It just fell together that way. I mean, the first assignment was now that he’s in the stocks, how does he get out, and how does he redeem himself? I think the main flow of logic was just realizing, okay, at some point, they have to let him out of the stocks, but would they just forgive him? Probably not. And would he screw something else up? Probably would. Will wanted the main comic engine of the story to be the way Tandy keeps offering up his own punishments and then screwing them up and then punishing himself harder to compensate.

The way Will thinks, he really can’t like an idea until he can picture how he’s going to play it, and how he’ll make it funny as an actor. He thinks in set pieces. So I don’t remember exactly how it came up, but we were talking in the area of punishments, and someone said shock collar.

That episode was ridiculous fun. Not terribly fun to shoot, though. It was ridiculously hot that week, and we had a ton of outdoor scenes. So when you watch Will doing all that physical stuff outdoors, keep in mind it was 100 degrees the whole time.

It feels like Phil is beginning to snap here and become fairly unhinged. His gun stuff with Phil is pretty intense. Was this an intentional move? Did you guys discuss his sanity slipping a little, or does Phil just have a blind spot towards Tandy?

It was intense, and there was a little discussion about it, because we worried a little that maybe it was kind of abrupt. We worried if we had really earned that emotion from Phil 2. But then we realized we had established a hot streak in Phil 2, when he drags Tandy out to the desert. And when that happened, it felt good and right to us. We liked having a character who is looking at Tandy from that military/survivalist perspective, like “this guy is a dangerous liability and someone needs to have the guts to put him in his place.” So we just embraced the reality that this character is old-school male, and a bit of a cowboy, and is pissed off at Tandy for more than a couple good reasons.