TVSquad

Right before a Kitchen Nightmares-themed lunch, FOX held the press conference for the new J.J. Abrams show, Fringe. On the panel were Abrams and fellow executive producers Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orici, Jeff Pinkner, and Bryan Burk, with stars Joshua Jackson, Anna Torv, and John Noble appearing via satellite from New York.

The name The X-Files was brought up a number of times during the session, mainly because the show aims to tell a continuing story with a mythology, using scientific investigation methods and other plot points based in scientific fact. But, Abrams and company took pains to tell the gathered critics that, while the story of FBI agent Olivia Dunham (Torv) investigates the operations of the Massive Dynamic corporation will have an overall arc, there will be a "mystery of the week" to keep people who've just tuned in for the first time interested.

He realized that some of his previous shows (Alias, Lost) are a bit more complicated than that, which was brought home one day at Greg Grunberg's house.

"I watched a few minutes of Alias and I was so confused. It was impenetrable," he said to critics, eliciting a huge laugh. "I should know this... Who the fuck is that guy?" He went on to talk about the complicated rep his shows have gotten, and how his new one will be a bit different. "Fringe is in many ways an experiment for us. It has an overall story and endgame, it absolutely does. (We want to see if) we can do a show that has that ulitimate story, but also a show that you don't have to watch episodes one, two, and three to see episode 4."

With all that he has going on -- the Star Trek movie he's directing is coming along, he said -- he still hopes to stay involved with Fringe. "We co-wrote the first episode together. We're all involved in breaking stories." It's the first show since Lost that he's been in the co-creator's role, and, unlike that show, he feels he'll be closely involved in this one. "For me I'll be deeply involved in writing, rewriting, story breaking, story arcs. I can't wait to direct an episode. I felt jealous I couldn't do the pilot."

Torv, an Aussie, might be a candidate for next year's "Excellence in Outsourcing" award, as she's relishing the role of Agent Dunham. "It's great! It makes life at work fun. I get to wear flat shoes and run and work hard. We had a little bit of training with guns, little bits and pieces. We just started fight training."

Joshua Jackson, who plays the estranged son of Noble's character, an institutionalized scientist crucial to the investigation, had the funniest lines of the hour. When a reporter asked about the cow "that stole a couple of scenes" in the pilot, Jackson points to his ear and says "We can still hear you." For his part, Pinkner had a good line that, because of Customs regulations, the cow was "the only recast" made between the pilot, which was shot in Toronto, and the series, which is being shot in New York.

About the leaked pilot, there are a few differences between what the critics saw this week and what went out on BitTorrent earlier this summer, mostly involving some added interrogation scenes and a scene near the end of the episode. Abrams was "freaked" about the news, as was the rest of the producing crew, who obsess over episodes of all their shows until right before they air (and "sometimes after," one of them said). But since he wants people to be interested in the show, Abrams got the impression that it was a double-edged sword. I asked him -- in the scrum of reporters that gathered around him after the panel -- when and how he found out about the leak. He said he got an e-mail that told him that it had hit the peer-to-peer sites like BT; by then, he said, it was too late to pull it back.

Once I get a better idea what he told others in the scrum (my recorder hears better than I do, believe it or not... too much loud music has done in my hearing, I guess), I'll post more tidbits from Abrams later on.