Shawn Ryan Quotations

He's going to be a great foil for the guys on the show.

He's going to be a great foil for the guys on our show. Forest has always impressed me with his range. He's got an incredible sweetness and soulfulness but also strength. It's a rare combination for an actor and that appealed to me with this character.

I think everyone would have felt lost if they went home and had to deal with this and had nothing to do.

The payment for certain sins can be delayed. But they can't be avoided.

We've certainly discussed different kinds of departures on this show and on 'The Unit' as well because that's a team that engages in very dangerous activities. It probably would be unrealistic to have a huge number of activities where somebody didn't get killed or very badly wounded. But I've never wanted to do something like this to be edgy, or prove how different we can be. There are shows that do that, and I am never impressed with that. And I think, in the end, the fans see right through it.

This was really one of the great guys of Hollywood.

You don't. You just go back and insert some lines.

Do we make it seem cool? I think we do. What we're trying to do is tell Eric's story. I think Eric is cool. ... I don't think there's a video game quality to our show, but I think there is something to be said for having a purpose the way Eric did when he spent his life in the military, for showing the sacrifices that these men and their families make.

Everyone, I think, felt more comfortable staying together and working rather than sitting at home trying to deal with this.

But he's someone that the networks, the studio, I think, in the past viewed a little dangerously. And I'm hoping that any success we might have with this will change their opinions of that because I've never met someone as committed and professional and intent on making good dramas as he is.

I don't ever want to have a weak episode of television with my name on it.

I don't want my writing to be recognized.

I don't want my writing to be so unique that when you apply it to different genres, it seems like the previous show that people know you from.

I still feel driven to try to make great shows and to make each episode great.

I would say on a creative level I put a lot of pressure on myself.

I'm perfectly happy to color within the network lines when I have to.

I'm very humble in terms of knowing that television is an extraordinary collaborative medium and that one person alone cannot make a great TV show.

To this day, nothing makes me happier than finding a TV show I really love.

I have no problem at all going back and forth between cable and network.

Working as a showrunner has made it tougher to watch other shows and movies.

There are certain economics involved in making a network TV show that you want to amortize the costs of that, so the more episodes you make, the cheaper they all are individually.

The worst thing you can do is end up with a network show on cable or end up with a cable show on network.

Series finales have that responsibility to leave you feeling good about entire series. You want to feel like the viewer closes the book satisfied. And if you strike out on the finale it skews how you feel about the entire series.

One of the tricky things about running a TV show is that you just never know how good the guest stars you cast on a weekly basis, how good they're going to be in the episode. Sometimes they surprise you in good ways and sometimes they surprise you in disappointing ways.

In order to appeal to a wider audience on network in order to survive, generally your characters need to be, at a base level, a little bit more likable.

Obviously there are different standards and practices that are allowed on cable versus network. You just have to embrace what your network is going to allow.

I've worked in network and cable on and off for a number of years, and you just understand what your parameters are. A lot of times, I think the best work that my team has come up with comes from having to deal with certain boundaries.

I was never that kid who grew up in New York and was always at the arthouse watching important films. I was the kid who grew up in the Midwest where there weren't any art films, and I watched TV. And that was really the medium that affected me and that I fell in love with.

You can make a good show, but you still need some magical alchemy to get people to watch.

Cheers was one of the first shows where I paid attention to the writers because their [work] was better than everything else I was watching. The writers weren't afraid to let a joke fall slightly flat if it advanced the characters.

The payment for sins can be delayed. But they cant be avoided.

There will always be economic pressure to make hits, identify hits, and then exploit hits. And you're going to exploit them with as many episodes as you probably can.

Everyone in Hollywood who is successful becomes less successful at some point. I'm just trying to delay that fall for as long as I can.

I've always read a lot of historical books and I'm a big fan of documentaries, and I've always thought of ways to do it.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about what the audience would want. That's my job, is to anticipate ahead of the audience.

TV is just such a fast-moving medium that you do what you can do, and what you can't do, you don't worry about too much.

I think the bar is higher these days in terms of audience expectations of authenticity.