To pull it off, Thiel enlisted filmmaker-brothers Joe and Anthony Russo as the show's producer-director team. "It's a way to bring a more balanced creative vision," Anthony Russo says of the team approach. "I think it's also a result of the influence of HBO, where they have had more of an auteur focus to the television that they produce, and it's trickling into the major networks. The inclusion of producer-directors is part of the move in television toward a more cinematic form of storytelling."
     How do the brothers divide the job? "We don't have a formal division like the Hughes brothers," Joe Russo says, "where one deals specifically with the camera work and the other deals with the actors. We sort of both do everything. But it's been ten years that we've been working together, so you know what your own strengths are, what his strengths are, and you naturally gravitate toward that. Tony's really great with structure and story, and I'm better with dialogue and character work, so that's the way we approach it."
     For Hoopes, it's working. "They look at characters as the main ingredient in a show," she says, "and they let us create and open up a world." Adds Hughes: "It almost makes you never want to work for a single director again, because they work so well together. You feel like you have another set of eyes that are protecting you and helping your performance along."
     Still, the logistical challenges have been many, not the least of which was where to shoot. "There's a reason you've never seen an airport show on television — because you can't build an airport on a backlot," Russo says. "Only Steven Spielberg can do that."
     For his recent feature, The Terminal Spielberg had an elaborate, three-story set built outside Palmdale, California. LAX producers inquired about shooting there, but the electricity costs alone were beyond their budget. Fortunately, a space opened up at Ontario International Airport, thirty-five miles east of downtown L.A. "At LAX a lot of our time would be spent going through security areas," Russo says, "whereas we have our own closed terminal in a non-secure area of Ontario, which makes it a much easier space to work in."
     Though not an ideal location for Locklear, who is commuting nearly 100 miles each way from her home in Ventura County. "It's a real trek," says the actress, noting that costar Hughes also has to make the long drive. "He asked me, 'Do you have a helicopter?' I said, 'If it goes past thirteen [episodes], maybe we can work something out with the network.'"
     Originally, the network was looking to the former Spin City star to lead a half-hour sitcom but sent her a pilot script of what was then known as HUB. "It was right after 9/11," Locklear recalls, "and I thought, 'This is too soon.'" The script was shelved, but it resurfaced last year with Locklear on board as the idiosyncratic Harley. "I was really drawn to LAX, and to this character and her quirks. Also, I have a dog named Harley, and I thought, 'This all means something.'"
     For perennial TV favorite Underwood (L.A. Law, Sex and the City), the series presents a chance to get real. "The kind of acting that I aspire to is work that is connected to reality and a character who has some flaws," says the performer, who was seen on Sex as the dreamy team doctor of the New York Knicks and the main squeeze of Cynthia Nixon's Miranda. With LAX's cunning and self-absorbed De Souza, he gets his wish. "When I heard about this character — who was this political animal and ran the airport, as they say in the promo, 'with an ego the size of a 747' — I said, 'That's going to be fun, but what are his personal demons?' One of the things that I threw into the mix was, 'What if he has a gambling addiction?' And we find that out in the second episode."