*PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS*
Josh Schwartz of Chuck, Gossip Girl, and The OC. Josh Friedman of The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Bryan Fuller of Pushing Daisies, Dead Like Me, and Wonderfalls. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse of Lost. You can’t ask for a more impressive television panel than that.
Moderator Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly introduced everyone to thunderous applause, then explained the format. He would ask the panelists “boring” questions for the first half hour and they would respond in a more entertaining way. Then, for the last half hour, audience members were welcome to ask any questions they desired…with one caveat that he demonstrated:
JENSEN: Damon and Carlton, where is the island?
CUSE: I do not recall.
JENSEN: How did John Locke die and end up in the coffin?
LINDELOF: We have no recollection of that.
JENSEN: I have a theory. Do you wanna hear it?
DARLTON: Yes.
After the laughter in the audience died down, Jensen asked the panelists how the strike affected their shows this past year and if it had altered their approach to the upcoming season.
Bryan Fuller said there was a lot of discussion about bringing Pushing Daisies back last spring for a few more first-season episodes, but ultimately ABC didn’t want to throw them “in front of the American Idol bus.” It’s a move that Fuller thinks probably kept the show on the air.
The big way that the strike affected the show creatively is that in the first episode of season two, ten months have passed — the exact number of months since we’ve seen a new Daisies episode. In the world of the show, the characters have all been struggling to keep their secrets over this time period and everyone is about to burst. Also, because so much time has passed, the first three minutes of the episode will be “like a clip show” so that anyone watching will know everything they need to know about the premise and the storylines before really getting into the episode.
Jensen next turned to Josh with the same question. “Chuck Josh,” he clarified.
According to Schwartz, Chuck will also be reintroducing the show’s premise this fall. The first episode will open several months from when we last saw Chuck, with our hero dangling off a roof and telling the story of how he got there.
Terminator Josh couldn’t just go with the flow, though: “Counter to these guys, [Sarah Connor Chronicles will be starting] about two seconds after the end of last season’s explosion.”
As the only showrunners up there to make new episodes after the strike ended, Jensen asked Cuse and Lindelof how they came to the epiphany that they would need six episodes to finish the season instead of the five they originally told ABC, and wanted to know which stories got cut because of the shortened season.
“First of all,” answered Cuse, “I’m not sure I’d categorize it as an epiphany.” He went on to explain that while a normal Lost script runs about 52 pages, the first draft of their one-hour season four finale came to 75 pages. Even worse, when he and Lindelof combed through it looking for cuts, they came up with about half a page.
Lindelof continued. “In an effort to sort of get everything in there, the scene between Sawyer and Kate [in the helicopter] was like, ‘Bye!’ and he jumped. We couldn’t play anything for their moments.” At that point they knew that they had to find a way to expand the finale to two hours.
Answering Jensen’s second question, Lindelof said that most of the shortchanged stories involved the “freighter folk” — Lapidus, Miles, Faraday and Charlotte — but that those stories would be told in a different way this upcoming season.
Asked about his inspiration for Pushing Daisies, Fuller explained, “I couldn’t do a series like CSI or Criminal Minds where you have to be in a negative head space all the time…because that’s just depressing. So I just wanted to cram a show with as many things that make me smile as possible. Like doggies and pie and bees and honey.” When asked why pie instead of cake, Fuller replied, “Cake can be dry; it’s a big gamble. Pie is always moist.” This, as you might imagine, drew a big laugh from the audience.
Next Jensen brought up the proliferation of mobisodes or webisodes — “some kind of sodes” — and asked why they do them.
For Josh Friedman, “sodes” are a way to explore things he otherwise wouldn’t get to delve into on the show, such as the Future War.
“TV shows, they’re not just shows, they’re brands,” added Cuse, “and the companies that make them want to expand the brand.” He sees the main TV show as the mothership, and all of the various “sodes” as ancillary material that is fun for hardcore fans, but not necessary to understand anything happening in the show.
When Jensen asked Schwartz about webisodes and if he received a lot of fan feedback through the web about Chuck or Gossip Girl, he was quick with his reply: “You mean criticism?”
Chuck is doing a series of webisodes that revolve around the Buy More. Schwartz believes that ancillary content serves a couple of purposes. First, it can provide more screen time to characters that might not get very much during the regular show; second, it’s a way to keep Chuck in the popular consciousness throughout the week until the next episode airs.
Lindelof chimed in, saying that they all know that none of the ancillary stuff is going to draw 12 million viewers. “We have no delusions that anybody in the mass culture that watches Lost gives a shit about when Jack first met Ethan, but–”
Fuller interrupted to remind Lindelof that the back of their name cards say that many audience members may be under 18 years of age. Translation: watch your language.
“You guys are fucked,” Lindelof informed us, eliciting claps and cheers.
Fuller then picked up the webisodes question by saying that they wanted to do a series of shorts for Daises “describing how Pigby came to the nunnery,” but ran into a lot of post-strike resistance regarding contracts, how it would be unionized, what’s covered and who would be paying for it. And no, you are not the only one slightly confused by Fuller’s quote. According to the Pushing Daisies Wiki: “Pigby is, hence his name, a pot-bellied pig whom Olive Snook befriends when she moves into the nunnery.”
All of this led to Jensen’s next question: what did they think of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog, and do they think the model that Joss Whedon created is viable for future content?
