The kitchen is definitely the heart of the house. It's Ruth's domain, and that's the center of the house. I would say that a lot of the best scenes we've ever written have taken place in the kitchen.

I think the point of the scene is to dramatize, with as much dark humor as possible, the notion that Ruth doesn't really know who George, the person she married so impulsively, is.

There's a real process of discovery for the writers as we plan out the season. We came up with the idea that somebody would be mailing George packages of feces-we didn't know at first who was mailing them. We sort of wanted people to believe it might be Arthur, and we knew it wasn't Arthur. But we hadn't decided who in George's life it was. I mean, all we knew about George was that he had been married six or seven times, and we sort of played that sweet and charming. Then we sort of found ourselves thinking, wait a second, this guy's been married six or seven times. That's a potentially huge story. We let it float for a little while, but we decided pretty early on who it was going to be.

I would imagine all of his ex-wives , the ones that are alive, are disgruntled, and all of his children, however many he's had. I mean, who in his past isn't disgruntled?

We get everyone's point of view.

We're all freaks that write the show. You know that line from Anna Karenina,--every happy family is the same, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. I think that's what the show's really about.