Two of the most interesting characters on the show have turned out also to be the most mysterious. In the series premiere, we met Jake, played by Skeet Ulrich, who returned to the town after a five-year absence. Where he was for those five years is just one of the secrets that will be revealed by the end of the first season.

Even less is known about Robert Hawkins, portrayed by British actor Lennie James. But even his secrets will begin coming to light soon. And according to producers Carol Barbee and Jon Turteltaub (a feature director whose credits include National Treasure) the two of them will have an interesting meeting in coming episodes.

At the Television Critics Association press tour last month, the cast and creators of the show talked with SCI FI Weekly about the show's success and what's in store for the second half of the first season. Jericho returned Wednesday, Feb. 14, with a recap episode for those who needed to catch up with the story so far, and will be followed by an all-new episode this week. How much would you say recent events have contributed to the interest people have taken in the show?

Barbee: I think that 9/11 and Katrina—which are sort of the two events that we draw from a lot when we're writing—showed us that we sort of watched the end of the world on CNN, but it wasn't in our neighborhood. We watched it from afar, but it looked pretty awful, and we knew in some way that was going to reverberate into our lives. I think that that's the fascination. I think we want to play off that scenario in a safe way and figure out who we would be in that situation. And then, of course, you come to it, I think, for that reason, but then you get involved with these characters and you just want to know how they survived.

James: Jericho is just another extension of something that now is in the zeitgeist that people are kind of frightened of. But cop shows are all about the situations that we're all most frightened of. And, you know, Without a Trace or any of those shows are all about our fears, and Jericho is another show, on one level, about exploring a different aspect of our fears. And I think that's partly the reason why. And because Jericho is done like a lot of those shows are. It's done at a distance, because Jericho is not the town that was hit. Jericho is a town that's affected by hits somewhere else. It is, as Carol says, slightly at safe distance, so people can view it in some kind of comfort without fearing that their ears are gonna drop off.How do you feel about the network dividing up the season into two blocks and having so much time in between?

Barbee: I was thrilled when I heard that they were going to do these two separate seasons, because as an audience member, I like to watch TV that way. I want to see fresh episodes all in a row, and I want to know that I can set aside this amount of time and be there for that. And to my mind, it's a great opportunity to get the audience caught up with where we are if they haven't seen all the episodes. Or if they haven't seen any of the episodes, they can jump in by checking them out online or seeing the reruns, or definitely the recap.

Turteltaub: You're not going to get reruns in the second half, which is always fun. Oddly, I think the question of "Was the layoff really long?", we're starting to figure that out now. Because up to now, it's been normal. All shows are coming back around now, so we haven't really felt any of that. When did you find out that it would be scheduled like that?

Barbee: We actually were told pretty early on that there would be a break after Episode 11 because it was, like, the natural Christmas holiday break. So we knew that we were arcing the story from the very beginning to have a big cliffhanger in 11. We didn't know how long the break would be. I think we found out when we were shooting, I don't know, maybe Episode 8 or something like that. We found out for sure that was the way it was going to go, but we had arced it that way. And because we knew there would be a break, even if it had just been a three-week break for Christmas, we wanted Episode 12 to be some sort of kind of relaunch, some sort of mini-pilot. So we had always planned [that].How much attention do you pay to the fans and the discussions of the show in the online community? Do you factor that into the writing process?

Barbee: First of all, we do monitor those, and we're very interested in what they're saying, so we do read them. We're also answering questions on the CBS Web site. The producers are answering questions from the fans. But I would say that we knew the story we wanted to tell, and we arced that story out from the beginning. And not to say that things don't shift and change and morph, and you have to deal with many different situations as you go through production, but I think we serve the fans best when we stick to the story we meant to tell and it has an integrity to it. But, yes, I would say that if 90 percent of the fans are sort of shifting in a certain way, we have to look at that issue. Or if one fan says something that's really cool, we'll go, "That's a great idea." So we do listen, but I would say that 99.9 percent of what we're doing is we know the story we're trying to tell.What kind of response to the show are you hearing? What are people most excited about?

Barbee: Well, Lennie. I mean they love the mystery of "Who is Robert Hawkins?" and "Where has Jake been?" I think people love that mystery. And then, of course, there's the whole contingency of people who just blog about who's sleeping with who and who they'd like to match up, and that's fun.How do respond to criticism about the realism of the show, and what people would or wouldn't do in a real-life scenario?

