"So being you just took over the reins, I wanted to congratulate you on Grey Water. I like how you're dealing with the fallout over the future of the show."
"The future of the show? Fallout?"
"Yeah. Whether it's renewed or cancelled, we want viewers to maintain a positive image of the network, so I love the way you're weaning them off the blond guy."
"Weaning?"
"Yeah, he was in the episode but he wasn't really in it, you know what I mean?"
"Not really, no."
"Come on. You're the genius who did it. The blond guy was in scenes but they were all identical to scenes he's already been in. Like he makes them pick suspects based on their instincts just like in Blinking Red Light. That was really unimaginative. Kudos to you."
"Kudos?"
"Exactly, if it's not imaginative, who wants more of it, right?"
"I see. So that's what you mean by weaning the audience."
"And then you had him walk away from the CBI killer case, the case that has all that dramatic potential to it and instead, you had him drive around in the car with the new girl wising off to people about fracking. That was so bad, it was good."
"Uhh…thanks."
"And you kept him separate from the short chick. That's the pivotal relationship so just letting it hang there and leech energy from the story was inspired."
"OK. I've only been in this job for one episode and I… Don't we want people to like the show?"
"That depends. If we cut his scenes down to nothing and make the scenes he is in formulaic and we only feature tangential characters in the other scenes, then-"
"Then?"
"Then, if the show goes away, it'll hurt less because viewers' last memories of it will be of labored murder mysteries and expositional dialog among third bananas. You know, like you did so beautifully tonight."
"I think I understand now."
"Then if the show gets a second life, we make it good again and the fans will be doubly happy to get it back. If the show goes bye-bye, it won't hurt fans as much to lose it and they'll be happy to tune into CBS's other offerings in the future."
"I'll put my best writers on it."
"Excuse me?"
"I'll put my worst writers on it."
"There you go."