On Tuesday, Fox's executives deemed Fringe [1] to be "a keeper" [2] at the TCA press tour [3]. A bit later, Joshua Jackson stopped by Fox's all-star party to chat about your favorite sci fi show [4]'s return after American Idol [5] on Jan. 20. He didn't spill too many secrets, but he did hint at what's coming up in the second half of the season. Here are highlights:

• On coming back for a new batch of episodes: "The idea around our set is that round two for us is really kind of like season two. The end of the 10th episode is really kind of a big cliffhanger: Olivia is left in jeopardy. So we come back just like you would at the beginning of season two, you resolve the cliffhanger, and all of the untied lines from those 10 episodes are tied up pretty quickly in the first few episodes back. And then we use that to launch us into the second set of stories. Also, we're coming on after American Idol, which is a much larger audience, so it gives us an opportunity to kind of reintroduce the characters. Once the John Scott character is out of Olivia's head, it opens her up to a wide variety of possibilities cause she's literally been carrying this man with her since the beginning of the show."
• On learning Peter's secrets: "I know the smaller character things, not the big, story, plot-driven things, because this is a JJ [Abrams] show. . . Peter's history, who Peter is, Walter's history, how it is that he seems to be so centrally involved in all of those mysteries — all of these things are slowly revealed. What we're shooting right now is actually a big reveal of how Walter — it's not incidental that Walter has knowledge about each one of the cases that we've investigated so far."

To hear what he thinks of the father/son relationship, his feelings about JJ Abrams, and whether he gets Lost [6] scoop, just .

• On Peter and Walter's relationship: "I never thought the father-son dynamic would be as rich as it's been so far on the show, to be perfectly honest. I was skeptical of it because I thought that could really get into melodrama and over-the-top but John Noble is fantastic, he's just great, and he takes what could be a very crazy, over-the-top character and always finds some sort of human center to it, so when you see him trying to relate with his estranged son, it's heartbreaking."




• On working with JJ Abrams: "He drives you crazy, and that's why you watch his shows. I say you, but I mean us, because I'm the same way. . . I am a big Lost fan, and how sick is this? I don't even get any inside information on Lost. You think you'd get inside the family and you'd be like, 'OK, so what'd they do?' No idea."
• On giving Peter a reason to stick around: "The concern amongst everybody, myself included, was you can only go so far on the 'Peter's here to be a babysitter' thing, because at a certain point this very selfish man would just say, 'f*** it, I'm out of here.' And then you had that episode where he gets abducted by the Observer and Walter tells him, 'Son you may or may not have died,' or 'You may not be yourself,' and that's a pretty good hook. Also, he may not like to admit it, but he's human and he wants to take care of his dad. At the core of it all there's a very simple emotional story going on: Peter is an abandoned child who has a chance all these years later to build some sort of relationship with his father. If you took away all of the science fiction, that's a workable story in and of itself."

Photos courtesy of Fox [7]