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.

(S02E11) When Kristin offered up the chance to review the Fall (Season?) Finale of Heroes, I couldn't resist stepping in to help. While this episode lived up to a lot of the promises of the season, much like last season's finale, it may have been a little lighter on the action than you'd want. There are a lot of big changes for a lot of the characters and yes, the promised "hero" death. We get resolutions on the virus plot, the Sylar/Mya journey, Hiro's quest to stop Adam, the Bennet situation, and in the end, there's enough to entice us to come back for more. It's all here and let me tell you, if Kristin was yawning and checking her watch through the last episode, there wasn't time this week. This episode is absolutely jam-packed from start to finish. "Volume Two" wraps, and as with last year we get a teaser of Volume Three. But we'll get to all of that after the jump.

(S02E09) "You've gone native. Are you kidding me?" Noah Bennet to Mohinder Suresh.

Just when you thought Mohinder couldn't get any stupider, he goes and shoots Noah Bennet in the eye. He is really in too deep with this company. And lately, he is making Matt Parkman look like a genius. (Wait, did Parkman just make me say that? Dumb joke, I know.) More on this after the jump because it basically took up the whole episode.

But before I go through all the storylines for this week, let me just say that I was so relieved that those ridiculous mascara-plague twins were absent from this week's Heroes. And just so I don't get too excited about it, I put a picture of them in the post to remind me that they are still on the show. (However, they are the vehicle to get the devilish Sylar back in the states so I suppose I forgive them on some level.)

Fans of Heroes who want to know more about the happenings behind the scenes rejoice! YouTube user buckshotwon has loads of clips of behind the scenes of everything Heroes. By "everything" I mean from behind the scenes when shooting the show, to what happened before/during/after award shows and the World Tour!

I'm sure you are wondering who this mysterious buckshotwon is? Well, he is none other than Heroes' Adrian Pasdar (he plays Nathan Petrelli). As he puts it on his YouTube page, Pasdar offers "random snapshots of the way [he sees] the world." But what will interest Heroes fans is that the cast seems to love being part of his clips (see "Grunny Goes Nuts!" after the jump for an example); therefore, you can expect funny performances and some cool footage from the sets (check the "Primatech" clip).

NBC had a special event on the set of Heroes today to announce that they're going global ... literally. The cast and creators will be traveling to at least seven major cities to promote the first season of the show in places it hasn't premiered yet. Although according to Tim Kring it's been watched (sometimes illegally, *gasp*) worldwide over the internet. Cities confirmed so far are: Toyko, Hong Kong, Singapore, Munich, Paris, London, and New York. We're fairly sure they've heard of it in New York City, call us crazy.

Nissan will be sponsoring the tour, which will also be going green in an effort to "reduce the carbon footprint," Kring said, although he wasn't quite sure how, since jets and cars eat are on the forefront of global polluting. Maybe they can bike around Europe? That'd be a nice special feature on next season's DVD. Greg Grunberg, who plays the mind-reading Matt Parkman, said he was visiting Paris with his wife recently, and the show hasn't even premiered on the air there. However, he had people coming up to him left and right who recognized him from seeing the show on their computers. Sacrebleu!

Obviously I mean the actor, David Anders. But wouldn't it be beyond cool to see the character of Sark show up on Heroes? Maybe he got some sort of power from being so close to all that Rambaldi business. Maybe he can have the power to impersonate anyone's voice exactly (Anders is actually from Oregon but does a British accent perfectly).

Kristin over on E! is reporting that Anders is under negotiations to join the NBC hit this fall. He would play a new character named Kane (Isabelle has details on the character here), though there are no other details about the character. Of course, it's not a done deal, but it would be fantastic if this actually happened.

[via TV Tattle]

In preparation for the much-hyped Heroes finale, which is spread out over three episodes, Entertainment Weekly offer five different covers which are said to contain clues for the upcoming spectacular installments of the series. "Each of Entertainment Weekly's five Heroes covers is packed with references and teasers to the finale episodes of the season," reveals the magazine when describing this covers special. EW.com even invites fans to come back in the coming days/weeks for more information about each cover.

Ever wanted to get a hold of one of Isaac's paintings? If so, you'll be happy to hear that NBC has decided to auction some of the paintings seen on Heroes and made by renowned graphic illustrator Tim Sale.

Vivi Zigler, Executive Vice President NBC Digital Entertainment and New Media, announced in a press release that NBC was proud of this event as it would not only allow fans a chance to own a piece of the hit show but also benefit the Epilepsy Foundation. This foundation was chosen because Heroes' cast member Greg Grunberg is highly involved with it since his son Jake suffers from epilepsy.

Here's an interesting little tidbit from the world of Heroes: it looks like NBC has changed their mind about Zach.

It certainly looked to fans like Zach (Thomas Dekker) was gay, for four reasons: one, when Claire's nasty cheerleader friend made a remark about Zach, he said something to Claire along the lines of "I'm comfortable with who I am." Two, NBC's recap of that episode says he is. Three, the character's MySpace page lists his orientation as "not sure." And four, creator Tim Kring talked about the character being gay (and what happened with an NBC exec) in this interview.

So people are wondering: did NBC change the orientation of the character? Did Dekker? Did the writers change it? Here I was going to say "oh, it doesn't really matter if he's straight or gay," and if this was real life it wouldn't, but if someone actually changed his orientation for some reason (or reasons) on a TV show, that's worth talking about.

[via Pop Candy]