Writing Legend Don Reo Makes It Look Easy. Jay Makes It Look Awkward

Show Notes: On this episode legendary writer and show creator talks about being the first white guy on stage at the Apollo, getting a show about alcoholics cancelled because the network president was an alcoholic, the pleasure of writing a first draft, and driving way too fast, and how music drives his writings and the time he was oddly alone with Bruce Springsteen and told him a dirty joke.

Bio: on Reo has always been quick with a quip, from the time he got his first laugh sometime back in junior high school to the jokes he wrote for traveling comedians, through the half century he spent “pushing the limits” of sitcoms to the book he is currently negotiating with Random House—The Tibetan Joke Book of the Dead.  “It’s about Hollywood and death which are probably synonyms,” said Reo, the recipient of WGAW’s Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement to be presented at the 2026 Writers Guild Awards. “I think you’re born with a funny gene, or maybe it’s the way you’re raised. Nobody else in my family was particularly funny, but I got a laugh in the seventh grade, and I thought, ‘Maybe I can do this. This is nice because it stops people from hitting you.’ I read that Woody Allen was making $500 a week writing jokes, and I thought, ‘Well, fuck, I can do that!’” And he did, effectively launching a career that has spanned seven decades, earning writing credits on series such as Sanford and Son, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, M*A*S*H, and Rhoda and creating or co-creating Blossom, My Wife and Kids, The John Larroquette Show, and The Ranch.

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