Damon Lindelof on format vs story

I think to just say that Breaking Bad is about a chemistry teacher who starts cooking meth because he believes that he has a short period of time to live and he wants to provide for his family is the worst possible log line ever to describe the show that I've been watching for the past five or six years. To say that Six Feet Under is about a family that owns a funeral parlor is so reductive. The Wire is not a television show about cops trying to take down drug dealers. That's the format of that show, but that's not what it's about. These shows are so rich that you can come at them from 50 different angles and that's why they persevere. I think the idea that television has evolved to this place of real thematic richness and the fact that you no longer have to get 10 million people to watch your show in order to propagate its survival are the best things that have ever happened to storytelling in this medium.

From here.