FBC PUBLICITY: Fringe Conference Call September 17,
2010/2:00 p.m. EDT
SPEAKERS
Marissa Flores – FBC Publicity
Jeff Pinkner – Executive Producer, Fringe
J. H. Wyman – Executive Producer, Fringe
PRESENTATION
Moderator Welcome to the Fringe Conference call. At this time, all
participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a
question and answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. As
a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to
turn the conference over to your host, Marissa Flores.
M. Flores Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today on the
Fringe Conference call with Executive Producers Jeff Pinkner and J. H.
Wyman, who are on the line now. As a reminder, Fringe returns for its
third season on Thursday September 23rd at 9:00/8:00 Central. Without
any further delay, please welcome Jeff Pinkner and J. H. Wyman. The
forum is now open for questions.
Moderator Your first question comes from the line of Joshua Maloni from
Niagara Frontier.
J. Maloni I wonder if you guys could give us a little bit more
explanation on something that I read you say in another interview. The
episodes, they’re going to alternate from one week it will be over here
and another week it will be over there. Is that true?
J. Pinkner It is true. So what we’re really excited about certainly as
this season gets underway and for awhile is we have left our heroine on
the other side, what we refer to as over there, the alternate universe.
Our universe being over here. We thought that the best way to really
thoroughly tell these stories was to dive into them wholeheartedly. So
an entire episode will take place over there with the alternate Fringe
team and then another episode will take place over here. Rather than
trying to tell an episode that takes place in both universes
simultaneously within the same episode, we really wanted to thoroughly
explore a Fringe case over there and the journey that our heroine is on
and then come back over here because the character that we refer to as
Bolivia, or short for Bad Olivia, is here embedded in our team we have
point of view characters in both universes and it seemed to us the
perfect opportunity to really explore in a really thorough fulsome way
the alternate universe.
J. H. Wyman Yes, we just loved the idea and it became apparent to us
that we felt that the fans would really appreciate a mythology in two
places. That sort of gave us the ability to have two shows about one
show which you never get the chance to do that on television. It just
presented itself in such a natural organic way to evolution in our
storytelling. Once we got in there we realized that’s great we can have
a fantastic compelling mythology over there and get people invested in
that universe with someone at the heart of it that they absolutely
identify with and care about and then actually come back over on this
side and have the mythology carrying out here. So we’re really excited
to see what fans say about that because we believe in it 100% and we
think it’ll be a really great journey.
J. Pinkner One of the challenges that we’ve had, the idea of an
alternate universe is both heavy and intellectual but as soon as you
start to experience it you realize that it’s really emotional and easy
to grasp and the way that we realize is that season one sort of
acknowledged an alternate universe. Season two we visited it. Season
three we really want to spend time there and get to know what the
conditions are like over there which really just reflects on our own
society and what life could be like here in our own world for real had
certain things just gone differently.
J. Maloni You guys have also said that, obviously Olivia’s going to be
over there for a good portion of the season. Obviously Olivia, and
Bolivia as you call her, they’re obviously both out of place. They’re
going to be working with different team members for several episodes.
What sort of dynamic can we expect between all of these characters?
J. Pinkner Last season was about secrets. This season we’re really going
towards the concepts of duality, the concepts of choice, the concepts of
who are we as people. What happens when you make a different choice,
those consequences?
So as a blanket theme I think self actualization for our characters this
year is really where we wanted to go and when you start to look at two
versions of the same person you can really get into some very profound
questions and areas that are interesting because you’re going to see
someone who is not Olivia dealing with Walter. Somebody who is Olivia
dealing with alternate Broyles so you’re going to start to be able to
see different aspects of people’s personalities and how they are. I
mean, there’s obviously that great tension when it’s the quintessential
spy on a mission kind of concept but we get to do in a way that
fortunate for us I think fascinating because it’s the same person.
J. H. Wyman Not to mention we have one of the most unique potential love
triangles in that its one guy with two different versions of the same
girl.
