The Brainy Bunch
NBC wasn't kidding when it promised a smart sitcom for midseason. Most of the writers on A.U.S.A., a lawyer comedy about young assistant U.S. attorneys, starring Scott Foley, are Ivy League graduates--including the show's creator-executive producer Rich Appel (Harvard undergrad and law) and story editor Jeff Westbrook (Harvard alum and former Yale professor.) Granted, plenty of Harvard, Cornell, and Brown types make livings as sitcom scribes in Hollywood (The Simpsons) and King of the Hill, for example, seem to have a pipeline from Cambridge, Mass.), but they usually don't fill an entire writer's room like they do on A.U.S.A. "When I think of the money wasted in that room between me and Jeff alone..." jokes Appel, who says it's purely coincidental that he hired 10 Ivy Leaguers. "My mom says to me, 'Can you now say law school was worth it?'" A.U.S.A. focuses on New York City's U.S. Attorney's office, where Appel worked for three years before highttailing it to Hollywood after landing a job at--you guesed it--The Simpsons. NBC's expecting sophisticated comedy from A.U.S.A., and Appel plans to deliver: "I will have airtight mathematical equations! The toughest questions of law will be discussed and analyzed ad nauseam.!"
