Esquire in 2014, Johnson explained why he needed to dial back Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's (yes, him) first treatment for the first draft of the original series. "It was too Hunter! We conceived the idea about three in the morning at his place; he was my neighbor in Aspen. I had a commitment at CBS for a 22 episode series, anything I wanted to do. I could have done the phone book if I wanted. And Hunter was broke, needed money. I didn't really need to do the series, but I thought it would be a good way to look after my buddy," Johnson explained. "So I conceived it with him. It was originally called Off-Duty. It was about two off-duty cops. In the show, a lot of the storylines had to do with us doing off-duty business to help Cheech pay for expenses. We had a security service, a private detective agency, stuff like that, which fed stories into the other stuff. Anyway, that's how it was conceived."