If it sounds here like Spade is starting to slip into his stand-up shtick, he avowed that his days as a Hollywood Lothario are long behind him — a past stage that he continues to crack wise about “just because it’s so ingrained I can’t turn it around now.” (He is also the father of a 10-year-old daughter, Harper, whose mother is Jillian Grace, a former Playboy Playmate.)

Asked if he could ever envision himself settling down, Spade got circumspect for perhaps the only time in our conversations.

“It’s very hard for me, for various reasons, which we won’t get into,” he said. “Too much data, too many gigabytes. But I have been trying to do that. I’ve known someone for a long time. I’ve been trying to make something work.”

Not that he would ever allow himself to express this in his comedy. “If I say, ‘Yeah, I’m seeing someone and it’s going well,’ they just go, ugh,” he explained. “I don’t think that’s what they want to hear.”

If time and experience have taught Spade anything, it’s that he shouldn’t approach “Lights Out” like his career depends on it, because, in fact, it doesn’t. “It’s not my first job and it’s not my last job,” he said.

This doesn’t mean he isn’t deeply invested in its success. But from this unencumbered vantage point, he feels the freedom to take the show in whatever direction he wants to and make it a repository for the kind of comedy he wants to do, rather than giving it away in increments on other people’s talk shows.

“Now that we’re a show, for however long we’re a show, I’d rather put it on here,” Spade said. “And if it’s forever, it’s forever. I got the forever deal. They said forever or three months, whatever comes first.”