In July THE INSIDE was cancelled with the last episode aired on July 13th. There were 13 episodes filmed in all and rumors are circulating that perhaps all the episodes will be eventually released on a DVD. According to Zap2It, FOX Entertainment President Peter Liguori takes full responsibility for the failure of the series. Liguori says, ""I'll take the heat on how that show as scheduled. I think if I could rethink that decision, the way to have premiered that show would have been a bit earlier, right on the heels of '24's' finale, right on the heels of 'American Idol's' finale." Instead, "The Inside" premiered on Wednesday, June 8 and promptly fell off most viewers radar, despite a strong cast and clever writing.

Brian Bellmont of MSNBC wrote a commentary on July 7th called "Gloomy, moody shows brighten summer TV" and this is what he had to say about THE INSIDE:

You want dark? “The Inside” is murkier than a sludge-filled sewer. On paper, it’s “Law and Order: Serial Killers,” a run-of-the-mill cop show about the FBI’s Los Angeles-based Violent Crime Unit. But in the hands of quirkmeister Tim Minear (“Angel,” “Firefly,” “Wonderfalls”), “The Inside” is “Se7en”-lite, an unapologetically dark and moody look at sickos, psychos, and the people who track them down.

Front and center is Rebecca Locke (Bridget Fonda look-alike Rachel Nichols), a fresh-faced, doe-eyed new recruit with some firsthand experience dealing with violent offenders. Turns out she was kidnapped as a child by just the kind of guy she and her new colleagues are after. Just what kind of damage did her experience inflict? As the episodes unfold, viewers are getting plenty of clues that Locke’s flawless skin may be holding together a scarred, unstable core. Peter Coyote adds a menacing layer as the rogue unit’s enigmatic boss, who may be more interested in solving crimes than making sure his agents come out of their investigations physically — and psychologically — in one piece.

It took until the fourth episode — written by “Buffy” alum Jane Espenson — for the show to really gel into a solid mix of black humor and piano-string tension. But if you want to check out this moody hour, you’d better act fast. Online buzz — including Minear’s own Web site — is already sounding the show’s death knell.

_______________________________________

Episode 1 - "New Girl in Town" airing June 8
An FBI Violent Crimes Unit (VCU) profiler is murdered by the serial killer the VCU has been trying to capture. Rookie Agent Rebecca Locke is asked to join the team and help them find the murderer, even though she lacks field experience. She doesn't know that she was chosen by Supervisory Special Agent Virgil "Web" Webster (Peter Coyote). Nor does Rebecca know that Web knows her secret - she was held captive as a child. This experience gives the novice profiler a different type of insight into the minds of both the perpetrators and their victims.

Episode 2 - "Old Wounds" airing June 15
The VCU is after another serial killer when Paul's former co-worker, a federal prosecutor, is murdered. They suspect their prime suspect meets his victims at an S&M club. Rebecca is attracted to one of its regulars.

Episode 3 - "The Prefiler" airing June 22
When a spate of murders targeting future serial killers start piling up, the VCU team find themselves matched against a cunning profiler who executes these would-be killers in the same way they would have killed their victims.

Episode 4 - "Everything Nice" airing June 29
When an eight-year-old boy is found murdered in a swimming pool in an exclusive gated community, Web pits his VCU team against one another with Rebecca believing that she has found a bad seed.

Episode 5 - "The Loneliest Number" airing July 6
When the VCU team investigates a series of suicides, they discover them to be murders linked to a suicide hotline. Meanwhile, Paul (Jay Harrington) suspects that Web's influence over Rebecca (Rachel Nichols) is growing stronger and may lead to fatal consequences.

Episode 6 - 'Thief of Hearts" airing July 6
Paul re-lives his first case under Web when a serial killer imprisoned for removing the hearts of his female victims is released because additional victims turn up bearing his killing signature while he is behind bars.

Episode 7 - "Declawed" airing July 13
With Web under investigation, an agent with a grudge against him leads the team after a ritualistic serial killer whose MO includes a stun gun and the removal of victims' fingernails.

