'Boss' Season 2: Tom Kane's (slow) road to redemption

The story of Tom Kane on "Boss" may eventually be one of redemption, but both the show's creator and star Kelsey Grammer hope that doesn't happen for a while.

"That's a question we hope we have enough seasons to actually tell," Grammer says. "We have an idea as to how to get there, but it requires a certain amount of time. If Starz decides they want to go for a few more, we'll be able to play out the story in that way. If everybody thinks it's wiser to cut it a bit short, we'll try to button it up under those circumstances."

Starz managing director Carmi Zlotnik told reporters Thursday (Aug. 2) the cable channel is happy with the show despite underwhelming audience numbers for the first season. "We keep reiterating ... we're not driven by ratings -- it's now how our business is evaluated," Zlotnik says. "It's one of the metrics, because it's out there, that we look at, but it's not the big picture. ...

"We love this show and believes it deserves a bigger audience, and the audience will grow through the work of Season 2."

The new season, which premieres Friday, Aug. 17, will see Kane continuing to struggle with the effects of his disease (and continuing to try to hide them) while keeping his grip on power in Chicago and navigating his less-than-ideal family life.

"It isn't going so well," Grammer says of the Kane family situation. "He is trying. Tom, in this point of the story, has discovered there are gaps in his life he'd like to fill in, or at least try to, but he realizes he's not a fully realized human being, and he only has so many avenues to make things different."

That's going to take time, creator Farhad Safinia says.

"In order to redeem himself by reaching out to others, he has to put himself back together and not be such a compromised human being as he is when we first see him," Safinia says. "Because he does some pretty horrific things, not just in the first season, but shocking, horrific things in the second season too."