As a massive admirer of Bad Robot and their creative works, it was great to come across this fantastic interview from GQ’s Alex Pappademas, who talks to some of the Bad Robot elders.

JJ. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Bryan Burk talk openly about LOST, Fringe, Alias, Felicity and the creative challenges that come with creating serialized television, and making it accessible in an era where networks tend to lean towards stand-alone stories.

It’s a fantastic interview with lots of good stuff. Continue past the jump, where I’ve posted an excerpt and links to the full interview.

GQ: JJ, is there anything in particular that you learned from the Lost experience that you brought to Fringe?

Roberto Orci [writer/executive producer, Alias; co-creator/executive producer, Fringe; executive producer/co-writer, Star Trek]: We needed Damon and Carlton.

JJ Abrams [co-creator/executive producer/director, Lost, Fringe and Alias; director/co-writer/executive producer, Star Trek]: And they weren’t available. No—my involvement with Lost really ended within the first season. And so a lot of what I learned from Lost was what people watching the show learned, which is what great characters and story looked like. I think the work that Damon and Carlton do on that show is obviously a high-water mark for TV, and the ambition. In terms of this show, it’s a very different show. Every show’s a different show. It’s easy, in retrospect, to make comparisons, but when you’re in the thick of it, when you’re working on something, even if it’s the same people, it’s suddenly a whole new nightmare challenge. And you scramble the best you can to do your best work, and it’s especially difficult when you’re doing a mythology show that’s also aspiring to be a standalone show. Lost was very lucky early on to get really good ratings. So the network was okay with mythology, and the show’s never apologized for it. Fringe, up front, said, “Hey, it’s a standalone show, and every week you’re going to get your own little separate mystery.” But the fans who come back to watch the show– and tonight, fingers crossed, that happens again– are the people who typically like the mythology. So there’s a weird dynamic that goes on that I still haven’t learned, from Alias to Lost to Fringe, how to necessarily solve.

GQ: How to please those two audiences simultaneously, you mean.

Abrams: Yeah. This group dealt with that with Star Trek. How do we do something that’s wholly original, while also doing something that’s wholly reverent of what’s come before? And how do you do a show that’s a week to week closed story and still tell a larger overarching story? It’s hard to please both sides of that all the time. It can be done in some instances, and other times, y’know, we fail miserably. But that’s definitely one of the challenges that we face, doing the show.

GQ: Was that always your intention, that Fringe would be more of a one-and-done show that didn’t depend as much on people following the mythology over a season-long arc, the way Lost does?

Orci: We always thought it would be both. That we’d have a little clue in each episode, but then every few episodes, you can have a highly mythological serialized episode. But in general, we always try to have that right balance.

Kurtzman: Which is a challenge, because I think our collective instincts veer toward serialization.

Orci: From watching Lost, I learned characters. That characters are key. The smallest character moment can be a gigantic revelation, as a viewer.

Damon Lindelof [co-creator/executive producer, Lost]: From the outside looking in, though, as a fan, and someone who had nothing at all to do with the development of Fringe, I felt the pilot clearly signified both shows. And the show that was more interesting to me as a viewer was the mythology, because of Nina Sharp and the mysterious and elusive William Bell. There’s a moment in the pilot where Walter looks into Peter’s eye, and I’m like, “What was that all about?” The problem with mystery of the week shows is, at the end of the episodes it’s just like that [brushes his hands off] and that’s not compelling television to me.

Bryan Burk [co-producer, Alias; executive producer, Lost/Fringe/Star Trek]: [On Fringe] I found us, referencing Alias more often than Lost, in the sense that that was a serialized show, and then in the middle of the series we started dabbling with making them self-contained.

Abrams: Well, ABC insisted on it.

Burk: Yeah. And it was hard to go there. Particularly when it’s such a serialized show. So from the beginning, the idea was, is it possible, how can we do it—how do we service two different audiences, those who just pop in for the individual episodes and doing what we all love, which is the mythology.

Kurtzman [to Carlton Cuse]: You and Damon have both worked on shows that were standalone, procedural shows. Do you feel that that can be as satisfying, storytellingwise?

Carlton Cuse [creator, Nash Bridges; executive producer, Lost]: I think they’re apples and oranges. A lot of people like the satisfaction that comes with seeing that case resolved every week. There’s a certain artificiality to it, but there’s also kind of a wish-fulfillment quality—a dead body falls at the beginning, and by the end of the episode you know who did it. The puzzle’s solved. I think those shows—I did Nash Bridges for six years, and that show had a little bit of ongoing sort of character mythology, but it was just a case every week. And there’s a certain satisfaction in doing that. And obviously the audience can just drop in whenever they want to that kind of a show.

