The Inside (TV series)

The Inside
Genre	Crime drama
Created by	Tim Minear and Howard Gordon
Starring	Rachel Nichols Adam Baldwin Katie Finneran Nelsan Ellis with Jay Harrington and Peter Coyote
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	13 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time	44 min
Original release
Network	FOX
Release	June 8, 2005 – March 14, 2006

The Inside is an American crime drama television series created by Tim Minear and Howard Gordon and produced by Imagine Television. The Inside follows the work of the FBI's Los Angeles Violent Crimes Unit (VCU), a division dedicated to investigating particularly dangerous crimes. The Inside initially aired on the FOX Network from June 8 to July 13, 2005. Although thirteen episodes were produced, FOX aired only seven episodes before canceling the series. All thirteen episodes were subsequently aired on Britain's ITV4 in 2006 and will begin airing in Fall 2007 on CBC Country Canada. All thirteen episodes were also shown, twice, in Sweden by TV3 in 2007. At The Moment all Episodes are being shown on Irish entertainment channel 3e @ 10pm Friday Nights.

Premise

The show features Nichols as rookie FBI Agent Rebecca Locke, who joins the VCU after the death of a previous member. While she proves to be a brilliant investigator, she has a secret that only she, and mysterious VCU director Virgil "Web" Webster (Coyote), knows; that as a 10-year-old girl, Rebecca was kidnapped from her home and held captive for 18 months (à la Elizabeth Smart). Astonishingly enough, no one found and rescued her; she escaped the trauma all by herself, setting a fire and escaping in the resulting chaos. Webster manipulates Rebecca's experience on each case, using the insight she gained through it to establish the mindset of the victim -- and the criminal.

Another sidebar to the plot is the moral struggle between Webster, who seems willing to use Rebecca's gift to catch the "unsub" at all costs, and Rebecca's partner Paul Ryan (Harrington), who views himself as the voice of conscience in the battle for Rebecca's soul. Additionally, Webster's past is very much unknown; viewers are left wondering exactly how much he has in common with the perpetrators he pursues. The show was the brainchild of Tim Minear, of Angel and Firefly fame. While FOX had already developed an earlier version of the show (a distaff 21 Jump Street imitator), Minear re-tooled it, with Nichols as the only holdover. Just seven episodes into its 13-episode first season, FOX cancelled The Inside, making it the third series (along with Firefly and Wonderfalls) of Minear's to be aborted by the network. Minear planned on releasing all 13 episodes of the original run, plus the Jump Street pilot and another pilot which was shot without Minear's supervision and was panned by FOX execs, on a DVD in 2006. Talk emerged that the DVD would also include Inside co-creator Howard Gordon's short-lived 1999 series Strange World to make a 26-episode set, but no plans have been confirmed.

Characters

• Virgil "Web" Webster (Peter Coyote): The supervisor. He is not married as far as we can tell. He chose his squad based on their secrets, their weaknesses and their strengths. He is known to push his agents to the max, especially Agent Locke, much to the disgust of Agent Ryan. He is also known to bend the rules or justify actions.

• Rebecca Locke (Rachel Nichols) is the rookie field agent brought in by Web, who wishes to use her gift to his advantage. She is able to put herself in the shoes of the victims, since she was one herself. This makes her excellent at getting inside the mind of a killer. Series creator Minear described her as a "character with no inside," hence the show's title. With clear trust issues and a lack of a social life, she slowly grows to like her colleagues more as the series progressed.

• Paul Ryan (Jay Harrington) is a young, married agent who Web chose to be his 'conscience. Idealistic and kind, he sees things in black and white. He is often paired up with Agent Locke, which lead him to discover her past secret. On more than one occasion, he and Web have clashed based on differing principles. Originally, his name was to be Paul Fatorre.

• Danny Love (Adam Baldwin) is an ex-marine who is blunt and crude, but not without his own morals and has a certain rapport with Agent Melody Sim. He often leads assaults on crime scenes. Originally his name was to be Danny Coulter.

• Melody Sim (Katie Finneran) is a quick-witted, intelligent and friendly agent who often mourns her lack of social life and shares a friendship with Danny.

• Carter Howard (Nelsan Ellis) is the technological go-to guy of the group, making an appearance whenever the team need technological expertise.

Ratings

Overall, the ratings for The Inside were not great. The first-run ratings were as followed:

Title	Rating	Share
New Girl In Town	2.0	4
Old Wounds	2.6	4
Pre-Filer	2.4	4
Everything Nice	2.5	4
Loneliest Number	2.4	4
Thief of Hearts	2.6	4
Declawed	2.8	5

Episodes

Main article: List of The Inside episodes

External links

• Getting THE INSIDE Out... on DVD!
• Downloadable The Inside Scripts
• PopGurls' review of the show, which doubles as an appreciation of the Rebecca Locke character
• Part One of an interview with Minear, in which he discusses the demise of the series
• Part Two of that interview, in which Minear talks about plots that audiences will not see because of cancellation
• Part Three, where Minear speaks on his future projects, including an Inside DVD
• The Inside Must Die To Live Again
• Interview with William Mapother about his experiences filming the final episode, "Skin and Bone"
• The Inside at IMDb
• Template:Tv.com