At the end of September, however, something great happened. "The original pilot didn't wow execs," reported Daily Variety. Tim Minear, the trade paper explained, would become the series' new showrunner and create a new pilot.
Who is Tim Minear? Just a TV god, is all! Minear wrote and directed the best episodes of "Angel" series creator Joss Whedon didn't write and direct. Remember the one that introduced The Groosalugg? The one that saw Team Angel move into Wolfram & Hart's Los Angeles offices? So fabulous were installents like these that Whedon made Minear his co-showrunner on "Firefly." So good was Minear's work on "Firefly" that Fox hired Minear as showrunner on "Wonderfalls," last season's best new show.
2) Minear's "Inside" is a different "Inside" than the one we've heard about.
It was reported in the trade press that Minear was "hired to write a new pilot script while keeping the premise." The trade press lies, says Minear. "I agreed to do it if they let me dump the premise. "˜The Inside' is totally retooled. It's less "˜21 Jump Street' and more "˜Silence of the Lambs'."
Gone is the high school and any ongoing undercover operation.
The show is now about Rebecca Locke, a young special agent who joins the FBI's Violent Crimes Unit (VCU) in Los Angeles. Having graduated from the FBI academy two years ago, she's already made a name for herself at Homeland Security, where she demonstrated a knack for cracking Queda codes.
The man in charge of L.A.'s VCU, celebrated supervisory special agent Virgil "Web" Webster, recruited Rebecca, and she may be his biggest find yet. Quickly and unassumingly does she demonstrate that she's better at what she does than the older, more experienced and highly skilled agents Webster recruited before her.
We also learn that a very dark chapter was been written into Rebecca's life long before she began training with the FBI.
"High school angle -- DEAD! This is not an undercover show," emphasizes Minear. "When they sked me to do this I felt there were problems in the DNA."
