I'm mostly coming at the superhero legends as an outsider, I know them and I studied them but I didn't really grow up with them, but I think it allows me to sort of analyze them in a way that's kind of interesting.

When I am kicking around show ideas, or really any idea, usually an image comes to me. I don't really start with a character or a logline like, "What if the electricity turned off?"

I've had a lifelong obsession with urban legends and American folklore.

In TV and movies, you kill yourself spending all this time to think up the symbolism or what if that deer that runs across your hero's path somehow conveys what's going on inside your hero's head? When a lot of times, you just want to hear what he's thinking.

Let's be honest, any show will live or die based on how good the characters are, how good the actors are, how complicated the relationships are, how grounded they are and how much heart they have.

If I had a worldview, and I don't know if I do, but if I did, it's one that's intensely humanistic. [That worldview] is that the only thing that matters is family and personal connection, and that's the only thing that gives life meaning. Religion and gods and beliefs - for me, it all comes down to your brother. And your brother might be the brother in your family, or it might be the guy next to you in the foxhole, it's about human connections.

Beyond all our Blackberries and iPhones, we're dangerously separated from our food and water supplies.