For your reading enjoyment, I’ve pulled together a list of 100 of my favorite quotes from the various interviews I conducted for Premium Hollywood, Bullz-Eye, Popdose, and The Virginian-Pilot this year, along with the links to the original pieces where available. As you can see, I had some extremely interesting conversations in 2009. Let us all keep our fingers crossed that I’m able to chat with just as many fascinating individuals in 2010…

1. Pamela Adlon: “In the first season (of ‘Californication’), when we had the threesome with the nipple clamps, I was, like, ‘I don’t get this, I don’t know how you’re gonna do it.’ And then, all of a sudden, there’s a crane with a camera hanging over our heads, and you’re, like, ‘Okayyyyyyy. But how are you gonna sell this? How are you gonna make it work?’ And they ended up shooting it brilliantly, cutting it together, and it just all ended up working without me having to compromise my own personal morals.”

2. Jonathan Ames: “After my first novel, my mother said to me, ‘Why don’t you make your writing more funny? You’re so funny in person.’ Because my first novel was rather dark. And I don’t know, but something about what she said was true. ‘Yes, why don’t I?’ Maybe I was afraid to be funny in the writing. But since then, seven books later, almost everything I’ve done has a comedic edge to it.”

3. Ed Asner: “I loved journalism until the day my journalism teacher, a man I revered, came by my desk and said, ‘Are you planning on going into journalism?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I wouldn’t.’ I said, ‘Well, why not?’ He said, ‘You can’t make a living.’”

4. Sean Astin: “When somebody brings up a movie (of mine) that I haven’t heard about in a long time, I feel like a 70-year-old pitcher at a bar somewhere, and somebody walks in and says, ‘Oh, my God, I was in St. Louis and I saw you. You pitched a shutout.’ It’s real. I really did do that, because someone today remembers it.”

5. Darryl Bell: “The legend of ‘Homeboys in Outer Space’ has become much more incendiary than the actual show. It’s funny how I usually challenge most people who talk about how much they disliked ‘Homeboys’ to name me five episodes. Most of them can’t, because they just bought into the ‘oh, it’s awful, just the title. Oh, it’s terrible.’ What’s interesting is that I had a great conversation with Chi McBride, who was doing ‘The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer,’ which, if you want to talk about in terms of the imagery of what was wrong, that show was much more infamous than ‘Homeboys.’ Yet it’s not remembered in the same way because the title didn’t grab you in the same way. I remember Chi pulled me aside and he was, like, ‘Look, everyone who is criticizing what you’re doing would take your job from you in two seconds. All of them. So all I can tell you is that this is one blip on both of our careers, and we are moving on.’”

6. Adam Campbell: “For some reason, people always pick on the British sensibility, and we always come across as stupid, but remember: we used to run this country!”

7. Nestor Carbonell: “Let me make this perfectly clear: I do not wear make-up, and I do not wear eye-liner. This is something I’ve had to deal with my whole life. I remember I was in college in Boston, I had a commercial agent, and they sent me out for some print commercial stuff. And they called me into the office and said, ‘Look, we called you in to talk to you because we just want you to know that…well, we don’t think you need to wear eyeliner.’ And I’m, like, ‘What?’ ‘Yeah, it’s okay, you don’t have to wear it for print ads.’ ‘No, I’m not wearing eyeliner!’ And I kept dabbing my eyes and saying, ‘Look! No eyeliner! I’m not wearing any!’”

8. Elaine Cassidy: “The last two days of shooting (‘Harper’s Island’) was probably the most hardcore, the coldest anyone has ever been. It was like your head was freezing, and my motivation for most scenes was, ‘The minute this scene is over, I’m heading straight over to that heater to get warm.’”

9. Chris Cornell: “I started as a drummer, so I sort of took on singing duties by default. I had sung backgrounds and some lead vocals from behind the drums in different bands that I’d been in, and I’d gotten great responses for the songs I would sing. I really started pursuing the possibility of being a lead singer based on the fact that I was working a full-time restaurant job and then playing gigs at night, hauling drums around. One day, it just dawned on me that, ‘Hey, I could be in a band and be the singer, and it would be a lot easier!’”

10. Bryan Cranston: “When ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ was over, I was looking for a drama more than a comedy…but if it was a comedy that came up, it would have to be as well-written as ‘Malcolm’ was, and it would have to be a different kind of character than I played on that show. That’s harder to come by. In drama, there were more opportunities, more options for me, and when I read (‘Breaking Bad’), it was just, ‘Good night, Nurse! I’m going after this sucker!'”

11. David Cross: “I had this sketch group or comedy-show thing that I used to do, and I kind of recruited Sam (Seder) and his friend and partner, Jon Benjamin, to do stuff for that. It was really back in the day when you just had a shitty job that paid the rent, and you spent the bulk of your time just drinking, getting high, playing softball, and putting on these dumb shows. But in a good way.”

12. Richard Curtis: “(Choosing actors is) a very serious business. I was taught this by Mike Newell, who was an obsessive auditioner. I mean, obsessive. And when we were doing low budget movies, he saw it as basically a way of rehearsing the movie. By the time anyone got the part, they’d been in three times, done it, thought it through, and talked it through, so they didn’t need to get any notes when we were shooting it. So trying to find Talulah Riley or particularly trying to find Tom Sturridge (for ‘Pirate Radio’) was a long journey. We must’ve seen 50 or 60 people, everyone between the ages of 20 and 28 in the UK, and you were just looking for that strange moment that’s a bit like love, where suddenly the lines take off rather than fill you with shame and embarrassment.”

13. Andy Dick: “I went to network on a handful of pilots, and going to network is the most stressful situation anybody can ever be in. You’re supposed to be on point, you’re supposed to be at the top of your game, the funniest you can be, in about five minutes, in front of people wearing suits who really don’t care, and they’ve probably already picked their person, but they have to see a handful just to satisfy the process. It’s the most horrible, horrible process known to man. I wouldn’t want anybody to go through it.”

14. Hugh Dillon: “(‘Hard Core Logo’) was really what got me into the whole acting thing, ‘cause I just got to work with such a great director and a great cast. And, y’know, he allowed me to do a lot of stuff. I wrote the ending to that movie. So that movie was really…I just thought, ‘You know, I fucking like acting!’”

