In this week’s issue, New York Magazine surveyed fourteen of the top TV show-runners about their process and craft. All during upfront week, we’ll be running longer transcripts of these conversations: some will include extended answers to our questionnaire, some will break free altogether, but all will provide a revealing and insightful look into the minds of the people who make our appointment television. One of those people is Jason Katims, who oversees Parenthood and Friday Night Lights. We spoke with him about his first gig on My So Called Life, his deep belief in collaboration, and the one Friday Night Lights story line everyone hated.

What was your first job?
I did a lot of freelance desk publishing jobs when I graduated from college. I sort of earned a living doing that while I was writing plays, which was what I wanted to do. My hope was to become a playwright. My first job in television was on My So-Called Life. I was living in New York writing plays and working in desktop publishing — working for a graphic designer — and I got a call from Ed Zwick’s office. I returned his call and he got on the phone and said, “I read a play of yours and liked it very much.” I said thank you and he said, “Do you know who I am?” I said no, and he said, “Well, I directed Glory, I created Thirtysomething,” and I said, “Okay, you can stop there.” I came out and met with Ed and it was right when he was developing with Winnie Holzman and Marshall Herskovitz the pilot for My So-Called Life. The timing actually worked out to be really great because even though I didn’t have a job right away, I got to meet Winnie Holzman, and when they were shooting the pilot I got to be on set and meet all the actors. It was really sort of like my graduate school, as well as my first job as a writer.

To read the rest of this interview go to NYMag.com

AVC: Season five of Friday Night Lights was the first time that there wasn’t the question before the season began of whether it would be the last one or not. You knew it would be the final one. How did that impact your approach?

JK: It impacted it greatly. From early on in the season, we were able to start to plant seeds toward what the ending was going to be. Even if we weren’t planting seeds, we knew where we were going. In the last four or five episodes, it was incredibly impactful. At that point, everything we were doing was leading up to the final moments of the series. So, on one hand, it was very emotional to have to go through the process of ending a show that you love. On the other hand, it was a great experience, because we knew that we could actually end it. It would have been so terrible after everybody had worked so hard for so long to make this the best show it could be to not be able to give it an ending. I really wanted to give it an ending that felt like a true ending, not only for Coach and Tami, but for all of the characters. In this case, the true ending that we sort of came up with was really about a new beginning, which is setting many of our characters on a new journey.

To read the whole interview go to: AVClub.com