Chris Pahlow and I were batting around ideas for this season, and we’re both big Sopranos fans and started talking about Dr. Melfi and Tony. I think the show ultimately decided that therapy was just a way for Tony to indulge his more maudlin feelings and rationalize his more violent ones, that it ultimately made just him a better capo. 

I haven’t experienced much therapy, personally. I saw a guy a few times many years ago and he was very nice and told me a few gentle things that made me feel better, and since I felt better, I stopped going. I think I spent the whole session wondering Isn’t this excruciating for him? Wouldn’t it be easier if he just told me everything that’s wrong with me? I mean, he obviously knows….

One of the most exciting things about Incoming is that we’ve been free to experiment with form, trying out different tones and approaches that work best for each story. For “What’s Wrong With Me?” we decided to try for a more-or-less fully improvised episode. Chris and I wrote a long outline describing the characters and the beats we wanted each scene to hit, and then set out to find the funniest and most nimble actors we could convince to be a part of it.

Brad Morris and I are old friends from Chicago, and he was nice enough to introduce me to Matt Walsh, whose performance as Mike McClintock on Veep is one of the funniest things in TV history. Marika brought in Christina Anthony and Ann Sonneville - amazing and funny women - but the ultimate coup is that she invited her old college pal Mary Elizabeth Ellis to play Bronwyn. Mary Elizabeth is well-known to cool people as The Waitress from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, an unbelievably inventive show that has skillfully used improv to elevate the format from funny to legitimately hilarious. ME showed up and absolutely drove this episode with her incredible dexterity, insane timing, and limitless imagination. 

As these were all LA-based actors, we recorded this episode at Studio Awesome in Hollywood. Ironically, Brad was in Chicago shooting, so we had to patch him in from our HQ at Noisefloor. When you get performers this skilled, the technology part just recedes and all you’re left with are real people in the most surreal situation imaginable. What a thrill!