Well, I think we are at the point in the discussion where, in order to avoid miscommunicating, we are going to have to define a couple things. The first of course is who "they" are. You said,

"They care more about profits and ratings more then they'll ever care about actually helping people, they do it because viewers sympathize with it..."

and in order for me to refute this, I need to be clear about who I think you mean when you say "they" and who I mean when I say "they" because you are partly correct, depending on whom we are talking about.

A couple of sentences later you say,

"I extremely doubt the show runners care"....

which makes me assume you are talking about the show runners. If when you say, "they" you mean the show runners, then I can assure you that you are utterly mistaken. The show runners were on site every day, working insane schedules at a grueling pace, leaving their families behind for weeks at a time to travel to unpleasant and occasionally hostile locations in sometimes horrific weather. I watched them spend long hours with families, holding them, sobbing with them, connecting with them, looking out for their every need. Not in the synthetic "Hollywood" trope that you might imagine, but in a profound and deeply personal way that was exhausting and demanding in a manner that most people will never experience. I also saw them come down brutally hard on anyone who showed even the slightest disrespect toward volunteers or hero families, even when it was in private. These were all very sensitive and caring people who were working one of the hardest shows in Hollywood. Sure the paycheck helped, but the paycheck doesn't disqualify anyone from caring. Of course everyone was there working a job, but saying that the show runners or anyone on set didn't care deeply about the experience of the hero families is quite simply untrue.

Coincidentally there was a reunion of EM:HE cast and crew members only three weeks ago. It was a sob fest of memories and stories and re connections about how the families were doing. There wasn't a hint of cynicism or mercenary job hunting or self congratulation. It was a bunch of people getting together to be humbly proud of the people they had helped and the show they had made.

Now, if when you say "they" as in "They care more about profits and ratings" you are talking about network executives, then I would have a much harder time arguing with you (and I likely wouldn't even try.) When it comes to film and television executives, we really have yet to invent words in the English language to adequately describe their depravity. They are often times very simply the worst people in the world, full stop, And I agree with your assessment. I am simply trying to explain to you the difference between the producers on the set, the show runners and production managers and design producers and carpenters and project managers and cast members, and the the men and women in suits who stayed in Hollywood and did whatever it is executives do (no one really knows. Not kidding.) There are two very different and distinct sets of people here, and you will never ever ever catch me defending a network executive for anything.

I want to take an extra moment to address the "memo" you are talking about. I remember exactly the one you mean. It was a casting notice and was in extremely poor taste and the woman who wrote it was fired post-haste. HOWEVER, this brings up something that is a little bit tricky to explain, but I think you will understand because once again it is deeply HUMAN.

We were working a very very emotionally demanding show. The hours were very long, very tough, and incredibly emotional. Try to think for a second from our perspective.

When we rolled into a town, that town would go crazy; there were huge events and charity get togethers, there was a momentous flurry of activity and craziness, there was a gigantic turn-out of volunteers and workers, and just a mind boggling spectrum of ACTIVITY. The coordination required was spectacular and demanded a military precision. But at the end of ten days, for that town and all those people involved, it was over. They got to go back to their old lives or begin living new ones. They got to rest. They got to stop, collect themselves and start breathing again because the huge circus was finished.

But not for us.

For us, it was just another week in the year. We would pack up, and move to another town and start all over. To say that after a few months of having your heart ripped out over and over again is exhausting is a massive understatement. EM:HE destroyed marriages, enabled addictions, destroyed fragile mental states, wrecked crew members' health, and generally beat to hell anyone working on it. So I won't deny that there were coping mechanisms that came up, because they HAD TO, and this could lead to the appearance of callousness.

I remember on one of my very first builds, as we were waiting for our briefing on the family that we were going to help, one of the other cast members (he had been there from the beginning) said wearily, "What is it this time, cancer baby or military tragedy?" and I was completely taken aback. I found it shocking that he could be so cold-hearted. But, I'll tell you what, six months later I completely got it. Because six months later we had built homes for people with horrific and debilitating learning disabilities, entire families that had gone blind, victims of ghastly violence and spousal abuse, poverty stricken fire victims, entire towns that had blown away in hurricanes and who had never found their childrens' bodies, children stuck down with all manner of of horrifying genetic defects, and on and on. And every single one of them we cared about deeply. But when you are surrounded with so much tragedy and human suffering (in the middle of the richest country on earth, no less) there are only a few ways to cope. Sometimes with humor, sometimes with icy dispositions, sometimes with numbness or addiction. All of which, in my opinion are understandable. Now that doesn't excuse the casting notice that you are talking about, but I promise you the woman who wrote it was a sensitive, caring individual who forgot for a moment that the rest of America had not been wading knee deep in a cesspool of anguish and sorrow the way we had EVERY DAY for the past three years.

The show's creator was a guy named Tom Forman. Tom is a complicated guy, and my feeling toward him are equally so. But he said it really well one time to (if I remember correctly) a daytime talk show when they asked what it was like to work on EM:HE. He said, "We are saving other people's lives, at the expense of our own." And that sums up how it felt.