Moderator Your next question comes from the line of Troy Rogers from The
DeadBolt.com.
T. Rogers What can you tell us about William Bell this season because it
sounds a little final for him in the box episode there?
J. Pinkner Well, William Bell has died on the other side. We like to say
on Fringe that nothing is final that we took a lot of understandable
heat at the beginning of last season when Charlie 1.0, when Charlie from
our universe died and Kirk Acevedo who had been a very important part of
the show was killed off we took a lot of heat and we said, quite
sincerely, without trying to spoil our show and where we’re going, we
have a show with two universes and without trying to spoil where we’re
going, Leonard Nimoy has retired from acting. If Leonard chooses to come
back there is a story in place that we would love to tell but in his
absence William Bell is a big part of this world and in the world of
Fringe science death is not the end.
J. H. Wyman Right. I definitely think it’s fair to say that you have not
experienced the last of William Bell.
T. Rogers Now getting to the alternate universe time travel kind of
thing, for shows or films dealing with that it can get complicated very
fast. Did you guys split the episodes that way to keep track of
everything or was it just for story?
J. H. Wyman That’s an interesting question because obviously you don’t
want to confuse anybody and it just became so apparent that that was the
best way to lay out the story that we wanted to tell. That we think that
you’re really short rifting some really compelling moments if you’re
cutting back and forth in one episode and you’re going over there for
two scenes and you’re over here for two scenes. It really sort of was a
like I said an evolution in our storytelling, a natural progression,
where we went to, “Hey, you know what? This is really cool. We have so
much to say about over there and the people in it and we have so much to
say about the people here so how do we do this?”
So of course, then the concept of, “Hey, we’re going to have the red
credit sequence and the blue credit sequence and we’re going to actually
devise a way of telling two shows about one show for a certain amount of
time in order to let our fans really experience over there as its own
piece because the reaction that we got, that we received from our fans
is more like, “We love the alternate universe and we really—” You know
what, they like the weird things like the amber and the zeppelins and
like over here this happened. So we’re just sort of doling out these
little packages of information over there in a way that Jeff and I both
felt was palatable to somebody that would want to follow the story and
actually invest in it and let their imagination get away with them
without worrying about tracking of it the “Where am I now? What’s going
on?” So it sort of just, it just sort of was a natural decision. We knew
it was right, right away for us to tell more deeper, more profound
stories without confusing anyone.
J. Pinkner We sincerely hold ourselves up very strictly to the confusion
barometer. To us, our show is very much like a family drama masquerading
as a science fiction show or as a procedural show and family drama, the
theme of the story we’re telling, we want it to play against the big
backdrop. We want it to be a story that a broader audience can
understand and appreciate because we think the things that we’re talking
about are universal and have great appeal.
We’re not trying to tell a genre show that’s a cult hit like as much as
like, yes, nothing would be greater than to have people passionate about
our show, which is incredibly important to us. It’s something we’ve said
before is not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice
really like licorice and we’re thrilled to be licorice. At the same time
we honestly and sincerely show these stories to our parents and we say,
“Can you guys follow this?” When they go, “Yes, totally,” we know we’ve
hit it because we want to be a show that should want—
J. H. Wyman Accessible.
J. Pinkner We want to be accessible. Should people want to come we
really want it to be welcoming and the way we figured to do that was to
tell episodes over there. The concept, as soon as you see it, is really
not that hard to grasp at all. There’s so many metaphors that apply or
analogies that everybody understands. There’s like, “Oh, there’s the
dream life and the waking life.” There’s daytime and nighttime. It’s the
idea of two worlds, we didn’t invent it.
J. H. Wyman It’s not hard to get but it the more, to Jeff’s point, the
more accessible the show is the better it is and we realize early on
that the more science fiction in our opinion becomes good is when they
become more about universal truths and things about morality and what’s
its like to be a human and live here. The red licorice analogy is
interesting because sometimes it takes a certain type of person to
really say, “Hey, I like Sci-Fi.” We’re hoping that we get all those
people because we love those people but we want to get those people that
say the show is Sci-Fi when its aspirational to be Sci-Fi at its best
where there’s real stories that are identifiable for people living here
now.
