A young production assistant named Tammy Teesdale stood beside the producer, her clipboard at the ready. Tammy was your typical television production assistant: pretty, competent, loyal, a good figure and sweet personality, but definitely not a rocket scientist or one whose name would ever be remembered by anyone she ever came in contact with.

Four very skinny, fashionably dressed gay men, the show’s writers, were crammed onto one of the couches. The program’s director, a nervous, bigoted homophobe named Donny Carruthers, was seated in an armchair opposite the couch. Until the meeting came to order he spent his time glaring at the writers.

A harried script girl with wild, unkempt hair and a new baby cleaved to one hip, named Marge Wreck, walked in and stood against a wall. The show’s assistant director, a competent young woman named Jennifer Cobb, was also standing against a wall. The contestant coordinator, Elsa Metzger, staring at everyone from behind her huge tortoiseshell eyeglasses, was leaning against another wall. Members of the network’s Standards and Practices Department (the censors), two tense, elderly bureaucrats named Albert Kligman and Herbert Siegel, were seated on a couch. The producer’s lawyer, Sigmond Levy, sat with them. Levy was dressed expensively as usual but looked like he had just rolled out of bed. None of the writers on one couch or the three men on the other couch offered a seat to any of the three women standing against the walls.

The producer tapped his desk with the top of his gold Cross ballpoint pen and ordered everyone to be quiet. “First of all, Ms. Wreck, must the child be in this office?”

“Yes. My sitter is sick.”

“Can’t the child play elsewhere while this meeting is in progress?”

“No.”

Marge Wreck was an excellent script girl, so the matter was dropped.

The producer sighed. He then said, “I want to discuss any problems we might have on our first show. Please keep in mind it is extremely important, I repeat, extremely important that we have an execution on our first program and not a boring cash payout. The first show’s ending will determine the success or failure of The Big Question. If the payoff’s an execution, The Big Question is a monster hit. If the payoff’s a boring cash payout, we’re a failure. So I repeat, we must have an execution on our premiere show.”

“Legally,” said Kligman, one of the network censors.

“Legally, of course,” added the producer, tossing a repugnant look at the obsequious Kligman. “With that in mind,” continued the producer, “I want to replace Theresa Mendavey.”

“Why?” asked Elsa Metzger, who was in charge of contestants. “Why replace Dr. Mendavey. She’s terrific. She’s young and pretty and smart…”

“She’s too smart,” said the producer.

“What’s so bad about that?” asked the director, Donny Carruthers, who tended to process things slowly.

The producer gave Carruthers a withering stare. “I just finished explaining, Donny, that what we need on our first program is an execution, and Mendavey is too smart. She will win the money.”