15. Chiwetel Ejiofor: “I think that this generation has witnessed, like, incredible change. And I sometimes wonder whether every generation feels that way. You know, maybe they do. The generation before me would have witnessed the end of the Second World War. They would have witnessed the first man on the moon. Do you know what I mean? They would have seen these seismic changes and gone, ‘Does everybody see it like this?’ And then the next generation…I was born in the late 70’s, so I was sort of party to the end of apartheid, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of Barack Obama. And you sort of feel, like, ‘Wow, this is so much,’ you know? But you really hope that the next generation absolutely does take things that they haven’t seen themselves or with their own eyes, and that they watch programs like this and realize that anything…anything…is achievable.”

16. Antonio Elias: “When I was first on (the ‘Star Trek’) set, doing the walk through with Chris Hemsworth and Faran Tahir, who plays Captain Robau, the first day we were actually filming our dialogue on the bridge set of the ship, the detail on that set was unbelievable. It was just…everything just looked real. I remember we were walking through with JJ (Abrams) and his first AD, and I literally had to stop and was, like, ‘Guys, I’m sorry, but I’m totally nerding out right now. Am I the only one that’s nerding out right now?’ They started laughing, because it was just so cool. It was, like, ‘What am I doing here?’”

17. Nick Frost: “Eight years ago, I was a waiter, and I didn’t have a pot to piss in. And now…? It’s like I said to my wife: I love the fact that, if I was in a restaurant and Steven Spielberg walked in, I could go up to him and say, ‘Hey, mate, how are you?’ I think that’s pretty amazing, actually.”

18. Jim Gaffigan: “I’m kind of a guy who’s missing a little bit of the guy gene. I love steak, but the notion of golfing is the last thing I would want to do. I love women, but I’m also a mama’s boy, and some of my best friends are women. So I’m kinda half guy’s guy.”

19. Corey Glover: “I always thought that the Grammys were, you know, the industry patting itself on the back. There is nothing wrong with that, and I appreciate it for what it is. But, you know, the day after we got this Grammy, I got on a subway and went back to Brooklyn. A Grammy and a token will get you on the subway. I appreciate it, and it’s great, and people look at it and say, ‘Wow, that’s really cool!’ And it is very cool. It’s very interesting, and I love it. But I’ve still got to get to work. In fact, what it means is that I’ve really got to get to work now, because, y’know, most people are expecting things from you that…well, I don’t know what they’re expecting, but whatever it is has got to be better than this piece of brass, you know?”

20. Bobcat Goldthwait: “Kurt (Cobain) was a fan of my standup, which was pretty weird. I know when people hear that, it’s kind of like finding out that Jimi Hendrix really liked Buddy Hackett, but he interviewed me at a college radio station before they broke and did Bleach. And then, like, about two years later, I was opening for Nirvana at these huge sports arenas.”

21. Elliott Gould: “Groucho Marx, in his later days, gave me the best review I’ve ever had and probably will ever have. I changed a light bulb over his bed, and when I came off of his bed with the used one after putting the new one in, Groucho said, ‘That’s the best acting I’ve ever seen you do.’”

22. David S. Goyer: “You know, we didn’t intend to have so many British people (in ‘FlashForward.’) Basically, it was who came through the door first. We cast Joe Fiennes first. We decided we wanted him to be American. I had seen him play American before a number of times, I knew he could do a pretty good American accent. So we decided, alright, he’s American. I’m ashamed to say that Sonya Walger…I didn’t actually realize that the actress in ‘Tell Me You Love Me’ was the same actress as in ‘Lost’ – I thought they were two different actresses – but her accent was quite good in ‘Tell Me You Love Me,’ so that happened. When Jack Davenport and Dominic Monaghan came along, we cast Sonya and Joe first, they said, ‘What about playing American?’ And I said, ‘You’re too late, our quota has already been filled.’”

23. Javier Grillo-Marxuach: “ABC Family wanted a Latino lead in (‘The Middleman.’) They thought that, because I’m Latino, it would be a great match. It’s funny because when Kate Juergens, who is the senior VP of ABC Family, called me with that suggestion, I was, like, ‘Absolutely not.’ She was, like, ‘Wait a minute, but you’re Latino. Don’t you want to put Latinos on TV?’ ‘Well, I do, but I don’t want to make this character into a stereotype. I don’t want there to be necessarily be salsa music playing whenever she gets on the screen and stuff like that.’”

24. Greg Grunberg: “I never root for a failure. I learned that when we were on ‘Felicity.’ There was a show that failed on the lot, and suddenly all of this food showed up on our set. I was, like, ‘What is this?’ And they said, ‘Oh, they cancelled this other show right before their lunch.’ And I said, ‘Throw that food away! We don’t want to touch that food! There’s no way I’m eating it!’ So I never root for anybody, because it could happen to you in two seconds.”

25. Sammy Hagar: “I would be happy to try to do a record with Van Halen. But they’ve only done one record since I left the band. They did one record, the Gary Cherone thing, and that’s it. What the fuck is the problem? You know, don’t blame me. Don’t be pointing at me and saying, ‘Fucking Hagar, fucking Hagar.’ I’m here, brother!”

26. Daryl Hall: “(‘She’s Gone’) was well-played in the R&B scene, and then ‘Sara Smile,’ which was on the silver album (Hall and Oates), was the third single released, and that broke in the R&B community, too. So our first success was on black radio – which was sort of natural, given our background – and then we crossed over onto pop radio. So that’s really how we came in: very much through the back door.”

27. Harry Hamlin: “I loved playing (Aaron Echols on ‘Veronica Mars.’) I was really sad when I got my head blown off, but…that seems to happen to me. I seem to be murdered on all of these shows. But, okay, as long as the checks don’t bounce, I’m all right with that. Besides, when Aaron Echols was killed, as I recall, he’d just had sex with a beautiful young girl, he was smoking a Cuban cigar and drinking a rare, 18-year-old brandy, and watching himself on television. If you gotta go, I think that’s probably the way to go.”

28. Dhani Harrison: “We were sitting around one day, and (Alex Rigopolos) just said to me, ‘Do you think they would ever go for a Beatle (‘Rock Star’) game?’ ‘It would be amazing, wouldn’t it?’ I said to him. Actually, I think I said, ‘It would be amazing because I could kick your ass at ‘I Am the Walrus’ while dressed as a wizard in Shea Stadium.’”