Turteltaub: There isn't a part of this show you can ask about where someone doesn't have criticism of it. There's a lot of criticism: "Oh, the show is so dark. Where's the hope? I live in a small town. People would band together. Why is there so much anger? Why do you have to show all this pain and misery?" Valid. "Oh, there's a bomb going off, and people are sitting around having a banquet. That's absurd." Well, I don't know if it is or it isn't. I think life would get pretty absurd. I know that nothing in my life that I've ever experienced, including the worst things I've been through ... let's just say have never gone 48 hours without laughter, without something odd, without some hope, without normalcy. You go to the bathroom. Whether you like it or not, you're going to go to the bathroom, and that's a very mundane part of your life. Now, we chose not to show that. But you do get to that.

And there's the difference between being on Wall Street on Sept. 13th and being in Virginia on Sept. 13th. Two days after Sept. 11, life is different, depending on where you are. There is a "life goes on" aspect to all of us. And we really felt it was untrue to not play that. ... While it may seem odd or "Who cares who is kissing? I want to see bombs" and all that stuff, I think all of it added up is the reason we're still on the air, because we're not putting all of our eggs in just that one place where it's going to get boring. We remain facile. We remain able to adjust and to go a lot of different places.

James: And I think that that is the nature of our show, and it is sticking to our premise, which is this isn't a town that was hit. This is a town that's affected by something that's happened away from them, not something that's happened in the middle of them.How much are we going to learn about Jake and Hawkins in the coming episodes?

Barbee: We always planned to close off or satisfy certain mysteries, then open doors to a new level of mystery. And so by the end of the season, you will know where Jake's been for the past five years. You will know what Hawkins' involvement is with the bombings, and you will also know who was behind the bombings, who did it. Why is a different reason, and who else is involved and who of our people are still involved and what that second wave of attacks, all of that stuff sort of is the next level.

Lennie, how much did you know about your character's backstory when you first started?

James: For the first five episodes of Jericho, I had no idea about my backstory, because I didn't want to know, because I wanted to remain in ignorance. Don't ask me why. It was a really bad idea [laughs]. But I thought it would make the producers think I was a really deep actor. But after that, I couldn't play the part without knowing it, so I did know his backstory and I kind of know what's revealed in [Episode] 12 and beyond, because that's not even half of it. And so I do have a kind of sense of who he is and what he's up to now, so I wasn't taken by surprise at all.How much did it surprise you when you did find out more about his backstory?

James: I wasn't surprised. It was just really exciting, because it gives a lot of levels to play. And that's the enjoyable thing about playing Robert Hawkins, is that in every situation [he's different]. Someone says good morning to him, he has to have three conversations with himself before he answers, and that's what I enjoy. And his backstory, his secret just brings that deeper and deeper and deeper.

The same question for Skeet: How much did you know about your character?

Ulrich: We had laid out a general guideline. I think some things have shifted a little bit, but not that far from Jon's original sort of brainstorm of backstory, which was brilliant. So, no, I've known quite a while. I knew before the pilot. I should say I didn't know necessarily [everything], but I knew the routine of the five years and sort of what was going on.How do you see Jake as a character? Is he a hero or an antihero?

Ulrich: He's not a hero, necessarily. I think the guilt of his past sort of doesn't allow him to think in that way. ... I just saw this thing about this book Blink, which is all about heroic actions and the sort of brain that allows that to happen. And I think he's sort of wired in that way. The brief synopsis I had heard of the book is that he has an ability to empathize and take action before the other part of his brain kicks in and stops it. But I think his reaction to it doesn't define [him]. He won't allow himself to define himself as a hero. So it's a hard question for me to answer.For the actors, this is a show with a large cast. Are there people you haven't worked with yet that you'd like to?

James: I think that's one of the fun things about the show. ... Because back home in England, a season is six episodes. So this is already the longest I've played a character, ever [laughs]. And I mean, like, ever. But there's still half the cast I haven't done any scenes with. So that's great, because there's still stuff you're going to find out about yourself. Who is Hawkins when he's talking to Emily? I think I have one scene where I looked at Dale and scared him, and then grabbed his friend and dragged him out the thing. So I've never done really anything with Dale. And he's got a storyline that's kind of coming up, [in] which he goes someplace where you really didn't expect him to go. And, you know, maybe Hawkins will come back around.

And also, one of the other things that's happened is that, you know, because of where we've come back in, in Episode 12, that there's an arc that happens for Hawkins and his family that drags us to Episode 15, 16. So over those episodes, I've not worked with Skeet, you know. We were just saying the other day that we kind of missed each other because we haven't had a chance to do stuff. So the size of the cast just constantly means, even the people you've worked with you're reintroducing yourself to when your storylines come back around. So it's keeping me interested.Hawkins and Jake met briefly before, but will we see them together again?

Barbee: You will get to see Hawkins and Jake come together. We've held that moment off on purpose, but it's coming.