Please do not stick this on O'Hare. Whatever decisions get made, it
is up to the producers -- me and Doug -- to implement those decisions, so
ultimate responsibility rests with me. If you're going to be angry at
anyone, be angry at me. Your anger is misplaced.

Again, this was *mutual*. We looked at the story, the way a
novelist looks at a novel he's one-fifth through writing, and you learn
things writing the novel that you can learn NO other way, however much
you plan and outline. And at some point, you say, "If we leave things
JUST as they are, no changes, we can do X and Y, which are both very
cool. But if we take a chance, and make some shifts in direction, we can
do X, and Y...*AND* Z...and Z is *VERY* interesting indeed. It opens up
whole new areas for us to explore. So we talked about it with Michael,
who had some thoughts of his own...and now here we are.

Granted, it's taking a chance. But we all swore a blood oath to
make the show consistently better. Any time a possible decision comes
up -- like, Should we do "Believers," knowing that it'll get us in
ENDLESS trouble -- we ask, "Will this benefit the show?" If the answer
is yes, we do it, regardless.

Once again, this is *mutual*. So blame me. And be assured, this
isn't now going to be a band-aid covering...it will let us get deeper and
faster into the meat of the storyline, and intensify the characterizations
and relationships. Sinclair's purpose in the large part of the first
section of the story was really to get everyone together...to start the
pieces moving. And now we've got all the players in position. The whole
24 hours/Line thread was *always* going to be resolved at the top of year
two, because you can't sustain that for more than 1.5 seasons at MOST.
The audience, rightly, won't stand for it. At that point, that mystery
dispensed with (which would lead to other questions), Sinclair kinda
faded a bit from the story, because now we have to bring the other
players into the foreground. So if he's going to fade *anyway*, why have
him meandering around? Why not "absent" him for a time...and up the
stakes for everyone else, and help focus on other aspects?

The story will go where it was always going to go. This much is
certain.

jms