Lindelof: There’s a difference between serialization and mythology, though. Like Grey’s Anatomy is heavily serialized, in terms of the character relationships—who’s sleeping with who, who’s angry at who, who’s just been fired. And you have to watch every episode to understand the depth of it.

You can find the entire interview here (part 1 – 4 pages).

Part 2 can be found here. (3 pages).

Photo Credit: Chris Buck

Thanks to FringeWatch for the heads-up.

Here is the first official LOST Season 6 promotional video, titled “The Beginning of the End”, which aired during last night’s episode of FlashForward. There’s no new footage but just the thought of LOST on the horizon makes it worth watching. At any rate, does anyone really want spoilers in the final season of the show?

JJ. Abrams spoke to SciFi Wire about his various projects, including: Fringe, LOST, Startrek 2 and Mission Impossible 4 (mild spoilers).

The season premiere of Fringe focuses on Olivia’s return to this world. When will we go back to “over there”?

Abrams: Well, the first episode is sort of meant to kind of reset things, and for those who have never seen the show, offer a way in. It has the advantage of being almost better than the pilot. You never have to have seen the show to see the first episode and hopefully get sucked in. So what happens in the very beginning, this crazy sort of situation that she finds herself in is in a sense meant to be the premise for what this year is about. So what you’re asking is really what happens over the course of the whole second season.

What will we learn about the Observers this year?

Abrams: Again, you saw in the first season, this guy who was around. You learn there is a relationship that this sort of oddball dude had with Walter [John Noble], but what he really did, what his purpose was, was not clear at all. This year we’ll get behind that.

And we’ll meet more of them?

Abrams: Check it out, you’ll see. It’s cool.

How is Lost going to make sense of all these timelines they’ve started and perhaps altered?

Abrams: Every Lost question should be directed to Damon [Lindelof], and I’ll give you his home number later. He said any hours you can call him. I don’t know what that means.

Could you come back to direct an episode of Lost?

Abrams: I’d love to direct another episode. It would be fun. You have to ask Damon, same thing.

Is there room in your schedule to do another show when you’re already stretched so thin with movies?

Abrams: Well, sadly, I’m working on a couple things right now that will test your theory, but the fact is that I’m working with some people like Jeff Pinkner and Joel Wyman, who are running Fringe, though it’s not quite the same thing as when I did Lost with Damon Lindelof. He really has run that show since the first year.

My involvement with Fringe, though, much more so than Lost, is, generally speaking, becoming less and less critical, because Jeff and Joel are there every day, and they’re really running. So when I wrote the first episode and am involved in this season, they’re doing an amazing job, which helps free up time to work on other things. I am incredibly ADD in that way.

Where are you in talks for Star Trek 2?

Abrams: We’re hopefully going to have everyone, obviously, from the first cast. I keep trying to spread this rumor that I’m going to recast Kirk as Greg Grunberg, but no one ever prints it.

Have you settled on what direction you’re going to take it?

Abrams: We’re just starting on that. Yes, we know the direction, but it’s very early. We’re working on a script right now still. I can tell you it’s cool. We have some really cool ideas, but it’s too early.

So Orci and Kurtzman have physically started writing?

Abrams: No, but we’ve started talking story, and Damon’s writing it with them.

Any momentum on Mission: Impossible IV?

Abrams: Yeah, we have a really cool story. It’s being written right now by Andre Nemec and Josh Applebaum.

What’s your ETA on when you’ll see the draft?

Abrams: We’re hoping to get it soon, like by the end of the year.

Could it work out for you to direct it?

Abrams: I’m open to anything.

What about that secret romantic movie Morning Glory?

Abrams: Morning Glory is being edited right now. It comes out next year.

Does it have a release date?

Abrams: Not yet.

[SciFi Wire]

TV Guide Fall Preview – featuring a segment on Fringe (starts around 1m45s mark – mild spoilers).

[TV Guide]

The Observer made another very public appearance, this time at the NFL game between the Giants and Skins on Sunday.