29. Lance Henriksen: “We’d be doing these really dark, dark metaphoric stories (on ‘Millennium’), and occasionally it would come in on you, because you do long hours to begin with, so you’re tired at the end of the day, working into the night. A couple of times, I went, ‘I’ve got to see the sun; I’ve got to go to Hawaii and lay on a beach, man, this is burning me!’”

30. Brian Henson: One of the criticisms of “Farscape” when we were on the air was that it was hard to catch up, that if you missed a few episodes and then tuned in, you might feel lost, and that might get you a little angry. That’s really why getting this show as a box set is a science fiction fan’s dream: because they really Aeryn’t episodes. You start at the beginning, and you’re gonna watch an 80-hour movie…and there’s no other 80-hour movie on the market!

31. Susanna Hoffs: “To anyone who’s trying to be an artist, in any medium, it’s a very odd and lonely and nerve-wracking and scary process when you let anybody see what you’re working on. You have to learn to listen to your instincts. Absorb other people’s advice, opinions, or whatever it may be from the outside world, but at the end of the day, you have to be true to whatever it is that you’re trying to say in that work.”

32. Michael Ironside: “One of the young production assistants (on ‘Terminator: Salvation’) stepped over to my chair and said, ‘Mr. Ironside, are you any relation to the Ironside who was in ‘Top Gun’?’ And I said, ‘I am, yes.’ And she grinned and said, ‘I knew it! Talent must run in your family!’ And she walked away. And all of the producers and directors kind of looked at me uncertainly, and I said, ‘What are you guys so uncomfortable for? That’s an incredible compliment. I do look like the father of that guy, for Christ’s sake!’”

33. Howard Jones: “There are, broadly speaking, 2 parts to my audience. The first group are the fans that are actively engaged with my output for the whole 26 years, and the second a more general or casual audience that only knows the ’80s work. I don’t find this a problem. I’m happy to have an audience that knows me at all!”

34. Chris Kattan: “With the Roxbury guys (on ‘Saturday Night Live’), I think the breaking point was when Stallone came on and wanted to do the sketch just because. And we’re, like, ‘Well, now we’ve got to create a story, so, what, are we bopping our heads with Rocky? What are we doing?’”

35. Phil Keaggy: “I think people are starting to get used to the idea thati t was impossible that Jimi Hendrix could ever have heard me and would never have said anything about a guy who, at the time, was only nineteen years old. We actually recorded our first album at Electric Lady Studios two weeks after his unfortunate death, so I just can’t imagine how he could’ve heard me. I think it’s just a rumor that someone’s kept alive, and it must be titillating enough to keep an interest there. But it’s just a strange, ironic sort of thing. I’ll never be in the category of Jimi Hendrix, and I couldn’t understand him saying something like that, anyway, even after all these years.”

36. Lisa Lackey: “Often they would come to me (on ‘Rude Awakening’) and say, ‘Uh, you know, we just can’t really hear your accent. Can you be just a little bit more Australian?’ And I was, like, ‘No!’ I mean, how do you be ‘more Australian’? I wasn’t born in the back of the Outback. I was born in Sydney, I grew up in a city, I moved to the farm when I was bit older…I don’t think I’ve ever said ‘mate’ in my entire life!”

37. Zane Lamprey: “I think a lot of the charm of (‘Three Sheets’) is in its honesty and its candor. I do my best to never try to be cool or look good, because I think that endears me to the fans of the show, so if by making myself vulnerable or self-deprecating or whatever, then…I just feel like it makes the show more enjoyable and more relatable. So therefore I’m going to be myself. If I don’t know what something is or if it tastes like crap, I’m going to say it. If I drink too much, you’re going to know about it, and if I pay the price the next morning, I’m going to be honest about it.”

38. Stephen Lang: “I was relatively buff (before ‘Avatar’), because I was working in a tanktop half the time on stage, anyway, but I just went kind of into hyperdrive after that and really worked to beat that old body into shape, to get that carcass where…I didn’t want to be looking at it and see anything hanging where it shouldn’t be hanging.”

39. Wallace Langham: “(William Petersen’s last day on ‘CSI’) was a really tough day to shoot for all the usual reasons, but, sadly, my father was passing away…and, actually, after we had finished filming, I got the call that he had died. It wasn’t a surprise, but…you know, I knew that would be the day, oddly enough. Once I got the call where they said, ‘Okay, you’re going to be shooting on the 10th,’ I just had a feeling. I thought, ‘Okay, the irony of life has always served me well,’ and true to form, it was a very heavy day on all levels.”

40. Lucy Lawless: “I haven’t actually used the merkin yet (on ‘Spartacus: Blood and Sand.’) It’s still a virgin merkin. I haven’t actually done anything that is quite full frontal nudity, though there are some men sort of wandering around in the altogether. They’re always going to baths, the Romans draping one another down with oil and stuff. It’s just a fact, so we show it. One of the gladiators is gay, and there was no taboo on homosexuality in those days, so we allow it. There’s no stigma attached to it. We don’t demonize or play it up or make him mince around with a bow around his neck. He’s a great big manly gladiator and he happens to be in this relationship with a gorgeous young man. It just shows you how we’re not in Wyoming now.”

41. Bill Lawrence: “My kids aren’t allowed to watch (‘Cougar Town’). That’s crazy talk! My God, they’re barely allowed to watch ‘Scrubs’! And even then, only certain ones. I let them watch that damned musical, and they sang ‘Everything Comes Down To Poo’ for six months.”

42. David Lewis: “There’s that scene in ‘Harper’s Island’ where Cameron (Mink) is tied up and sort of hanging from a beam, and I was kind of groping her, and I’m, like, ‘What can I do here?’ And she’s, ‘You can do whatever you want, it’s all cool, we’re acting.’ So I’m groping away, but the producer comes over and says, ‘Um, you gotta do less groping.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Yeah.’ And, meanwhile, people are getting cut in half and having their heads chopping off. But I can’t put my hands near her breasts, because you can’t have that on TV. But impaling someone with a whaling harpoon? That’s okay.”

43. Damon Lindelof: “Hopping around time in a non-linear storytelling fashion (on ‘Lost’) allows you to bring back characters who are dead and, in some cases, buried. Now that time travel is the story itself, it opens up even more doors. So when an actor reads that they’re getting killed off on the show, they’re basically, like, ‘Okay, but should I still bother to show up next week?’”