Moderator Your next question comes from the line of Henry Hanks from
CNN.com.
H. Hanks This being a family drama, like you said, I guess we’ll be
seeing a bit more of Peter and Walter obviously had a big problems at
the beginning of last season and now they’re back working together. Can
you talk more about what we can expect with those two?
J. Pinkner Well, basically, John Noble—last year what he did with that
character it always left us sort of like breathless because he really
transcended everything that we had written and he became so
heartbreaking as a character and that relationship people really did
invest in Henry. That’s a blessing and a curse at the same time because
what happens is that played itself out in a way that we are very happy
with—the breakup of Peter and Walter. So what becomes a challenge is how
to get John and Josh to play something that we haven’t seen before and
that got us thinking and that made us like, “Okay, how is this going to
begin to resolve?” I say begin because it’s like if we really try to
look at the relationship like a real relationship and when things break
down in a relationship they’re not easily put back together. People have
very strange feelings when they’re trying to reconcile. There are
trespasses that each other, perceived and real. There’s so many
difficult muddy, ugly things in a true father/son complex relationship
that once we sort of started looking at that portion of our program
realistically we realized we had a lot to play. We realized that we
could give John and Josh something to really chew on this year that’s
different from last year but just another shade.
So what’s going to happen is like they’re going to be okay and then
they’re not going to be okay. Then things are going to be solved for a
minute and then further complications are going to up. Because the lie
that was perpetrated against Peter and what Walter has done, if you take
it for face value and you really look at it, it’s the quintessential
kidnapping story. There’s feelings there.
So this season I don’t know if heard but we did say that the journey of
self actualization for all these characters, this is a big part of it,
this relationship and these people are going to come into their own.
Peter is going to sort of demonstrate things apart—emancipated—from his
father for a certain amount of time but definitely emancipated
emotionally and he’s going to self actualize and figure out where he
plays into who he is and who he thought he was and all these things.
Walter, by the same token, will do the same. He will get to the point
where he realizes that he has to go through insanity to sort of get to
the place he needs to be okay. So we can promise there’s going to be
some really nice drama between them and a next, I guess, our impression
of a real relationship and how those conflicts play out.
H. Hanks You guys have a lot of fun with the alternate universe sort of
changing up the theme titles and having Olivia meet Bolivia
face-to-face. Any fun stuff you have coming up like that: people meeting
up and playing around with the format of the show and stuff like that?
J. Pinkner Yes, absolutely. One of the things that we love about the
alternate universe is it’s really an opportunity to sort of world build
specifically. We spend a lot of time and attention and what’s really
been so wonderful to us the level of attention and detail that all of
our departments in Vancouver and all of the writers and all of the
actors weigh in. Like everybody, the idea of what would our daily life
be like? What would our universe be like? What would our world be like
if certain decisions had just been made differently? One of the obvious,
the most obvious one being if the White House had been hit instead of
the Twin Towers? If, as intentionally intended if the Empire State
Building was a docking station for zeppelins and the Hindenburg had
never exploded and people traveled via zeppelin what would consequences
flow from these things?
If our universe had started to breakdown—now we’re getting more
global—if our universe was starting to breakdown and the Bermuda
Triangle was actually in the middle of New York Harbor and boats got
sucked into vortex’s meaning our— The analogy for us is, if our world,
if we we’re living in World War II like conditions all the time, what we
looked at is that sort of tough times forge more noble, stronger people.
So what would that universe be like?
So we, everybody’s sort of taken up the charge and those episodes that
take place over there, the level of attention and detail shocks and
delights even us. That our set designers and set dressers and art
department get into.
Now of course, from a character standpoint, we get to really spend time
with a different version of Broyles. One who is still married and the
consequences and how he’s different as a person. We get to really
experience what Bolivia’s life is like. Our Olivia was essentially
abused as a child. She was given these experiments which changed her
worldview. Bolivia, that never happened to. Charlie on the other side is
still alive and has a different life.
