6 showrunners on how to keep production in L.A., their advice to young writers and more

Most television lovers have one: an episode that left an indelible imprint long after the credits rolled.But which made the cut for the six creative minds on The Envelope’s 2026 Emmy Writers Roundtable? For Megan Gallagher (“All Her Fault”), it’s the series finale of “The Americans.” Jonathan Glatzer (“The Audacity”) selected the pilot of “Breaking Bad”: “When those pants fly up in the air in the beginning, I was just like, ‘What in the hell?’ And I was completely sucked in.” Others went further back.

Andrew Guest (“Wonder Man”) named “Seinfeld’s” “The Marine Biologist.” Bruce Miller (“The Testaments”) praised the pilot of “My So-Called Life.” And Sonja Warfield (“The Gilded Age”) is still thinking about an episode from the third season of “thirtysomething,” which featured the corporate-buyout storyline involving Michael Steadman (Ken Olin) and the spy posing as an office painter to listen in on his plan: “The painter was a Black woman,” Warfield said.“What struck me about that was that she was invisible to him.

And in the end, she’s wearing a suit, and he can see that she had all of the information.” Michael Patrick King (“The Comeback”) dug even deeper into the vault with “Lucy Does a TV Commercial” from “I Love Lucy.” The memory of a tipsy Lucy trying to sell a health tonic known as Vitameatavegamin left such a lasting impression that, while working on “Murphy Brown,” King got his hands on a copy of the script page with Lucy’s slurred spiel: “Lucy didn’t improvise anything,” King said.“The writing on the side is ‘bats eyes, winks, slips’ — it’s all on the side in stage directions.”Of course, these writers are getting viewers talking with their own work too.

Here, they discuss their series, the threat artificial intelligence poses to the entertainment industry, why producing TV shows in L.A.matters and much more.

Read on for excerpts from our conversation....