44. Joe Lo Truglio: “The internet may have saved the State reunion…and any future State collaborations, considering we’re about as big as the Waltons and half of us are on one side of the country and the other half is on the other. E-mail is really the only possible way for us to communicate…and it’s a little bit easier. because we’re not all in the same room.”

45. Dolph Lundgren: “(Filming in Russia) was a nightmare. It was really bad. But then it kind of resolved itself. We were shooting in Red Square, which is always the toughest location, I suppose, outside of the Kremlin. You can get fined in Russia, but we had the permits and everything, and we came in with our actors and crew from Bulgaria…and then we lost the permits the night before, and the only time we could do anything was on the weekend. Everybody was ready to shoot themselves. The producers were, like, ‘What? What?!? You’ve got to be kidding me!’ We could’ve turned into instant alcoholics.”

46. Rod Lurie: “A reckoning is coming on the state of the internet journalism, because right now, the way it’s set up, there is so much room for libel to squeak through that you’re going to see…they’re going to rewrite the rule book on journalism very soon. They have to, because the bloggers are getting away with so much rumor-mongering about public officials and even private figures because they don’t have editors and they don’t have fact checkers and they don’t have lawyers. There is going to be a price to pay somewhere down the line.”

47. Jennifer Lynch: “(‘Eraserhead’) may seem like a dark film, but my father and I watch it, and all we do is laugh. It was Disneyland everyday on the set. That’s when I fell in love with film.”

48. Ken Marino: “I’m assuming that there’ll be a new group of people who’ve never seen ‘The State,’ and they’ll go, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard a lot about this, I’m looking forward to seeing it.’ And then they’ll watch it (on DVD) and be, like, ‘Who the fuck…? What is this? What are they making fun of? Who is that?’”

49. James McEachin: “I got an interview to come and do (‘Play Misty for Me’), and…Clint Eastwood wasn’t really that much at the time. You know, he wasn’t the Eastwood that he grew up to be, so to speak. I walked into the office and the door was opened, so I just sat down and started reading and looking at some things, and all of a sudden this guy comes through the door and says, ‘Hey, man, how are you doing?’ We struck up this conversation and we started talking. ‘What are you here for?’ ‘Well, I’m going to interview for this movie.’ And we just continued with the conversation, and I really didn’t know it was Clint I was talking to, to be honest with you. A few minutes later, (producer) Bob Daley showed up and said, ‘What are you doing in here?’ And Clint said, ‘Hey, leave the guy. We’re talking. Can’t you see we’re talking?’”

50. Duff McKagan: “Playing in (the Neurotic Outsiders) with John Taylor was great. A lot of pussy every time we played a gig. So many chicks. It was, like, ‘Wow, John, really? So this is what it was like, huh?’ And there would be like a couple guys with mohawks and a guy with, like, a jean jacket coming in to see me and Jonesy!”

51. Ian McKellen: “I’ve played an awful lot of people that other people would call villains, but that isn’t a very helpful attitude to have if you’re about to play them. They are just people, and they may do dreadful things and say dreadful things, but your job as an actor is to know why they do them or say them.”

52. Colm Meaney: “I do go back to Ireland, and I’ll probably be doing a film in Ireland in January, and I guess that kind of keeps me classified as ‘the Irish actor,’ but the last four or five projects that I’ve been in are either American or English, so I don’t feel terribly trapped in that. But sometimes, yeah, you would like to not be called ‘the Irish actor.’ You’d prefer to just be called ‘the actor.’”

53. Jonny Lee Miller: “I think Danny Boyle’s got it in his head that we all still look too young (to do a ‘Trainspotting’ sequel.) But, I mean, I don’t look like anyone I play, anyways, so I don’t really know where that comes from. Because, you know, you change yourself for the roles. I’m actually not Scottish, either!”

54. Katie Morgan: “There’s lots of things I never did (in porn). Like, I never did do the butt. And I had rules of no more than two at a time, on account of things that I do and don’t do. Ya can’t leave people standing around bored! So, yeah, all sorts of stuff. I was actually quite picky!”

55. Kevin Nealon: “Me and Conan O’Brien and Robert Smigel and Dana Carvey wrote a script called ‘Hans and Franz: The Girlyman Dilemma,’ and it was going to be co-produced with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he was going to co-star in it. We had a deal with Sony, we got paid to write it, and it was a musical, but it never got made because…I think Arnold kind of backed out at the last minute because he was getting cold feet because ;The Last Action Hero’ had come out, where he was parodying himself. But it was a really funny script, and I wish it could’ve seen the light, because I think it would’ve done really well.”

56. Kyle Newman: “I think everybody should see (‘The Star Wars Holiday Special’) to realize how bad something can be. There are some cool things in there, but it’s two hours long, and you could probably cut it down to about two minutes and twelve seconds of cool material. The animated Boba Fett sequence is great, and there’s some cool stuff, but overall, the whole format of a variety show in the ‘Star Wars’ universe is just a train wreck.”

57. John Noble: “Because I was so heavily pumped to get (an Emmy nomination) this year, you try not to think about it, but it starts to permeate into your thinking. It was actually quite a relief when it didn’t happen, because I’ve been in the business for so long that you kind of grow aware what goes on, so I went, ‘Oh, no? Okay, back to work.’”

58. John Oates: “I haven’t had a mustache for 20 years and people actually still talk about it! But I kind of understand it on the level that the mustache is back in vogue, you know. It’s back in style, and there is a lot of talk about it. My mustache took on this iconic kind of symbol of the era, of those decades in a way. Of course I didn’t carry the ‘stache torch singlehandedly…”

59. Chris O’Dowd: “I actually fly back to London this weekend to start learning how to ride a horse (for ‘Gulliver’s Travels’), so that’s going to be interesting. I’m fucking shitting myself. And I’m a big guy; I’m, like, 6′ 4″, so I have no idea what size this fucking horse is going to be. So I’ve decided on day one, I’m just going to let him know who’s boss. Which will consist of me quietly whispering into his ear, ‘Mr. Horse, you are the boss.’”

60. Ed O’Neill: “I used to say things like, ‘My name’s not Al (Bundy), you know?’ Not to the press, but to fans. ‘My name is actually Ed.’ I’d find myself saying that, and I’d think, ‘Who do you think they think you are? They only know you from that!’ And finally I just got…I don’t know, I guess a switch went on for me, and I realized, ‘This was the greatest job that you’ve ever had in your life. Why are you acting like an asshole?’ So from that minute on, I kind of…well, I hate the word ’embraced,’ but I just kind of went, ‘Yeah, okay.’ ‘So you’re Al, right?’ ‘Yep!'”