So for our characters and for us, as storytellers, exploring these
characters by which hopefully people in the audience will on some level
think like, “Oh, what if I instead of breaking up with that guy back in
college I had married him? What would my life be like right now?” It
seems to us like Facebook is so much an opportunity for people to
explore the choices they made and reconnect with people from their past
and imagine how their life would be different or “What happened to this
person?” It’s such a subconscious theme in our world these days that we
get to play it actively through our show.
J. H. Wyman Part of your question I think is that we’re, definitely, we
can say that members of our team will be aware of doppelgangers of
themselves on the other side. So it’s not just going to be Olivia and
Bolivia but you’re going to understand throughout the season and that’s
going to be neat because that’s also as Jeff said, there’s something
that we want to investigate. Imagine seeing a version of yourself that’s
just a little better. That could be depressing.
Moderator Your next question comes from the line of Alice Chapman-Newgen
from Times Courier. Please go ahead.
A. Chapman-Newgen Will Olivia form any new relationships on the other
side as she’s trying to work out her situation there? Also, does Bolivia
begin to see things a little differently on this side of the alternate
universe?
J. Pinkner That’s very astute. So taking them one at a time, well,
taking them in reverse order, Bolivia very clearly in the season finale,
Bolivia is charged with the notion that people from our side have
invaded their world, have damaged their world and we are the enemy and
Walter’s lying which is metaphorical is that they’re monsters in human
skin. He doesn’t mean it literally; he means they’re the enemy. They’re
the ones attacking us and making our lives …. She’s now going spend time
living with our characters, living with Walter, living with Peter,
living with Broyles and just exploring our world and of course its going
to affect her worldview. Of course. That’s one of the things that we’re
really interested in. At the same time she’s an agent with a mission and
she’s very loyal and dedicated to the life she’s living and to the
people she works for.
J. H. Wyman Therein lies the conflict.
J. Pinkner Therein exactly lies the conflict. On the other hand we love
these characters that we’ve got to meet on the other side. Lincoln Lee,
played by Seth Gabel is just delightful. We’re so thrilled to have Kirk
Acevedo back. Lance Reddick is really playing two versions of Broyle and
we had a conversation with him yesterday and it was odd because it
really felt like we were talking about a character and not about a
performer playing two different characters. It’s a unique situation
where we have actors creating different characterizations of characters
that they’ve already created.
Walternate is so different from Walter but so understandable. His son
was taken. It changed his worldview and it’s very much, but we get to
see from the backend of the telescope how life events changed these
characters. So Olivia will absolutely spend time interacting with all of
them and that’s going to change her worldview as well.
Moderator Your next question comes from the line of Marisa Roffman from
GiveMeMyRemote.com.
M. Roffman It seems like Peter is, besides struggling with his
relationship with Walter, he’s also struggling with the fact that this
doomsday device is reacting to him. How much is that going to play into
where his character goes this season?
J. H. Wyman It’s going to play a lot. Look, that’s a major thing. Last
year, if you look at it again, it’s the season of secrets, it’s sort of
like subjectively Peter did not understand the secret. Everybody else
knew and he didn’t know. So he’s sort of like this huge revelation at
the end of the season that gave us a lot of gasoline for the season for
him. But now, that’s different.
So now this season when he comes in he is now the person who knows more
than anybody and wants more than anything to find out how does he fit
into this. Why him? What does this mean? Why did this thing? So these
questions become really ultimately his core want is to figure out some
form of answers that nobody on his team actually is qualified to answer.
That’s going to be a big part of his self actualization. There’s a lot
of answers that we think are compelling and mysterious and interesting
this season that he’s going to start to put together a really nice sized
jigsaw puzzle that will be eventful at the end of the season.
