"The writers are writing human beings, and they're writing about the human condition and how difficult it is to function in that condition. I think it's one of the charms of the show, the idea of redemption and working towards becoming better people, for everybody involved"
About this Quote
Dzundza is doing something actors rarely get credit for: translating a writers-room philosophy into a moral pitch that feels earned, not preachy. By stressing that “the writers are writing human beings,” he’s quietly pushing back against the two big degradations of TV storytelling: the plot machine and the archetype factory. This isn’t a show that treats characters as chess pieces moved for shock value; it’s one that insists messiness is the point.
The phrase “how difficult it is to function in that condition” is the tell. He’s naming the human condition not as a poetic abstraction but as an everyday impairment: fatigue, impulse, pride, fear, the way trauma calcifies into habit. It’s actor language, too, a defense of performance-driven television. If functioning is hard, then every small choice on screen becomes legible, playable, and, crucially, forgivable.
Then he pivots to “charm,” an interestingly soft word for what is basically an ethical framework. Charm here isn’t cuteness; it’s the seduction of watching people attempt decency when decency costs them something. “Redemption” is also carefully democratized: “for everybody involved.” That line widens the moral aperture beyond a single protagonist’s arc into an ensemble ecosystem, where even secondary characters get to be more than collateral damage.
Contextually, Dzundza’s point reads like a vote of confidence in long-form storytelling’s biggest advantage: time. The show can let people fail, relapse, backslide, and still keep the door cracked open to change. That’s not naive optimism; it’s a commitment to seeing characters the way we want to be seen ourselves - not as what we did at our worst, but as what we’re still trying to become.
The phrase “how difficult it is to function in that condition” is the tell. He’s naming the human condition not as a poetic abstraction but as an everyday impairment: fatigue, impulse, pride, fear, the way trauma calcifies into habit. It’s actor language, too, a defense of performance-driven television. If functioning is hard, then every small choice on screen becomes legible, playable, and, crucially, forgivable.
Then he pivots to “charm,” an interestingly soft word for what is basically an ethical framework. Charm here isn’t cuteness; it’s the seduction of watching people attempt decency when decency costs them something. “Redemption” is also carefully democratized: “for everybody involved.” That line widens the moral aperture beyond a single protagonist’s arc into an ensemble ecosystem, where even secondary characters get to be more than collateral damage.
Contextually, Dzundza’s point reads like a vote of confidence in long-form storytelling’s biggest advantage: time. The show can let people fail, relapse, backslide, and still keep the door cracked open to change. That’s not naive optimism; it’s a commitment to seeing characters the way we want to be seen ourselves - not as what we did at our worst, but as what we’re still trying to become.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Improvement |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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