Some great reviews on Coyote's role:

Nancy Franklin, The New Yorker:
The new Fox Wednesday-night drama, “The Inside,” about an F.B.I. profiler whose own personal history makes her all too suited for the job, wastes no time playing its trump card—and that card is not the profiler. It’s Peter Coyote, in the role of Virgil Webster, her boss at the Violent Crimes Unit in Los Angeles—an unsmiling, manipulative man with what would pass in polite company for a cruel streak. Coyote has always had a strong presence on the screen, both in movies and on TV. He didn’t start acting until he was almost forty—he was, and still is, a broadly engaged political activist—and perhaps his full life as a human being is what makes him seem so grounded as a performer. He comes across as not needing the attention the camera provides, and so the camera willingly gives it to him. He’s a tall, trim tree, and still good-looking at sixty-two. And then, tying it all together, there’s that voice: it’s measured and sane yet passionate, serious but not stern or judgmental, warm but not gooey—and, amazingly, though Coyote couldn’t possibly be unaware of the persuasive power of his instrument, he doesn’t seem to be in love with the sound of it. Television advertisers know that you would buy anything from this man: in addition to the dozens of narrations Coyote has done for documentaries and live TV broadcasts, he has had a very successful career doing commercial voice-overs.

Jeffrey Sisk, Daily News:
Rookie FBI Agent Rebecca Locke (newcomer Rachel Nichols) is the latest member of the Los Angeles-based Violent Crimes Unit headed by shady Supervisory Special Agent Virgil Webster (a wonderful Peter Coyote)... The cast - especially Coyote, Harrington and Nichols - is uniformly strong, though Webster may well be the worst boss ever. With his apparent disregard for the well-being of those who work for him, a mutiny seems likely.

Joy Press, Village Voice:
Buried among the dozens of throwaway reality shows cluttering up the summer schedules is one scripted program with a serious pedigree. The Inside (Wednesdays at 9 on Fox), a stylish and creepy addition to the violent crime-solving genre, boasts a sterling staff of writers and producers from shows like Buffy, The X-Files, and 24. And although the series theoretically revolves around a blonde novice FBI agent named Rebecca Locke (Rachel Nichols), the real attraction is co-star Peter Coyote, who plays her Machiavellian supervisor Virgil "Web" Webster. Web takes only the most emotionally punishing cases, exploiting his own employees' vulnerabilities; his relationship with Rebecca promises to be particularly twisted. Coyote explains in a telephone interview, "It's not a lab show. You don't have people saying, 'Let's flush this with five cc's of dexothorpan.' This is about unexpected turns the human mind can take. Each character has personal and ethical limits, except Web. Just when you think he has rendered himself completely corrupt, it turns out he's ahead of everybody."

Coyote spent many years pushing limits in the counterculture—as a member of the '60s anarchist group the Diggers and a denizen of various communes. He remains a political activist, regularly supporting lefty causes and documentaries. So why does he end up with so many cop and sheriff roles? (In last season's USA miniseries The 4400, he even played a Homeland Security chief.) "For some reason, casting people and directors see me as the Robert Vaughn of my generation," he says dryly. "I guess it's just an irony of history." But he's enjoying The Inside, not least because of his longtime interest in serial killers. "I spent a lot of my life hanging around outlaws, some of whom were extremely dangerous—a few were actually murderers. These are people who don't have internal restraints, and I think it's fascinating to look at where the difference is between them and me. To find the line I refuse to cross

Kat Parr, TV Squad:
Peter Coyote has a huge resume, and if you knock out the B-list, there's still E.T., Erin Brockovich, and a slew of suspense films that gift him with appropriate proportions of irony and gravitas.

Jonathan V. Last, Weekly Standard- The Inside has many virtues, not the least of which is an embarrassment of acting riches in the cast. In addition to Coyote's cool devilry, there's Adam Baldwin's congenital malice as Danny Love and Katie Finneran's pitch-perfect Melody Sim rounding out the squad. But the show's most important virtue is its sense of off-kilter mystery - just a few episodes in we can tell that not everything is quite right with The Inside. There is the vaguest hint of the supernatural hanging about the show. Not quite Lost, not quite Twin Peaks, not quite The X-Files, there are, nonetheless, larger forces at work in Virgil Webster's office. Let's hope The Inside survives so that we can find out what they are.

Jason Davis, Cinescape - Veteran actor Peter Coyote brings an interesting ambiguity to Virgil Webster, who seems, in many ways, to be just as dangerous as the monsters he pursues.

Aaron Barnhart, Kansas City Star:
Coyote brings an almost unbearable heaviness of being to his part, which creates enough believable tension with all his agents to propel “The Inside” forward.

Alan Pergament, Buffalo News:
Coyote, a veteran film and TV actor with a powerful voice heard on many a commercial, could play this cold role in his sleep. He is far from the caring boss we've grown to love on CBS dramas, and we learn next to nothing about his history.

Mike Hughes, Honolulu Advertiser:
This tough and tense series about an FBI unit investigating violent crimes is the cure for summer blandness. At the core is Rebecca Locke, played well by Rachel Nichols. She's a young FBI agent with a past that seems, at first, eerily vague. Her new boss is Virgil Webster, who is played by the always-terrific Peter Coyote. This is a fascinating character, almost in the league of Fox's Gregory House. Webster might seem to lack a heart or a soul. He'll risk the lives of others to do his job. He's terribly good at it — and he may have seething emotion under the surface.