J. Pinkner One of the things that we’re really trying to attend to and
that we both learned from experience as viewers and as storytellers is
that Magoffins, like the weapon, are only as important as how it affects
the characters and how it drives them and changes their emotions. The
other thing that we have found that works for us really well is ask
questions but then give answers and then play the consequences of those
answers.
J. H. Wyman We don’t want to frustrate anybody.
J. Pinkner So very much the doomsday machine, we will explore it, we
will learn more about it and what Joel was clearly saying is what we’re
really interested in is how that’s going to affect Peter as a person.
M. Roffman Yes, it almost seems like Peter is doomed to be tragically
unhappy for the rest of his life because first he finds out about
Walter. Now he’s got the whole Olivia thing going on and he’s putting
his trust in who he thinks Olivia is and then he’s going to get that
wool pulled out from him. Is he ever going to have happiness?
J. H. Wyman Well, you have to go through darkness to get to light so
that’s his journey right now. Just keep in mind when he first showed up
on the team, this was a guy who was sort of rudderless and had
absolutely no concept of who he was. He was a conman with very many
personas and didn’t really commit to anything and didn’t really have
substantial relationships in life that he could connect with. So if
anything, I guess one could argue that he’s found a family, sometimes
that he doesn’t want, but he’s found and has become a more
dimensionalized human being.
So in that journey, it’s like real life. Sometimes dark, terrible things
happen and you have to move through them. They don’t go away very
quickly. They actually form who you are once you pass through the other
side. It’s a difficult journey, but once you get through the other side
you come out at least stronger and more enlightened.
So it’s like, yes, I think he’s going to find— I love a character, and I
know that Jeff does too, that basically is trying to do the right thing
but is having setbacks on an emotional level or on an intellectual
level. He’s confused, but he’s trying to be a good person. He’s trying
to do the right thing. He’s trying to get answers and trying to find
happiness which we think everybody is today. Everybody goes through that
so he’s sort of like this walking metaphor for us of people like, yes,
every time you think you’ve got something great something comes around
the corner and it can set you off balance and you have to deal with it.
So that’s how we see him. I think that he’ll find happiness in
increments and where they really count.
Moderator Your next question comes from the line of Charlie Anders from
IO9.
C. Anders In an interview a while ago, Lance Reddick said that the show
was moving away from the procedural elements and I’m wondering if that’s
actually true, if there’s going to be less monster-of-the-week stuff?
Second of all, Walter, obviously, gets a huge surprise at the end of the
second episode. I’m wondering without getting too spoilery, he gets a
lot more responsibility and I’m wondering how that’s going to affect his
character going forward.
J. Pinkner So to answer your first question, everybody defines
procedural differently. There will absolutely be a story in each episode
with a beginning, middle and end. There will be cases. Our team is
charged with solving cases, which we love, those stories reflect on the
themes that the characters are going through.
So I don’t know, I’m not sure what Lance meant by that, but we’re not
suddenly changing the storytelling of the show. It’s expanded and now we
have two universes and all the things we’ve talked about but we’re going
to be exploring cases on this side and that side.
To your second, Walter is Walter. Walter has been damaged. Walter is
still just as interested in exploring as he ever was and we can be
spoilery for this phone call. Walter—
J. H. Wyman Some people haven’t seen the—
J. Pinkner If you haven’t seen the episode—
J. H. Wyman Don’t—
J. Pinkner I’m trying to answer your question without answering, without
using certain nouns. But Walter will absolutely—
J. H. Wyman …responsibility.
J. Pinkner Walter’s plate around has gotten much, much, much, much
bigger plus it’s an opportunity for Walter. One of the themes that we
constantly go back to is Walter has missed 17 years of his life. Rip Van
Winkle is very much a theme that we go back to. Peter has been robbed
from his life. Olivia has a child, part of her life was taken away and
changed. Walter missed 17 years of his life during which his partner and
best friend, the Lennon to his McCartney, was continuing to explore
things that they had talked about and now Walter has the means of
discovering and exploring what those things were.
J. H. Wyman Yes, because of the monster-of-the-week versus the
mythology, we realize there was this sense of frustration from our core
viewers and our big fans that say come on we want to see the mythology.