61. Patton Oswalt: “I think most comedians go through that (period), where you have to change or evolve. You don’t want to just keep doing variations on the same themes. And, besides, it would look kinda creepy for a guy my age to be doing stuff that, like, a 20-year-old would do. ‘Yeah, this is bullshit!’ It’s, like, ‘Really? You don’t have bigger concerns at this point in your life?'”

62. Aaron Paul: “I have had viewers that come up to me, and they’re, like, “You know, we used to watch (‘Breaking Bad’) as a family, and once the melted body came falling through the ceiling, my mom was just, like, ‘I can’t watch this show anymore. This is just way too disturbing for me.’ So it’s not for everybody.”

63. Jim Parsons: “(Wil Wheaton) was so fun to have on the set, and he was such a good guy, just in general. He seemed to be completely okay with the fact that his entire name became a mantra of vengeful hate. That didn’t seem to bother him.”

64. Andy Partridge: “I don’t like people turning up and A) wanting to stare at me, B) wanting to play me their music, C) wanting to be my best friend. You see, I just…I’m very private, and I hate all that. I usually try and be pleasant to them, but inside I’m going, ‘Fuck off and die! Fuck off and die!’”

65. Ron Perlman: “I like doing voiceover work. I just like it in general, because you’re constantly working on a very first-instinct level. You show up, you get in front of the microphone, you look at the lines, you say the lines, and then you move on. You work on a really primal level, is what I’m saying. You don’t have to shave. You don’t even have to wear pants. But, uh, that wasn’t your question.”

66. Danny Pudi: “You know, you’re just sitting with Chevy, then you’re doing a scene with him and acting, and all of a sudden you go, ‘Omigod, that’s Chevy Chase!’ And then you’ve got to keep acting. ‘Danny, your lines? Your lines…? You’ve got to keep going!’ ‘Oh, sorry, sorry!'”

67. Gordon Ramsay: “Chefs aren’t very good at sleeping. Guy Savoy said to me 20 years ago, when I was in his kitchen and said, ‘Sorry, Chef, I’m a little bit tired,’ he said, ‘Tired? How many hours sleep did you have last night?’ I said, ‘Six.’ He said, ‘Fucking way too much.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Think about it: the average person sleeps for eight hours a day, so when you get to sixty years of age, that means you would’ve slept for twenty years. Does that scare you?’ I said, ‘Yeah!’ He said, ‘So shut the fuck up, sleep four hours a night, get to sixty, and only have slept for ten years of your life!’”

68. Dileep Rao: “I think my beard (in ‘Drag Me To Hell’) is getting a better IMDb rating than I am.”

69. Francis Reader: “There’s a certain period in your life, I think, where if music is something that you’re passionate about and it’s something that gives you a thrill…what you feel about the music in a critical way doesn’t come into it. If I hear anything from, like, the year 1979 or 1980, when I was first just getting knocked over by music, reading the charts every week and taking the radio to school, it doesn’t matter what the record is or if it’s the craziest comedy record or whatever. It just gives me such a thrill of nostalgia that I can’t not like it and can’t not enjoy that moment.”

70. Andy Richter: “I never try to think that (a show is too smart for the average viewer), just because I think you put yourself in the position where you go, ‘Well, I tried to do something smart and funny, and I guess they want dumb shit, so I’ll try and write dumb shit.’ You just have to do the best job you can. Otherwise, it’s just too soul-deadening.”

71. Talulah Riley: “It was (Nick Frost’s) first-ever bedroom scene and my first-ever bedroom scene…not that we were actually doing much, but we did have to lie sort of semi-nude under the sheets. And he was incredibly sort of vibrant and outgoing, but then he suddenly got very, like, ‘I’m engaged and I’m getting married!’ And I was, ‘Okay, that’s good. I just won’t be touching you, then!'”

72. Robbie Rist: “Sometimes people will bring up these odd things that I did a one-off from. Like, I did a ‘Knight Rider,’ and I’ll get an E-mail from a ‘Knight Rider’ fan who says, ‘Look what I did to my car!’ And I don’t know if you know about this, but there is a sub-cult of ‘Knight Rider’ fan who trick out their cars to look like KITT. I’m, like, ‘Really? Isn’t there anything else you can do? Do you make that much money? Because I have projects I’d like to get off the ground, so how about you don’t make KITT and you give it to me?'”

73. Krysten Ritter: “It was just a little weird coming into the seventh season (of ‘Gilmore Girls’), where everyone is already set in their ways and their dynamics, and you sort of feel like you’re coming into a party late. So I was just, like, ‘Ugh! How do I make friends?’ It’s like high school dynamics!”

74. Joan Rivers: “The only good thing about age is that I get out there and…I say I’m working better than I ever worked. That started about seven years ago in Edinburgh. I just said, ‘Oh, what, am I going to censor myself?’ I’ve been fired, I’ve been broke, I’ve been bankrupt, I’ve had to go to court to get my name back, I’ve been publicly humiliated. Screw all you. Now I’m going to tell you what I really think about Jennifer Aniston, that little miss boo-hoo. So, no, I don’t censor myself at all now. But, you know, ‘fuck’ is in the vernacular now. It was good enough for Shakespeare. When Jane Fonda can say ‘cunt,’ it’s over. It’s done.”

75. Saul Rubinek: “I have a very good recollection of working on ‘Death Ship.’ We called it ‘Death Shit.’ I was glad I was killed off quickly. But you’ve got to remember that it was my second movie. I think I had done one movie before that. I was thrilled. You know: no mortgage, no kids. I was just thrilled to travel down to Alabama. We were in Southern Alabama, and all I remember was that, as I was leaving the production trailer, I saw all of my fellow cast members in the water. And there was a production report saying that under no circumstances should the actors be in this water, it’s polluted, and you will have to be hospitalized. But apparently nobody had told the actors. And that’s when I began to understand something about the nature of independent movies.”

76. Vik Sahay: “(Playing with Jeffster at Comic-Con) was absolutely the scariest thing I have ever done. I literally skipped over the ‘what a great moment’ to ‘oh, my God, I can’t believe I have to do this.’ And when I was up there, the people were, like, “Oh, my God,” and they were all screaming and stuff. But I didn’t hear a thing. I was just in my own little bubble of horror and panic, utterly, utterly blanched with terror.”

