In Defense Of Good O1' Network TV

With his NBC breakout now broadcast’s best shot at cracking the Emmy drama category long dominated by cable and streamers, the This Is Us creator celebrates entertainment’s last wide net

- Dan Fogelman

When I was a kid, my mom was determined to make me a “reader.” By age 8, I was reading multiple children’s books a week. An author named Matt Christopher was my favorite — he wrote children’s sports books with great titles like The Kid Who Only Hit Homers. I positively inhaled them. To this day, I can speed-read an adult novel in just hours. … I retain very little, and it means I have to bring multiple hardcovers on a long plane ride, but reading has always fed me. Ever since I was young.

And if reading fed me, television was my dessert.

As I got older, my parents began to let me watch two hours of primetime television a week (we weren’t Amish, please don’t get the wrong impression of my parents; I was already showing early signs of potential TV addiction, and they were right to set limits).

Knight Rider and The A-Team were my dominant two TV choices. But as I got older (and the rules loosened), my tastes expanded.

When The Wonder Years’ Kevin Arnold got to first base with Winnie Cooper, it was like I’d gotten to first base with her.