And here’s a cute Fringe ‘promo’ that was played during the commercial break:

With the new season of Fringe only 4 days away, I thought I’d put together my top 5 “Must See” Fringe Flashbacks:

1) David Jones and William Bell – This might not be the most obvious choice for a flashback, especially with Jones having met his end in the season finale, but he was a great character whose motivation for wanting William Bell dead could do with some more explanation. It’s no surprise that Bell has his opponents, but for Jones to go to such lengths to kill him, well, that’s a pretty big statement in my opinion.

2) Olive/Bell/Walter – The scene on the grainy VHS tape with young Olivia was one of those ‘blow you mind’ type moments of last season. Everything clicked in those 15-20 seconds, imagine what could be revealed with more time spent on those clinical trials? I so want to see Olive go all Carrie on us!

3) Young Peter & Walter on Thanksgiving night – The night that Peter and Walter nearly died in the frozen lake is my most anticipated flashback. It could offer some explanation as to why the Observer apparently saved them. I also get the impression that Walter hasn’t told Peter all there is to know about that particular night. I mean, we know that the Observer isn’t supposed to “get involved”, so what gives? Let’s see it!

4) Young Olive and Nick Lane – Olivia doesn’t have many friends, yet apparently she had Nick by her side as a child. The two of them were paired together during William Bell’s Cortexiphan trials, and you’d have to think that a flashback of their time together (and perhaps more importantly, their deactivation/separation) would make for useful mythology and character development.

5) W-ina – Nina told Peter that her and Walter used to spend a lot of time together back in the good ole’ days. I know that I’m not the only one who’d like to see what Nina and Walter used to get up to at the stables. Right? Oops, wrong list, this one belongs in the 5 Fringe Flashbacks We Don’t Need to See!

Of course, for many of these flashbacks they’d need to hire some good young actors to play the parts of kid Peter and Olivia, but Fringe has shown capability in that area with the excellent casting of Spencer List, and to a lesser extent, Lily Pilblad.

Season 2 of Fringe premiere September 17th on FOX. You can watch the sneak peek footage from the premiere episode here.

There are a few Fringey bits and pieces floating around this morning -- a new Fringe promo has arrived and John Noble and Anna Torv talk about the second season of Fringe:

Brand new Fringe season 2 promo:

FOX All Access host Chris Leary catches up with John Noble for a chat about the upcoming new season of Fringe:

Anna Torv talks about her hopes and expectations for Olivia in season 2:

“I actually feel like I’m getting further away from Olivia, to tell you the truth,” Torv said in a recent interview in Pasadena.

“I feel like when we started and I first read the pilot, there was this woman and she was fresh-faced and really energetic and a hard-working FBI agent, and all of the sudden her world got turned upside down. Now a year into it, I want her back and I don’t know how to get back to her. I always ask the writers questions and they say, ‘That’s just what Olivia’s feeling.’ ”

The season premiere will focus on Olivia’s traumatic return from the parallel universe. The show is set to become even more complicated with the introduction of several alternate realities.

“The one we are seeing now is slightly skewed, and then there’s the one that’s a little bit further away and one that’s a little bit further and a little bit further forever and ever and ever,” she said.

Even though she’s more confused about Olivia, Torv said these kinds of stories are the ones she loves the most.

“I love playing that stuff because it’s something solid to play. I love that much more than I do the autopsies and the bodies,” she said.

“What I find really difficult is all the procedural stuff that there isn’t any kind of personal connection to.”

Many fans are waiting for Olivia and Peter (Joshua Jackson) to become romantically involved. But the Australian native, who is married to season one co-star Mark Valley, isn’t sure that’s what she wants for her alter ego. Though Torv says she likes the idea of Olivia, Peter and Peter’s father Walter (John Noble) forming a family.

“I’m tempted to believe that at the end of the day, the nice shift would be for Olivia to become the nurturing maternal figures to these two lost boys,” she said. “The Wendy to their kind of Peter Pan. So I’m kind of resistant to making the Peter/Olivia thing a strong story line as opposed to going, ‘You lost boys really need someone to wrangle you a little bit.’ ”

[BostonHerald]

With the new season of Fringe less than a week away, what better time for a season 2 featurette and a quick look back at season 1 through the eyes of the cast and crew?

Season 2 Featurette

My Name Is Hurl

Exploring The Unexplainable

What You Know

Gene

Season 2 of Fringe premieres September 17th on FOX.

Here is a season 1 recap of Fringe.

[FOX Broadcasting]

Here is the Fringe Season 2 Photoshoot. You can find the related photos here and here.

[FringeBloggers]