Fringe Will Start Off Jumping the Shark

On Fringe's slam-bang setup: "When we did the pilot for Lost, we had the monster appear at the end of the first act because we wanted to say to the audience, 'We're jumping the shark now. We're not going to wait. We're doing crazy shit from the beginning.' On Fringe, we very consciously made what is in many ways a preposterous, front-end scientific story choice in order to say to the audience, 'This is what you're going to be getting on the show.' It may be more extreme in some episodes, less so in others."

On the Fringe mythology: "I'm drawn to overarching, long-term stories so there will still be a mythology through the evolution of characters and revelations about what 'the pattern' means. But we're writing the show so it is not as serialized as Lost.

"What made X-Files so great is that they'd do a number of shows that have nothing to do with the mythology. Fringe is closer to E.R. almost, where you have these ongoing relationships and story lines, and yet week to week, when the door bursts open, you're faced with the insane urgent situation of the week."

Science fact, not fiction: "Though you could say it's science fiction, the weird thing about Fringe is that a lot of the stuff is at least in the realm of possibility. It's not sci-fi -- it's just sci.