When you start a script you aim to hit a note you know you want to end in general.

When you start a script you aim to hit a note you know you want to end in general.

You always go by your gut. That's the best you can do. You go by what you feel, and you say yes or no based on what it inspires in you.

In fact, we actually listen to fans all the time. It's helpful because you want to get a sense of what people are looking for and what they disagree with.

You used to have to make a choice. Is it a serialized television show, or is it a stand-alone or procedural? We were wildly influenced by The X-Files. Even when we created Fringe, it was the same thing. It's the gold standard of all gold standards, in genre television, and it was so wonderful because you felt so much for those characters.

I asked a director once what the secret of it all was, and he said you have to be so prepared that you are willing to throw all your preparation away in the moment when you see something better. That's a phenomenal piece of advice. It's been my compass through the process of making films. But you can really only do that if you're prepared. You can't wing it.

I think what people watch television for is the emotional continuity, from episode to episode, and feeling that the experience that they had, four episodes ago, has actually been building to an episode that comes later, and knowing that the characters are growing, as a result of that, and making mistakes, is really, really important to the way people connect to television.