77. Rob Schneider: “Carsey-Werner cared more about power and control than they cared about comedy, so I’m glad I got the fuck out (‘Men Behaving Badly’) after a season and a half. I would never work for those people again. I would rather do any other menial job than to ever work for that company again. Totally. That’s one the reasons I never want to do television in America: because I had such a horrible experience with Carsey-Werner. It was a really funny show, and they talked me into it by saying, ‘We’re gonna make it just like the British show.’ And then they fucking lied to me. Fucking bunch of liars. And then on top of that, they watered it down, so it was more like ‘Men Apologizing For Trying To Behave Badly.’ That’s what they should’ve called the show.”

78. Campbell Scott: “I’m 47, I have gray hair, and yet people still come up to me on the street who are in their twenties, who weren’t even born when ‘Singles’ was made…well, they were pretty tiny, anyway…and they say, ‘Oh, I love that movie ‘Singles.’’ And I always say, ‘How old are you?’”

79. Amy Sedaris: “I don’t really consider myself to be a comedian. I mean, it’s not like I’m sitting around writing jokes or anything. I just like dressing up and pretending to be other people.”

80. Paul Shaffer: “Some ten years ago, I got a book deal and tried to do it. I wrote three stories up, and I just never had time to go back to it. So this time, when I was re-introduced to David Ritz, who is the A-list celebrity biographer, just a couple of years ago, he said, ‘If you ever want to do a book’… I thought, ‘Well, that’s the way to do it: do it with somebody, and that way, he has the responsibility of turning it in on time.’”

81. Craig Singer: “As filmmakers, we all kind of borrow and steal. I don’t think it’s an intentional tribute, but you’re influenced by things that you’ve seen, and a lot of times it’s about where you wish films had taken you. So you’re using your imagination to say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if…’ Or, you know, ‘I’ve never really kind of seen this executed quite in this way before.’ So you try to keep it fresh, and if you’re gonna steal, steal from the best.”

82. Kevin Smith: “It’s not like someday my kid’s gonna be standing over my grave, and somebody’s gonna hang her a folded flag and say, ‘You know what? This is ‘cause he did 24 hours straight on Twitter.’ But it’s just one of those little personal victories, like, ‘I wonder if I can do this.’ And I did it. A stupid goal, but I accomplished it. Life’s all about…for me, at least…having very stupid achievable goals. That way, you always feel like a winner.”

83. Rich Sommer: “(‘Mad Men’) was my final audition of the pilot season. It had been three miserable, horrible months where I had zero callbacks, zero positive reception, one of those pilot seasons that makes you pretty sure you are never going to be an actor and never want to be an actor. And then that happened.”

84. Jon Stewart: “I think, in general, most of the people who come on (‘The Daily Show’) are relatively sophisticated media professionals. There’s not a lot of, ‘Wait a minute, how did you get access to comments I made three years ago?’ They’ve been around the block, so you don’t often get people who walk away angry. Now, you do get people who walk out oblivious. Rob Blagojevich came on, and…look, he’s either been the victim of one of the greatest travesties of justice to a political figure or he’s a sociopath, because he’s just out there going, ‘I’m telling you, I didn’t do anything!’ But I don’t normally hear people say, ‘That was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen!’ They’re pretty hip to the game.”

85. Dean Stockwell: “I’ve got categories of jobs, and one of the categories is ‘money jobs.’ If one of those comes along and I have to make a living, even if I don’t like the script that much, I’ll do it and just try to stay above water, which I’m able to do most of the time. I try not to sink with the ship.”

86. Tom Sturridge: “You know that scene at the beginning (of ‘Pirate Radio’) where I take The Count a cup of tea in the studio, and he shakes my hand, gives me a hug, and slaps me on the arse? That’s genuinely the first time Tom Sturridge met Philip Seymour Hoffman. Literally, I’d hadn’t seen him or exchanged words with him before. Richard just called me on set and said, ‘Take him a cup of tea.’ So that’s what I did. And the smile of delight as he slaps me on the arse is purely mine.”

87. Kurt Sutter: “The great thing about having a serialized drama (like ‘Sons of Anarchy’) is that I’m allowed to bring up events and circumstances that have happened in the past in other episodes to show that this kind of violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It has ramifications. It has repercussions. Whether it’s a week from now or five years from now, you know it will play out. Nothing is ever tied up into a perfect knot.”

88. Matthew Sweet: “I never cared about covers. I really only wanted to do new songs of mine, always. I went straight to writing and had this kind of empty hole. I remember one time I was standing with Brendan O’Brien, maybe during The Thorns, and he can play, like, any song in all of rock history on any instrument. He’s a complete hot dog with that kind of thing. He was playing something, and he said, ‘Come on, play along,’ and I was, like, ‘I don’t know how to play that.’ ‘Oh, come on, what are you talking about? Quit fucking faking it!’ He thought I really knew them, but I really just don’t know that many songs.”

89. Amanda Tapping: “It’s just so much fun making (‘Stargate’) that, as long as they keep asking, I’ll keep doing it. It really is one of those dream gigs. It sounds hokey as hell, but it really is just so much fun. Samantha will be rolling through the Stargate in her wheelchair, going, ‘Where’s my gun, dammit?’”

90. Alan Thicke: “The key to writing for Richard (Pryor) was to just push his buttons and then know when to push the buttons on your cassette recorder. You’d get him started, then surreptitiously start recording when he got inspired and started walking around the room and improvising in character. Then you’d get it all transcribed and take credit for it.”

91. Lea Thompson: “My kids can’t watch (‘Howard the Duck’). By the time I get in bed with the duck, they are, like, ‘Turn it off, mom. You in bed with a duck is just pretty much a deal breaker.’”

92. Sam Trammell: “Most of the time when people have to get naked, it’s for a sex scene or it’s post-coital, and they’re in a bedroom and it’s kind of a closed set. But with Sam (on ‘True Blood’), it always seems to be because he’s turning back into himself from being an animal, so I’m always outside. Like, way out. Like, out for everybody to see.”

93. David Wain: “Everyone who went to college and especially people working in media seem to know at least one person from Shaker Heights. There’s just something about that place that made people go to the coast.”