Mike Duffy, Detroit Free Press:
With its compelling atmospherics, solid cast and Coyote's fine performance as the manipulative top cop, series creators Howard Gordon ("24") and Tim Minear ("Wonderfalls") have concocted a taut little thriller.

Victor Balta, Daily Herald:
Webster is played with an unsettling brilliance by Peter Coyote ("The 4400"). Webster is seemingly always a step ahead of his subordinates and doesn't necessarily appear to have their best interests in mind.

Tom Jicha , Sun Sentinel:
Peter Coyote effectively portrays Webster as a cranky, controlling, results-oriented superior officer, whose regard for his squad members is based on what they can do to make him look better. He's an off-putting individual -- think House as a cop -- but he does something in the final act likely to endear him to fans of this genre.

Mark A. Perigard, Boston Herald: He picks his operatives because he's aware of their emotional problems and he's more than willing to exploit their weaknesses to capture the bad guys. This creepiness gives ``The Inside'' an edge the other procedural shows don't have. Coyote summons up the Cigarette Smoking Man without the devilish nicotine fix.

Robert Philpot, Star Telegram:
The eccentric Coyote, by the way, could play this role in his sleep, but he's one of the elements that keeps the show awake.

Jonathan Storm, Philadelphia Inquirer:
The Inside departs from most of the grim autops-a-thon procedurals that ooze over the TV landscape, spending time dissecting its central characters. Who are they? Why were they chosen by the bewilderingly unemotional unit chief, played enigmatically by Peter Coyote, who is so archly juicy in these kinds of roles?

Mike Kelly, Toledo Blade:
Coyote, a veteran character actor, brings a stern-faced strength and gravity to his role, and a bit of a sinister quality as well. He's not your typical gruff-but-goodhearted TV police commander, and it's easy to imagine that he might have a few dark secrets of his own.

Kevin D. Thompson, Palm Beach Post:
Coyote, who always exudes The Voice of Authority no matter the role, is perfectly cast as enigmatic Webster.

Rob Owen, Pittsburgh Post Gazette:
The most intriguing aspect of "The Inside" is the creepy Web Minear has woven with Coyote as the spider at its center. Is Webster a good-guy boss or a master manipulator who's using Locke for her talents?

Laura Urbani, Tribune Review:
Coyote does a good job of portraying a shady bureaucrat, a role he practiced on "The 4400."

Tim Goodman, San Francisco Chronicle:
If Coyote actually had this role in a more believable series -- say, on CBS -- he'd be looking at five highly rated seasons and syndication.

Eric Berlin, Blogcritics.org:
The old crotchety boss is given a nice twist by way of Peter Coyote in the role of Virgil “Web” Webster. The character arc of the show will likely focus upon the reason that Web selected each member of the elite team. He has, we’re told, an ability to pick assets and then control them to suit his needs.

FOX FACT SHEET -

“Do you understand what it would mean to work for me? The things you’ll see? The places you’ll be required to go?” – Webster

“I’ve already been to those places.” – Special Agent Rebecca Locke

“You only think you have.” – Webster

Special Agent REBECCA LOCKE (Rachel Nichols), just two years out of Quantico and confined to a statistical analyst position in Washington, DC, is determined to break free of her routine, yet safe, desk job and venture out into the field to tackle the FBI’s most dangerous assignments. Rebecca’s drive catches the attention of famed agent VIRGIL “WEB” WEBSTER (Peter Coyote), the head of the FBI’s Los Angeles Violent Crimes Unit (VCU), a rogue division where a team of agents tackle the most psychologically taxing and physically threatening cases. When a spate of serial killings leads to the death of one of their own, Webster hires the rookie to replace their dead profiler. While exceptionally good at her new position, Rebecca’s skills stem not only from her training, but a secret she is keeping – she was once a victim herself and her kidnapper is still at large.

Agent PAUL FATTORE (Jay Harrington) is married and the conscience of the department, who learns of Rebecca’s secret and is determined to protect her from Web – a man he believes will go to any length to solve a crime, including putting his own agents at risk. Rounding out the team are DANNY COULTER (Adam Baldwin), an imposing ex-Marine, tactical team leader and a bit of a hothead

THE INSIDE explores the intricacies and complications of investigative work, as well as the personal sacrifices required of Rebecca and her VCU teammates as they move from one investigation to the next. The mystery of who these agents are, and why Web has hired each of them, has really only just begun.