Understanding the Production Pipeline for Network Television Scripts
I spent about six years working in a writers' room for a network comedy, and if there's one thing that consistently catches people off guard, it's how little the final shooting script looks like the polished draft that gets handed around in pre-production. Boris Kodjoe has been in several projects where this gap between script and screen becomes really visible, and his recent work on Mom-related content has highlighted the collaborative machinery that actually gets words onto a page. Let's talk about what's going on behind that. When people ask about unlocking or understanding how a show like Mom gets its scripts finalized, they're usually looking at the relationship between the showrunner, the writers, and the actors. The script isn't just written once and filmed. It moves through multiple layers of revision, table reads, network feedback, and on-set adjustments. For someone like Boris Kodjoe, who came into acting from a dance background, the script is more of a living document than a fixed text. He's spoken in interviews about how much he collaborates with the writing team on character beats before anything hits the set floor. The writers room process for a multi-camera sitcom like Mom runs on a tight schedule. Each episode gets assigned to a writer or pair of writers, who produce a first draft in about five to seven days. That draft then goes to the showrunner, who does a pass, then it hits the full room for notes. You might see four or five major revisions before table read, and then anywhere from two to four more after actors have had a chance to bring the lines to life. That last stage is where most of the actual magic happens, and it's also where most people who aren't inside the building don't realize the work is still being done.
One thing I learned the hard way is that the first draft is never the draft you should judge the quality of the show by. It's supposed to be complete enough to evaluate structure and character arcs, but dialogue almost always needs work at the table read stage. I watched a perfectly fine script fall apart at table read because the actor playing the role had built a completely different emotional rhythm for the character, and the writer had to rewrite entire scenes on the spot to match what the performer was bringing. That's normal. It's not a failure of writing, it's part of the process. For actors like Boris Kodjoe, the collaborative relationship with the showrunner and head writer tends to deepen over multiple seasons. By season three or four of any given show, the actors know the voice of the world well enough that their notes on dialogue can actually improve scenes rather than derail them. I've seen it happen where an actor catches a line that doesn't match their character's established speech pattern, and the writer agrees and reshapes it in twenty minutes rather than spending an hour arguing about it. That kind of trust doesn't happen with every actor or every writing team, but when it does, it shows clearly in the final product. There's a practical workflow to this that most fans never see. After table read, the showrunner produces what's called a polish draft. This incorporates any network notes, scheduling constraints, or performer feedback. The polish draft goes to the director, who then works with the actors on set. Sometimes the director changes blocking in a way that makes a scene need adjustment, and the writer might be called in to rewrite a beat that same afternoon. The script supervisor tracks every change, and those tracked changes are what become part of the official archive. What airs on television is usually the third or fourth version of that day's script at minimum.
I ran into a specific problem once where a network notes memo wanted us to cut a character's arc for budget reasons, essentially removing five episodes of storyline from a season outline we'd already locked. The workaround wasn't to fight the note outright, which would have burned political capital we'd need later, but to restructure the episodes so the character appeared less frequently without actually resolving their storyline. The arc stayed intact, the budget held, and the audience didn't notice the reduction in screen time. This kind of problem-solving is what the writing staff does constantly, and it's not something you learn from any single script. It comes from being in the room when these decisions are made repeatedly. Another counter-intuitive thing about network TV scripts is that the jokes are often written in pencil, not pen. Multi-camera sitcoms still use the pencil draft system for a reason: it signals to the entire production team that nothing is final until the show airs. Pencil means it can change. Pen means it's locked. You'll see pencil drafts labeled as such in production files, and you'll see pen drafts that are essentially the same material after the showrunner signs off. The distinction matters for legal reasons and for understanding what stage a script is in during production. Looking at the Mom series specifically, the writing team operated with a clear hierarchy that served the show well. Chuck Lorre's name appears as executive producer because of his production company's involvement, but the day-to-day creative decisions for individual episodes come from the credited showrunner and the writing staff assigned to that episode. Boris Kodjoe's character, when he was part of the ensemble, would receive his sides and script packets typically forty-eight hours before the taping date. That's standard for multi-cam production. Single-cam shows sometimes give actors the full script weeks in advance, but the fast turnaround of multi-cam means rehearsal time is compressed and the script moves quickly from draft to filmed product.
