John and Craig discuss the hot new trend of firing jerks from successful TV shows. Why is it happening now like never before? Is there an important distinction between being “difficult” and being a jerk?

We also follow up on listener suggestions for outlining tools, and answer questions about the landscape of feature comedy, the art of biopic postscripts, shopping agreements, and the etiquette around replacing another writer.

Links:

* A series is in development based on Elif Batuman’s New Yorker article about rental families.
* Some listener-recommended outliners include Workflowy, Gingko, Cloud Outliner, OmniOutliner from Omni Group, Pages, Causality, and good old index cards.
* Some recently fired examples include Roseanne Barr, Jeffrey Tambor, Clayne Crawford, and Bryan Singer
* A question of etiquette regarding replacing another writer
* No Thanks!, a game by Thorsten Gimmler
* Faraway 3, a puzzle game for iOS
* The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!
* The USB drives!
* John August on Twitter
* Craig Mazin on Twitter
* John on Instagram
* Find past episodes
* Outro by Jon Spurney (send us yours!)

Email us at [email protected]

You can download the episode here.