But of course we were put up against as responsible film makers and
understanding that we have partners in Warner Brothers and in FOX, it’s
very important to kind of constantly try to attract more viewers and to
try and not make the show alienating that if you haven’t watched season
one and season two—or season one at that time—that you’re done. We
didn’t want to get that because we think that would be a tragedy because
we believe that anybody can come into Fringe.
So we were stuck in this really hard place where the studio and the
network want standalones for that very reason. They want standalones so
they can say, “Well, anybody can come and watch,” “I heard about this
cool show, Fringe, you ought to check it out.” So they’re not completely
lost. That’s a problem so our solution to use an episode to give you an
idea our solution came in the form of “White Tulip” and episodes like
that because we realized what we need to do to satiate both our hardcore
fans and our financial responsibilities is to create a term that we
coined a “mythalone.”
C. Anders Right. ….
J. H. Wyman Yes, which is … then the viewers they get a payoff in the
concept of mythology but the viewer can sit down and watch it who hasn’t
seen it and still enjoy an episode like “White Tulip.” So that’s where
we live now. That procedural element that was in “White Tulip” is part
of our DNA so we’re always going to have that it’s just that we caught
on. We really got it that we didn’t want to frustrate our fans.
It sounds really simple when you say it now, like, “Yes, sure, you have
a great standalone case, plus you thread in some great mythology,” but
I’ve got to tell you it took us a long time to get there and realize it.
Now that we have that our template for telling stories that we think
satisfies both parties.
Moderator Your next question comes from the line of Lena Lamoray from
LenaLamoray.com.
L. Lamoray You guys have written some of my favorite episodes of Fringe
like “Brown Betty” and “Peter.” What episodes did you enjoy working on
the most and why?
J. Pinkner I think that it’s, as co-show owner’s it’s our responsibility
to oversee all of the episodes. There are some that we write the scripts
but we’re responsible for overseeing them all and I think it’s hard to
say which ones were the most, we love all of our children equally.
The two that you pointed out, “White Tulip,” the season finale, sort of
like the bigger landmark episodes, whether they have our names on them
or not, are the ones that we sort of like. We love the “Jacksonville”
episode. The ones that have truly the most emotional grounding are
always the ones that we respond to the most. “Brown Betty,” though it
was crazy and off-the-wall had a really deep—it was really an
exploration of Walter’s pain in this sort of fantastical way. So I think
you sort of hit the highlights. “Peter” was particularly effective and
powerful for us.
J. H. Wyman Yes, it’s strange. Each one becomes its own puzzle to crack.
You sort of fall in love with the theme of what you’re doing.
Particularly, I liked “White Tulip” because it was a love story. To tell
a love story in the framework of science fiction was something that
excited us and to crack and go we can tell our kind of story in a way
that nobody has told one and get across a profound example of a human
condition. That’s what really gets us off.
I think that both of us at the end of a day and we’ve cracked an
episode, we’ve broken an episode and we look at it, if we can look at
each other and say, “This is a great plot but did we get across what the
episode is really about?” If the answer is yes—and we don’t stop until
it is—then that’s what makes going home and saying, “Wow, that was a
good day.”
L. Lamoray What do you think the viewers are going to enjoy the most
about season three of Fringe?
J. Pinkner With every episode comes a free box of candy.
J. H. Wyman The same stuff we’re excited about. We love the alternate
universe. We love the idea. On a global scale schematically, this is
what, us, Jeff and Joel sitting there looking at the world that we live
in and saying how did our show reflect the society that we live in and
why will people care and what are we hoping that people invest in. We’re
both at a point where we realize that the world’s in a really hard place
right now and that it’s a place where people have lost a lot of faith in
certain aspects, whether it politics, religion or I don’t know what, but
there’s so many, family. I mean, look at the family now.
