Neil Goldman

For any aspiring TV writer in Hollywood, it usually begins with the long road of writing and pitching spec scripts, episodes written for specific shows. In Neil Goldman's case, he moved on quickly after selling one to the family comedy "Step by Step," in which a couple, each with their own children, must learn to live together, and in 1998 to the subversive Seth McFarlane animated series "Family Guy," writing a quartet of episodes for that show and graduating to the position of Story Editor. Goldman subsequently parlayed this success into executive producer slots on a couple of NBC live action comedies, "Scrubs" from 2006 to 2009 and "Community," following a lawyer who is forced to attend a community college and tolerate its staff and students, beginning in 2009. Along the way, he also wrote 14 episodes of "Scrubs" from 2001 onwards, each one titled with a phrase that began with the word "My...," a staple of the wacky medical series. "Scrubs" brought Goldman three Emmy Awards nominations, one for his writing and a pair for his producing efforts. But in all three cases, he came away empty-handed.