 13 but then I always have thoughts about 22. Because we were cut short last year, I still had a few big kind of plot ideas that I just didn’t get to you know that were going to be 13 and were going to be 22 and so I still have those.  They’re written up on our writers board, so I know those are things that we’re still working towards. And the show is in essence even though I couldn’t have told you…when I sold the show originally I probably would say I knew what 5 or 6 of the first episodes were and we ended up shooting almost exactly those episodes.  Now they were different in a lot of facets.  I didn’t write them all when they were written but if I were to have pitched you the season or the first 6 episodes of the season 3 years ago, the first 6 episodes were….many of them were things that I had already thought about.  Beyond that I had big ideas, not necessarily good ideas but big ideas for kind of big signposts that I was working towards. Due to the strike, we didn’t get to them so they’re still there and we’re working towards them.  I mean a lot of stuff in last night’s episode sets up episode 22.  There are things in last night’s episode that pay off, hopefully, at the end of the season.

So how did the writer’s strike both…did that possibly help you?  Because I’ve spoken to a few other show runners and they said it was the first time in their lives that they weren’t writing and that they were sort of just thinking and then they came back with almost a fire inside and a lot to say.  Is that the same for you or different?

Josh Friedman: No definitely…first of all it wasn’t the first time in my life I wasn’t writing.  Those guys are full of shit.  I spent weeks and weeks not writing. When I was a feature writer I should sit months.  You’d find me down at the Commerce Casino if you wanted to find me. I was there for a month playing Hold ‘Em, you know?  I wasn’t writing then.  I didn’t recharge anything. The writers strike didn’t really do anything for me.

Oh yeah?

Josh Friedman: The writers strike for me was just painful.  I mean, I spent time with my family but I didn’t actually think about the show.  I know that seems weird because I was obsessed with like the show and I would read everything online and I would track in the ratings and all that stuff during the strike, but I almost made a conscious decision in my head to not proactively think about ideas going forward with the show.  And whenever I was on the picket lines with other writers on the show, we never talked about the creative aspects of the show.  We just didn’t do it.  I just thought it was just like mentally crossing the picket line and I didn’t want to do it and it helped in this way--I was burnt out.  I’d never done TV before.  9 episodes and I’d really only did 8-1/2 but we’d written 9.  It was a lot of work. I never worked that hard in my life so I think just in terms of coming back reenergized I just came back having slept.  It makes a big difference.  You know, sleeping for 5 months is different than not sleeping for 5 months, and I definitely felt when we came back we spent a few weeks in the room before we started production—it was a long time before we started production…before we really even started writing.  Just a few weeks in the room talking about last year…. so we had a period of time after the strike where we really all got together and I thought we had some great stuff come out of it.  I mean some really, really good exciting things came out of it, so in that sense that people were rested, I think they were recharged.  I always hesitate to say that anything good came out of the strike, creatively, because it was just a painful thing. But sleep was probably the best thing that came out of it.

I’ve heard that from other people, too.  So for this season without going into very specifics, what can fans look forward to as far as you know what’s going to be happening with some of the characters or the situations?  Or what’s the over-arcing stuff that fans should looking forward to?

Josh Friedman: Well I think that…I hope that…well, the first episode last night serves as sort of an emotional launching point for a lot of difficulties that the family will have.  I think that we saw in John a kid who…some shit went down and he’s going to be responding to it in various ways in various episodes to come and I think that whether or it was he or Sara who killed…and I’ve heard people think either….obviously either version of it is a painful thing for John.  Either he just killed somebody for the first time or he just witnessed his mother do it for the first time and I think both are traumatic experiences.

I’m going with John doing it.

Josh Friedman: You’re going with John doing it?

Yeah.

Josh Friedman: We will find out.

Right.

Josh Friedman: I will say that and we will see what happened at the attic.

Maybe I’m wrong.

Josh Friedman: Well, it’s 50/50.

Exactly.

Josh Friedman: Or 30/30/30.  It depends on if you believe that they both did that so….but we will find out.  It’s definitely something we actually shot the events up there when we were shooting that episode.

Oh yeah, for flashback purposes.

Josh Friedman: For flashback purposes, so we will find out though what happened there.  And I think it spins him and her into a different place and I think that’s one of the things I’m really interested in exploring from a character point of view.  And I think also what went on with him and the Cameron in the episode whether or not you believe that she meant what she said when she said that she loved him as I actually think the more important of the 2 things is that she said he loved her and I think that’s the thing that sort of… whether that struck a chord with him or not I think that also affects the way his attitude towards her in the future episodes and towards this new character, Riley, and things like that.  So I think that a lot of things are sort of set up character wise and in terms of the plot, well we have a T-1000 that now has a very important piece of computer tech  and I’m totally excited by that.  I don’t know if that’s maybe just because I love watching Shirley do anything but just some great stuff coming up with her and Ellison starts to get messed up with her and that goes some weird ways.