Complexity Without Commitment

THIS IS NOW a little late, too -- but in case you missed it, Dave Itzkoff had a very high-value writer-wonky preview of J.J. Abrams Fringe in the NYTimes last Sunday. What really caught my eye were a couple of paragraphs about the balancing act of serial vs. standalone elements, and what Abrams has learned over the years. This is exactly the stuff that everybody creating series after J.J. has to deal with now, because, let's face it -- to some extent his shows created the taste in the audience that demands complexity....sometimes.

IF you’ve ever been utterly baffled by a television show that J. J. Abrams had a hand in creating — too confused to follow the serpentine plot twists of “Lost” or “Alias” or, heck, even “Felicity” — know that Mr. Abrams, the prolific writer, producer and director, has been annoyed too. With you.

I just got tired of hearing people say to me, over and over, ‘Yeah, I was watching it, but I missed one, I got really confused, and I stopped watching it,’ ” he said in a recent phone interview.

“The evolution from your ideas and expectations and intent to what actually occurs in the series is a massive gulf,” Mr. Abrams said. “It’s a best-effort scenario. But I think that’s what a series is anyway.”

The solution to such narrative puzzles, Mr. Abrams and his colleagues said, is to have a game plan with clearly defined goalposts that can be moved around as a season and a series unfold. Know the ending to your series when you begin it; hope your show continues in perpetuity but always be prepared to wrap it up. (In this spirit the producers of “Lost” announced last year that the series would conclude at the end of its sixth season, in 2010.)

In the case of “Fringe” its creators say they have figured out a finale — naturally, they declined to describe it — that could be deployed at any point in the series. “If we’re canceled at Episode 13,” Mr. Orci said, “we’ll tell you at Episode 13, and if we go on, you could literally find this out in seven years.”

Recollections differ as to how much of the increasingly complicated “Fringe” story line was pitched to executives at Warner Brothers and at Fox when the series was ordered. “You always have to be on the up and up with your studio and your network,” Mr. Burk said. “There’s too much at stake, and they’re taking the biggest gamble.”

But Mr. Abrams cautioned against too much candor. “There are certain details that are hugely important,” he said with some mirth, “that I believe, if shared, will destroy any chance of actually getting on the air. These are the kinds of things that scare people away.”

The whole article (link above) is well worth your time.