The dog came from an experience of my own. You know, my sister died when I was thirteen. And I didn't really grieve for her until about 20 years later, when for whatever reason, my psyche was ready to really feel that loss. I was living in New York. I just thought I was having a nervous breakdown, actually. Part of my way of dealing with the anxiety that I felt was to go running. And one day when I was running, this dog came out of nowhere and just ran along with me. I think I might have been high at this time as well.

I wanted the psychic to be very mundane. One time I went to a psychic with some friends and she was very scarily in tune with a lot of stuff that was going on in my life. And she was just this weird little old lady in a housecoat with a lot of pictures of Jesus in her house.

I decided in my mind that when she says, "She's not gone," she's talking about Brenda. She says I see a woman. I see water. I see a dark man. She's picking up on Brenda. There's a very memorable scene from the first season when Brenda and Nate are in the pool.

I was also thinking that she could be talking about Maya, because she's gone down to San Diego with her aunt and uncle and they ask if she swims. Very rarely do we actually spell that stuff out. I tend to believe in a certain amount of synchronicity, and if you consciously delineate the symbols, they become a lot less interesting.

Death is the great mystery. I mean, it's going to happen to all of us. But we don't know what it is. I want the show to retain an air of mystery. I like it if you can read it a couple of different ways. Because that just makes it richer, and it's not exactly the same experience for everyone watching it.

Ultimately, this is a show about death, and when you have this lead character who started this season in this deep denial of death--he basically ran away from it, ran away from his family because he didn't want to acknowledge it--you gotta keep getting him closer and closer to it.