Tim Minear

What began life as an article on bringing attention to the final six episodes of Fox’s riveting yet barely promoted summer crime thriller THE INSIDE, has sadly turned into a bit of a post-mortem.

The show’s co-creator Tim Minear granted iF MAGAZINE an exclusive interview to discuss the status of the show and the remaining episodes of the series which follows newbie FBI agent Rebecca Locke (Rachel Nichols) who is assigned to L.A.’s violent crimes unit headed by Virgil Webster aka “Web” (Peter Coyote).

Think SILENCE OF THE LAMBS mixed with the ambient moodiness of director Michael Mann’s Los Angeles based movies (HEAT, THIEF), as the unique series was originally intended for a midseason berth before being pushed to the dead of the summer where it just might have found an audience - if it weren’t for being scheduled opposite ABC’s juggernaut DANCING WITH THE STARS. Now the series is being pre-empted on Fox tonight by what was supposed to be THE INSIDE’s new lead-in SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE? which was expanded to 90 minutes this week.

Now the big mystery is what will happen to the remaining episodes of the series. Will they air? Will fans have to wait for the DVD to finish off this 13-episode arc? And is the show officially cancelled? Minear sheds some light on the subject in Part 1 of our conversation.

iF MAGAZINE: What happens now that you were preempted for another week?

MINEAR: Out of the six remaining episodes, as of last week, we were only going to have to pull one episode out of rotation. Since, the dance show did so well, last week, they wanted to do a 90-minute one tonight. Now two would be out of rotation. To be honest, I feel like I was told two would not air, but my prediction is it will be anywhere between five or six of the remaining episodes will not air. If one does air, I predict it will be the last one.

iF MAGAZINE: What episode will that be?

MINEAR: If they air another one, the next episode that will air is “Aidan.” I’m really excited for people to see that episode. I think it’s a great example of what this show does best, which is to take a very interesting villain, with a very interesting psychology and to have a crime story that is a metaphor for the emotional arcs of one of our main characters.

iF MAGAZINE: How does it feel to have your ass kicked by ABC’s dancing show?

MINEAR: It’s typical. We would have been better if we were on Friday nights. Again, that’s just one more element that goes into it. Who could have predicted we would be up against something that would have been considered AMERICAN IDOL numbers, even if it were on in the fall. We were up against a juggernaut and the network was not willing to double pump us on a Friday night or another night. And then, they kept telling me, “ABC’s dancing show ends five weeks into your run, this show ends and we have a show called SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE.” We would be pre-empted the first night it was on and then the following week, that would be our new lead-in. So they kept telling me, “that’s when we’re really going to see how the show does,” except they didn’t wait until then because they’ve already canceled it.

iF MAGAZINE: And the irony is, they didn’t even wait to see if the lead-in would have helped.

MINEAR: We thought we were going to be killed by that dance show on ABC. We were killed by that dance show on Fox. Fox kept referring to their dance show as “the cavalry” - “it’s on its way and you’re going to have this great lead-in.” The cavalry got there, but it killed us.

iF MAGAZINE: So, are you canceled?

MINEAR: They haven’t told me officially that we’re cancelled. That’s just a bunch of hoo-ha anyhow, because they told me they weren’t picking up the cast options and I’ve heard a rumor Rachel [Nichols] already has another show.

iF MAGAZINE: In some ways, this show could have turned into the next HOUSE for Fox if they allowed it to build like HOUSE did last fall.

MINEAR: We could have become HOUSE. I believe we are not dissimilar to HOUSE. The reviews have been really mixed and the one’s that have been really negative, they go into it saying “Oh, they’re trying to be C.S.I. and they start talking about sh*t that’s not even on the show. “Oh, this excessive gore!” The subject matter is really grim, don’t get me wrong, but C.S.I. is far more graphic than this show. Not to say, this show is not graphic. It’s graphic for a network show that runs at 9:00 p.m. at night and it has all kinds of warnings all over the place, but the people who love the show are really seeing what we’re trying to do, which is not in fact a procedural in the sense of “bag it, send it to the lab.” We don’t know anything about that. I wouldn’t know how to write C.S.I. or LAW AND ORDER or any of that sort of stuff. Those guys are wicked good at what they do, and what I do is something else. I write about characters with all kinds of moral crises and moral ambiguities. I generally write about people who could go one way or another.

iF MAGAZINE: You’ve said previously, in the era of DVD, you treat the first order of each series you work as one complete arc so if the show isn’t picked up, there is at least a conclusion that satisfies fans. Did you do the same with THE INSIDE?

MINEAR: We don’t go off on a cliffhanger and there is a little narrative punctuation at the end of Episode 13. Things come full circle a little bit, but there is a much deeper mythology to explore in this particular series than say WONDERFALLS. Given that everything was happening to Jaye [Caroline Dhavernas] in that series, we were in on it from the beginning and Rebecca on THE INSIDE has this past and so does everybody. There is a lot of ground we could have mined.

iF MAGAZINE: Even though it’s probably still too early to reflect on the show, could you discuss how you feel about what you created with the 13 episodes of the series?

MINEAR: I’m proud of the show. I was talking to someone today and we realized that when you’re doing a genre show, you already have an element of unreality to go to dark places and people tend to be willing to go there with you. When you take out that genre element, it takes away that fantasy buffer. And people don’t realize that THE INSIDE was unreal too and set in this hyper-melodramatic universe, not unlike the universe that ANGEL was located in. Granted we didn’t have vampires on the show, but it was the same kind of tone. People who were looking at it as if it were C.S.I. or procedural were missing the joke. I’m really excited for people to see the entire shape of it on DVD, because then I think they will really understand what we were trying to do with the show.