Get the Full Details
If you're interested in tracking how scripts evolve across a season, the most reliable public source is usually the episode transcripts posted by networks or streaming platforms after broadcast. These aren't identical to the shooting scripts, but they're close enough to see structural choices. Compare transcript from episode one with transcript from episode ten of the same season and you'll often see character voices shift noticeably. That's the collaborative process at work, refining and adjusting based on what the performers and writers discovered during filming. There are also DVD and Blu-ray commentaries from the show's producers and writers that walk through specific episode scripts in detail. Those are valuable because they reveal the decision-making process in real time. You'll hear the writer talk about why a certain scene was cut, why a joke didn't land in the table read, or why a line was rewritten three different ways. This is the closest thing to a masterclass in television script development that exists publicly, and it's available without any special access or subscription beyond owning the physical releases. What I find most useful when analyzing any script from a show like Mom is to read it straight through once without taking notes, then read it a second time with a pencil, marking every line that feels out of character or every scene that seems to exist purely to advance plot rather than reveal character. That second reading tells you more about the show's actual priorities than any interview or behind-the-scenes article ever will. The script is the blueprint. Everything else is commentary on the blueprint.
Practical Steps for Understanding Script Development on Television Shows
Tracking Revisions and Collaborative Input
Start by getting access to the final shooting script for any episode you're studying. These are occasionally leaked online, and production companies sometimes share them with industry trade publications. Compare whatever you find to the aired episode and note every difference. Dialogue changes, scene cuts, added transitions, adjusted endings. Those differences are the fingerprints of the collaborative process. Network notes are another layer most people miss. The writing staff receives formal notes from the network roughly halfway through the draft process. Those notes typically address pacing, sensitivity concerns, budget limitations, and sometimes creative direction. The staff responds to each note with either compliance, a counter-proposal, or a refusal with reasoning. I've seen well-reasoned refusals stick and I've seen compliant changes make episodes worse. There's no formula for which network notes are worth following. The actor's table read notes are the next layer. When actors perform the script in front of the room, they flag lines that feel wrong, scenes that drag, and moments where the character's motivation isn't clear. The writer takes these notes and revises. This is usually where dialogue gets its sharpest edges. A line that works on paper but sounds stiff when spoken will get rewritten immediately. This is why professional actors are so valuable in the writers room, even when they're not writing.
Common Pitfalls for People Analyzing TV Scripts
The biggest mistake people make is treating the final broadcast version as the definitive script. It's not. It's the most polished version that survived a long chain of edits and compromises. The original story outline or the first draft often contains cleaner, more ambitious work that got cut for time, budget, or tone reasons. If you want to understand the creative vision, you need to see what was removed, not just what remained. Another pitfall is assuming that every line in a script was written by the credited writer. In multi-camera production, lines get moved around, swapped, and rewritten by anyone in the room. The credit system doesn't reflect the actual authorship of individual jokes or scenes. This is standard practice and it's not misleading, but it does mean you can't attribute every line to one person. Finally, don't confuse network standards and practices with creative decisions. A script might lose a joke because it violates a content guideline, not because the joke was bad. Those cuts are invisible to viewers unless you're reading the revised drafts side by side with the final version. This is especially true for shows that air on broadcast networks versus streaming platforms.
What This Means for Aspiring Writers and Creators
The process I've described here is the actual workflow used on shows like Mom and many others in the multi-camera comedy space. It's not glamorous, it's not solitary, and it moves fast. The writers who thrive in this environment are the ones who can take notes without ego, rewrite under pressure, and maintain a consistent vision while remaining flexible enough to adapt to changes from dozens of different stakeholders. For anyone looking to understand how a show's script gets built, the best approach is to study the final product backward. Watch the episode, read the script, identify what works and what doesn't, then trace those elements back through the collaborative layers that shaped them. The gaps between what was written and what ended on screen are where the real creative work happens. That's where collaborators like Boris Kodjoe and the writing teams he works with bring a script from a collection of pages into something that functions as a coherent piece of television. The system has limitations. Not every note is good. Not every actor's feedback improves the scene. Sometimes the network passes on a script that was ready to go, and the writer has to start over from scratch with a completely different approach. The process is designed to catch problems before they reach the audience, but it also filters out some of the riskier creative choices along the way. What survives the process is usually functional and watchable, even if it occasionally lacks the edge of the original vision.
That's the tradeoff. Collaboration produces consistency and polish, but it also smooths out the rough edges that sometimes make television memorable. The writers and actors who understand this tension and navigate it well are the ones whose work stands out over multiple seasons and projects. Boris Kodjoe's presence on shows like Mom demonstrates that kind of steady, collaborative professionalism, and the script that ends up on screen is proof of the entire team's work, not any single person's.