94. Dave Wakeling: “If you look at the history of IRS (Records), you can see there’s a certain point right about the time when ‘Tenderness’ came out, just before, where all of a sudden songs on IRS were starting to enter the top 40. And I think that they’d had enough success with the college charts and the independent charts that they could now afford to enter the top-40 lottery game. There had been jokes running around IRS that the only way you could get a top-40 hit on IRS was if you had a vagina. Miles (Copeland) liked his girl groups!”

95. George Wallace: “When (Jerry Seinfeld’s) first child was born and we had the bris, and I was honored to hold one of the baby’s legs, which is supposed to be for the daddy and the granddaddy. I said, ‘Whenever I walk into that house, that boy looks at me like, ‘I know you from somewhere.’”

96. Patrick Warburton: “You know, my mother actually thinks my soul is in peril for being on (‘Family Guy’), and after I watched last Sunday’s episode, I thought, ‘Geez, maybe she’s right.’ You know my rationalization is that it is just absurd, crazy humor, and…what the fuck. It is a deplorable show. It’s horrible.”

97. Carl Weathers: “(‘Rocky’) was so simple and, at the same time, such a complicated movie in a way, and a feat that John Avildsen pulled off, to shoot a movie in so few days with so little money that looked so much bigger than it actually was. The right people came together at the right time…and it worked. It just worked. And nobody thought that movie was going to be what it was. In all honesty, *I* thought it was going to be huge, but I was so young, naïve, and inexperienced that that doesn’t mean very much.”

98. George Wendt: “It’s maybe every third person now (who calls out ‘Norm!’ when they see me). It used to be every other person. It’s faded a bit, but not too much. They’re always going to remember me that way. I decided a long time ago that if I’m going to let this make me crazy, I’m going to be certifiable, so I just roll with it.”

99. “Weird Al” Yankovic: “If Michael Jackson hadn’t given his blessing (for ‘Eat It’), it’s hard to say the direction my life would’ve taken. If my second album hadn’t done well, that might’ve been it for me. But with Michael Jackson signing off and giving me his support…I mean, I’ve been able to ride that for quite some time.”

100. Andrew Zimmern: “The single greatest pleasure that I have in doing (‘Bizarre Foods’) is when I meet families with 6, 7, 8-year-olds, or teenagers, who say, ‘It’s something the whole family can watch, and it lets us show our younger children that one man’s ‘weird’ is another man’s ‘wonderful,’ and we all kind of live in the same place.’ It’s just the best part of my day.”

“As we went along, I think we got a better handle on the balance of our characters and the plots and making sure that our plots were character-centric,” admitted executive producer Jeff Pinkner. “I think that we learned how to write for these actors, these characters over time, and I think we learned this in ‘Alias’ and ‘Lost.’ The shows that are really about the characters, the characters and the actors playing them start to meld a little bit more, and I think we’ve gotten better at that.”

Orci noted that one of the series’ biggest issue from the very beginning was figuring out the percentage of standalone episodes versus a larger serialization. “We’ve all read the research that says a regular viewer watches three episodes in a year, etcetera, etcetera, so you try to modulate,” he explained. “In the first season, we actually had to sort of plan around resetting the series once or twice and doing it around three- or four-week-long breaks. And that kind of exercise makes us, in Season Two, a little more flexible, a little bit more able to read the green. And I think, you know, the fact that we are closer than we were from New York is also helpful. We can all be up there a little bit more; we can communicate better with each other. I think we’re just a tighter ship this year.”

If you weren’t entirely sure whether or not that shot of the World Trade Center took place in the past or in an alternate universe, Pinker is glad to clarify. “We have decided that, though science acknowledges a multi-verse and an infinite number of universes, we are only going to tell a story about two: here and what we are referring to internally as ‘over there,'” he said. “But they are two versions of reality. It’s not time travel.” (Season 2 will predominantly take place here, he said, “but what’s happening over there is impacting what’s happening over here.”)

Pinkner admits that it’s a challenge to come up with the most succinct way to convey the show’s science to the average viewer.

“One of our co-producers, Brian Burk…we literally say that we try to write the show for his dog and for my dad (to comprehend),” he said, scoring a laugh. “Both his dog and my dad are really bright, but…how do you convey a parallel universe, which science has actually acknowledged or hypothesized for decades, and the idea that there’s literally a Doppelganger for each of us living in another universe where very similar, although different events are taking place?

“At the end of the season, when we made the choice that we were going to see our character, Olivia, cross over to the other side and meet William Bell, who we now know is over there, we tried to figure out what would be the most iconic symbol to represent this is very much like here but different. And we talked about using the World Trade Center as the visual representation of that, such an iconic thing that tragically is no longer here, and we immediately thought, ‘Okay, that’s perfect.’ That’s the end of ‘Planet of the Apes,’ when you’d see the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand, and then you know, ‘Oh, we landed back on Earth.’ And we struggled with whether it would be appropriate or disrespectful, but we thought that, ultimately, it’s an honest way to represent that there’s another version of Earth in New York where different choices were made and, therefore, different consequences.”

If you’re wondering, Leonard Nimoy will absolutely be back on the show as William Bell, and the option is available for him to appear “as much as he wants, truly,” according to Pinkner. “We’ve made an open invitation.” One has been filmed, and fellow executive producer J.H. Wyman says that there will be several more for sure.

Although it was cool to have Nimoy on the set, that’s talking in terms of general awesomeness rather than temperature. “It was 106 degrees outside,” said Pinkner, “and unlike Los Angeles or New York, the sound stages in Vancouver don’t have air-conditioning. It was 120-some degrees inside, and like a pro, he sat there all day. He never went back to his trailer, and did pages and pages and pages of dialogue and scenes with Anna.”

“Well, he’s from the planet Vulcan,” observed Joshua Jackson. “He’s after that kind of heat.”

“Sincerely, his wife told me that he practices biofeedback,” said Pinkner. “He just sort of, like, regulates his body temperature, which is very Spock-like.”

* First off, I didn’t mention it in my original write-up about the series, but I really dig the way they set the location: with huge letters that look like they’re part of the scenery. It’s one of those accepted parts of a series that you wouldn’t think they could do anything particularly unique with, but damned if they didn’t.

* Like the pilot, the opening sequence is nice and harrowing, making it the perfect way to get you caught up in the episode right off the bat, and the decision to provide it with limited commercial interruptions – timed down to the second – was certainly appreciated as well. Also, the method of offering flashbacks to the pilot was a nice, unobtrusive way to giving first-timers just enough info to walk into this episode without feeling lost.

