"The pilot script set the bar so high, and Lee Toland Krieger directed it with such aplomb and panache," Phillips says proudly of Prodigal Son's beginnings. "It was like, 'Are we going to be able to keep this up?' You see so many shows where they do a lot of crazy, cool things and spend a lot of money on the pilot, and then the quality of the show just gradually goes down. Ours hasn't. Ours has gone up, if anything. They have kept up that level of ingenuity and ingeniousness."
But Phillips adds that it's not just the "crimes of the week" or the intricate plotting that makes Prodigal Son tick. "It's so exciting, but the relationships, which I think are ultimately the backbone of any successful television show, have only gotten deeper and the characters have gotten more complex," he says. "They never do things in broad strokes. It's always very specific. We've all been able to grow into our characters because the writers have paid attention and write to our strengths."
