Of these examples, Carter’s transition makes immediate sense. In prime time, he sits—and pits—political and theological opponents across a table from each other. So a leap to the sparring of three of the most famous talking heads in history is not so difficult to imagine. "I have been playing with this concept since I was 24 and wrote a play about the young Hitler and Freud getting together," said Carter. "And I have always found that each different discipline I have dabbled in helps me with all the others. It’s like the way farmers keep their fields fertile by rotating the crops."

That notion has been seconded by other writers. "One nice thing about theater is it tends to be driven by character and not plot," Joel Fields said. "That has certainly trickled down and informed everyone’s approach on The Americans." Treem has also said: "Everything I know about writing TV I learned from writing plays, and everything I learned about writing plays I learned from TV."

This ricochet relationship has not always been thus—at least not since the first Golden Age of Television, in which dramatic works like Requiem for a Heavyweight and The Miracle Worker were penned for the small screen by theatrical scribes like Horton Foote, Frank Gilroy, and Abby Mann. Even the classic comedy series, Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, had a writing staff filled with those who also wrote for the stage: Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart.

Then came The Sopranos and shows like The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men, which were largely credited with ushering in television's second Golden Age. With the stigma of working in TV fading (as The New York Times noted in 2010) playwrights had fewer reservations about making the move to the weekly format. Let’s face it, the quality of what we see on television now is as high as in any art form.

And there's the money thing. Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Kushner, the most important playwright of the day, once told me he could not possibly live on his plays alone, no matter how many times they’re reprised. The prolific Theresa Rebeck has gone back and forth between stage and television, most recently with Smash on NBC and two subsequent plays on and off-Broadway.

Rebeck said there's no way she could support herself or her family on a theater career. And yet, it is the place where there’s more room for what she calls "the singular voice of the writer. There’s a strength and purity to the voice of the play, which is harder to achieve in television, where there is a lot of group-think and politics. [In television,] the goal is not telling stories, it’s making money." For the hungry writer, apparently, as well as for the bloated networks.

Playwrights may go to TV for the big bucks, but they bring important qualities honed on stage: the strong sense of character development mentioned by Joel Fields and a way with dialogue. At the same time, those in the theater world are often pleasantly surprised with TV writers. Wendy Kout, who created the series Anything But Love, worked on other shows, and is now writing plays (Naked in Encino, which just had its world premiere in Rochester) said, "Our medium was a great training ground for writing for stage. We learned discipline, how to deal with endless notes, we sweated deadlines, we also developed confidence and earned residuals, which makes it possible to be playwrights." David Lee, one of the creators of Frasier and co-writer of Can Can, added "On sitcoms, remember, we basically do a little play in front of a live audience every week."