Bryan Fuller simply gave a thumbs up.
Schwartz said that it opened the door for a whole new type of storytelling. Also: “Neil Patrick Harris is a very talented guy.”
Lindelof reflected on their days on the picket lines during the strike. “One of the things that we would do…is talk about all the awesome things that we were gonna do by ourselves. Sort of like when you’re on summer vacation and you talk about all the awesome things you’re gonna do before you go back to school. Of course, you do none of them.” Except for Whedon, who took those picket line conversations and made them into reality. “Considering it takes 300 people to make an episode of Lost, I’m just in awe of the accomplishment of Dr. Horrible.”
Referring to the “sing-a-long” part, Cuse added, “Maybe that’s how we’ll do the zombie season of Lost.”
Friedman joked that he can see Terminator as a TV show or a musical, but “I don’t really think [it] works in movie form.”
Jensen followed up Friedman’s joke by directing a question his way: “How [does] the TV show exist with the movie franchise? Are they two separate worlds? Do you take inspiration from it?”
“We’ve always felt that the TV show is its own expression of a version of the Terminator universe,” answered Friedman, “and the movies are an expression of the Terminator universe…and I think the fans understand that there’s different expressions within a mythology.” He also apparently had a conversation with McG where they both mutually decided to each do their own thing “and never the twain shall meet.”
The next question was for Schwartz and Team Darlton, regarding how it was decided that Chuck and Lost would take place in the same universe. Jensen was referring, of course, to one of Chuck’s flashes in the second episode that reveals that Chuck knows where Flight 815 went down.
“We called up Josh and said, ‘Where did it go down?’” said Cuse.
Schwartz continued the story. “He sent a box of cookies, I believe, that said, ‘If you give away any more of our secrets, we’ll kill you.’ Because Lost is a TV show and Chuck is real.”
“What was it like launching two TV shows at once?” Jensen asked Schwartz, referring to Gossip Girl and Chuck both beginning their runs last fall.
Schwartz’s reply was more verbose, but here’s the gist: it was hard, but he was working with good people that made things easier.
Next Jensen asked all of them how they maintained the geeky, fantasy nature of their shows while still appealing beyond the genre fan.
Rather than being a problem they have to work around, Cuse said he thinks having a “geek” show gives them the benefit of both worlds. They see Lost as a character show that happens to have some mythology. “The cake is the character show and the frosting is the mythology. The frosting tastes the best, but you wouldn’t want to just eat frosting.” He then referenced Fuller’s earlier pie comment by saying that maybe the mythology was the crust and the character part is the pie filling.
On Sarah Connor, Friedman said they refer to the show’s mythology as the rabbit hole. “You’re in the writer’s room…and then six hours later you don’t know where you are, time has gone by, and there’s junk food in front of my desk. And we haven’t written one little thing.” He admitted that the show went “down the rabbit hole” a couple of times last year, but they know that at the core, it’s a show about family.
“I love mythologies,” answered Fuller. “That’s the sauce for the goose for me.” He sees the procedural elements on Daisies as something they have to get through to get to the mythology parts because, “I live for that shit.”
Lindelof said he thinks there’s a sense in the industry that you shouldn’t do genre shows and everyone is scared of them, but every year it’s the genre shows that tend to generate the most buzz and get people interested. “Batman is going to out-gross every other movie this summer.”
“Serena is now a cyborg,” quipped Schwartz, referring to the main character on Gossip Girl.
Jensen then asked Fuller if his love of mythologies meant that Daisies would eventually have a complicated backstory about magical piemakers.
Fuller didn’t miss a beat. “No,” he replied. “I think there’s a very fine line, and George Lucas drew it when he came up with midi-chlorians.”
After much laughter and applause from the audience, Cuse jumped in, saying they use that example all the time on Lost. “I think there are some things that are best left mysterious, and you actually strip them of their power by trying to over-explain them.”
Fuller simplified it even further: “I think we need more awe.”
Next Jensen asked the panel what influence comic books played in their storytelling on television.
Lindelof said he found “that kind of serialized storytelling…very exciting,” and mentioned how much reading Watchmen when he was younger affected him. “How big and dense that universe was.” It taught him that people are willing to accept a tremendous amount of story if it’s presented to them in the right way.
The visual aesthetics are what draw Fuller to comic books, and he thinks that they’re a great map to telling a story. “It’s a nice challenge of storytelling.”
Schwartz sees a link between comic books and Jensen’s earlier question about balancing “geek” elements with more mainstream storytelling on their shows: “The best comic books are always about characters. As [many] genre elements as you try to have in the storytelling, you have to be invested in the characters.”
“Just watch TV,” added Friedman.
At that point Jensen invited audience members to line up at the mic for questions. Schwartz pointed to people as they ran up and proved prophetic: “Lost, Lost, Lost…”
Check back tomorrow for the Q&A portion!
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Read Comic-Con coverage for Friday here and for Saturday here.
View some photos from the panels here.
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Read Josh’s blog Boring Future Generations here.
Read the TV spec scripts he wrote with writing partner Juliana Weiss here.
Related Stuff:
Juliana Weiss-Roessler is a writer living in Los Angeles. To read more of her writing, visit WeissRoessler.com. You can also follow her on Twitter: @jul_weiss. 
Epic reporting, there – it really lessens the pain of not being there when you can read reports like this! Thanks!