There’s so many things breaking down that we believe that on a
subconscious level people want to look for something that can give them
some sort of, “Oh, wow. What if…?” Some sort of hope. Something out
there that they don’t know that they don’t know. When you think of the
concept of a parallel universe and you realize, “Wow, there could be
another universe,” which is pretty wild. We want people to sort of get
in there and go, “Yes,” and escape and say, “Look at that. Yes, there is
something that maybe I can believe.” That maybe there is something else
out there. That maybe there is another place and universe and all of us
in it is not as easily understandable and that they can find some faith
in the unknown.
So that triggered us to get really into the alternate universe and
that’s what kind of gets us off and we’re hoping that when people get
there and they’ll say, “Okay, now I get to see my favorite characters go
through something that’s really strange and unique and interesting.”
We’re hoping they’ll respond to that. Like those little things. Just
those little flashes of the alternate universe and how things happen
differently over there, that’s what compels us this season is watching
our characters going to get to a place where they grow and go through
things.
J. Pinkner We’re incredibly blessed. We have a phenomenal cast of
actors—
J. H. Wyman Amazing.
J. Pinkner Who are all incredibly accessible and if we can in 43 minutes
and 25 seconds or whatever it is, give our audience moments of being
scared and moments where they laugh and moments where they’re grossed
out and then moments where they’re moved emotionally, we’ve done our job
and we think that we now have a bigger canvas and new actors that we’re
really excited to be joining our cast to tell those stories.
Moderator Your final question today comes from the line of Suzanne
Lanoue from the TV Mega Site.
S. Lanoue I have a question about the whole thing with Walternate and
the doomsday machine. It seemed to me that, as you said, his motivation
was he lost his son and he had to get him back and to take a little
revenge and feed his ego a little, because he is Walter—but it seemed
weird. This is the part I didn’t understand. He brought Peter back to
work the doomsday machine which he had to know would hurt Peter because
he had the little drawing from the bad guys—
J. H. Wyman The observers, yes.
S. Lanoue So is there anything that you could explain to me about that?
It seems to be contradictory that he wanted him back but then he wanted
to hurt him.
J. Pinkner Walter, our Walter, was the one who interpreted that drawing
from the observer and said, “This is what’s going to happen to my son.”
The observers can travel, we know because we’ve said it, that the
observers can travel back and forth through time and pop-in here and
pop-out there, there’s only one past, but from every moment that we’re
living, and there’s an infinite possible futures. We don’t as
storytellers believe in literal fate or destiny. We believe in choice
and freewill. One of the things we appreciate the most about parallel
universes is how small choices could down the road lead to big changes.
So what Walter has seen as one possible outcome but not the only one and
therein lies our storytelling.
J. H. Wyman Yes, he may know that. But you’ve actually, Suzanne, your
questions about that element of the program are actually, they are
important questions and they’re—
S. Lanoue They will be answered somewhere along the way.
J. H. Wyman That is correct and it’s actually devised for you to go,
“Huh, that’s interesting. What’s going on there?” So it’s like a, you’re
question will be answered.
S. Lanoue So Walternate, the alternate Walter doesn’t necessarily think
that the machine would hurt Peter?
J. Pinkner Or … in his universe he needs to sacrifice his son.
S. Lanoue And that messes with his whole motivation of why he did it in
the first place. My head hurts just talking about it.
J. Pinkner No, not at all. It’s like a great poker game. You don’t know
what card you have until you turn it over. So just imagine that
Walternate can conceivable turn over a card that you didn’t see coming.
M. Flores Thank you, everybody, for your participation. Thank you, Jeff.
Thank you J.H. That concludes our conference call for today. Again, as a
reminder, Fringe returns for its third season this coming Thursday the
23 of September at 9:00/8:00 Central. Thanks again, everybody.
J. Pinkner So real quick before you cut us all off. We sincerely, Joel
and I, so appreciate all of your guys time.
J. H. Wyman And the support that you guys have given.
M. Flores Thank you, guys. Thank you, everybody.
J. Pinkner Talk to ya’ll soon.
J. H. Wyman Bye.
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