End Credits: How I Broke Up with Hollywood

Lin writes a straightforward memoir of breaking into television writing and her decision to leave the business. Her career includes working on the Friends and Freaks and Geeks television shows. Although she earned an Emmy nomination for Desperate Housewives and two Writers Guild of America nominations for Breaking Bad, she doesn’t pull any punches about the unpleasant and chaotic working conditions under creators Marc Cherry (“an awful boss—demanding, unprofessional, and not very nice”) and Vince Gilligan (“all he cared about was his show. Not the people who worked on it”). She writes that what drove her from the business was the grueling hours, the egotistical bosses, and the political and dysfunctional aspects. There is plenty in this book to show that writing for television is not an easy career, and the people in control can be cruel. Fans of these shows will be interested in the glimpses the book offers into their writing rooms.