* The character of Dr. Walter Bishop continues to be fascinatingly eccentric, with his memories ebbing and flowing like the tide, but the reality is that John Noble’s performance in the role is enthralling to watch. His quiet, innocent delivery makes even the strangest lines work, and his sudden explosion of anger at one point is downright shocking.

* Thankfully, they have indeed attempted to downplay the Pacey-isms being delivered by Joshua Jackson. There are still a couple of moments where he throws out snappy lines which feel inappropriate, but the character of Peter is startling to feel more like a real guy caught up in a weird situation. (I can only presume that his aptitude at police work comes from years of watching procedurals on TV.)

* Okay, maybe Anna Torv is a little glum in her delivery, but I don’t really have a problem with her performance. I had to laugh when my wife made a comment about how she needed to get her roots done, but she accepted my argument (or pretended to, at least) that a real government agent wouldn’t be all that concerned about maintaining a glamorous look, anyway.

* Obviously, things don’t really kick into high gear until the last 15 minutes of the episode, but between the unfolding of the man-baby plot, Walter remembering where he parked his car, the tie-in to the case to Walter’s research, and Olivia trying to work out how much of her work over the past year was tainted by her traitorous partner, I remained thoroughly interested from beginning to end.

* All hail the cow!

As it happens, “Fringe” has the advantage of featuring a couple of other names which give it added credibility, particularly amongst sci-fi fans: Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Fox has really been pushing the fact that the duo wrote the script for “Transformers,” but for some reason, they don’t mention that they were called upon by Zack Snyder to assist with the script for “Watchmen.” Funny, that. Probably more important than either of those credits, however, is their longstanding working relationship with Abrams, having done time with him on “Alias” as both writers and executive producers and writing the screenplays for both “Mission: Impossible III” and the new “Star Trek” film. The collaboration has worked out well in the past, so there’s every reason to be hopeful that…

Dammit! See what I mean? I almost fell into being optimistic about “Fringe” just because Abrams is involved. Granted, he was only a third of that particular equation, but even so, I don’t want to do that. Not again. I did it with “Six Degrees,” and 13 episodes later, I was left a bitter shell of a TV critic. I can’t handle that kind of heartbreak a second time…particularly not when “Fringe” reminds me so much of still another show that was canceled too soon: “Threshold.”

There was a lot of talk around the TCA Press Tour about how it’s almost disappointing to find that “Fringe” is, for all its inherent weirdness, a surprisingly penetrable show. At the time I was hearing such comments, however, I had yet to see the pilot. Now that I have, I understand what they were saying – the framework about government agents who explore the fringe sciences was easy enough to digest for “The X-Files” to become a hit (the 2008 film not withstanding) – but I can also imagine mainstream viewers dismissing the show because it’s so “out there.”

The stage-setting for “Fringe” begins with the entire crew and passenger manifest of an airliner dying under grisly circumstances while in mid-air, an event which, as you would expect, leads to a governmental investigation. FBI Special Agents Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) and John Scott (Mark Valley) are called in to participate in the inter-agency task force, where Dunham immediately butts heads with Department of Homeland Security Agent Philip Broyles (Lance Reddick). In the midst of their investigation, Dunham and Scott are caught in an explosion while pursuing a suspect, and although Dunham survives mostly intact, Scott seems to have been infected by something not so far removed from whatever it is that took down the plane. Unfortunately, the only scientist who may possess the knowledge to save his life – Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) – has been institutionalized for many years; similarly, the only person who can authorize visitors for Dr. Bishop is his son, Peter (Joshua Jackson), whose experiences with his father over the years have been so awful that he has no immediate interest in ever seeing him again.

But you know how these things work: Dunham blackmails Peter, Peter begrudgingly agrees to go, and father and son are reunited. As you might expect, it’s far from a happy reunion. Dr. Bishop is, not to put a fine point on it, off his nut (his first words to Peter: “I thought you’d be fatter”), and Peter’s suffered through enough of his dad’s craziness over the years that even the blackmail is barely enough to keep him involved in the situation. But he stays, Dr. Bishop begins to investigate a possible method of saving Scott’s life, and so it goes from there.

“Fringe” is full of countless mysteries. Some are based in reality, courtesy of the wonderful world of governmental bureaucracy, but most spring forth from the events aboard that plane, including the introduction of a creepy corporate executive named Nina Sharp (Blair Brown), who’s like the older sister of Shirley Manson’s character over on “The Sarah Connor Chronicles.” The character of Dr. Walter Bishop is unquestionably the most intriguing character on the show, however, described by Orci as “Frankenstein mixed with Albert Einstein” because of his unique scientific beliefs. Basically, he’s one of those guys who’s constantly walking the line between genius and insanity, and the only way to confirm that he’s talking the former rather than the latter is to take a step of faith and hope for the best. On the surface, science wouldn’t appear to be a great blend with faith, which may be why the show’s initial mythology seems so intriguing.

I don’t want to spoil too much of what goes on the middle of “Fringe,” but having offered the initial set-up, I’ll also clarify how it evolves into a series. Basically, Dunham survives the events of the events and, as a result, is invited by DHS Agent Broyles to join with him and begin investigating cases involving the fringe sciences, stuff that’s above top-secret. There are still 15 minutes left of the episode at this point, so we expect that she’s going to refuse (she does), and we know with 100% certainty that something’s going to happen to change her mind (it does). In the end, she does indeed agree to join with Broyles…and now that Dr. Bishop is acting comparatively normal, he’s being drafted to assist as well. Peter is royally freaked out by the events he’s witnessed, of course, and all of his instincts tell him to bail out, but when Dunham asks him to stay on to help stabilize his father’s moods, he agrees, anyway.

Welcome to “Fringe.”

I’m intrigued enough to give it a try, even if I think they might want to tone down Jackson’s highly Pacey-esque quips, which he spews constantly throughout the pilot. We get it: the guy’s got decent comedic delivery. Just don’t overdo it, okay? I don’t know if non-sci-fi fans will be as easily swayed into its camp, but the ensemble is strong (Kirk Escovedo plays one of Dunham’s fellow FBI agents, and I’ve yet to see him deliver anything less than a solid performance), the mysteries are intriguing, and if the episodes aren’t so mythology-driven that it becomes completely impenetrable to casual viewers, I think it’s got a shot.

But, then again, this is Fox, so it might be off the air next week.