Fringe

I'm not a huge tv watcher, but with Greg out of town and my irrational fear that silent houses equal someone trying to break in, I landed on Fringe tonight. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it, but here are my initial thoughts.

Initially it won my attention for basically two reasons: it's produced by J. J. Abrams (of LOST fame among other things) and it had to be better than Big Brother Season 942 or a really bad impersonation of a Japanese game show. It terms of it's competition, it's a winner, but then again, I'm not really sure what wouldn't be a winner in that time slot.

I hadn't heard much hype for the show, but then again I've spent most of the last several weeks watching Bones on DVD, so I am not really surprised by this fact. As soon as the show started, I could tell that it was going to be some weird combination of LOST, X-Files, A Beautiful Mind and Bourne Supremacy. It starts with an electrical storm mid-air that creates a mystery flight full of skeletons by the time it comes back "on the radar." Okay, I get it, if you have a mystery illness a plane makes a great contained area to start the plot, but two series in a row with freak electrical storms mid-air, at this point I wasn't holding out much hope. The trailer even looks like the grabbed the first 20 seconds of LOST.



The similarities with LOST mostly end there, except for the obnoxiously obvious evil company that is secretly manipulating the world and even has a fake commercial embedded in with the real commercials. Abrams does do some cool effects with added text. Instead of the typical Law and Order style subtitle that labels a location switch, Fringe features text that is as much a "part" of the scene as the new location. The camera flies through the text, thus melding the "edited" narrative and the "camera lens" narrative to a certain extent. I found this intriguing the first couple of times I saw it, but I'm guessing that by the end of the season it may become a little cumbersome.

In terms of actual storyline, Abrams had to know that the secret government agency and conspiracy theory thread was getting rather worn out, but I like his invocation of the older trope of the "mad scientist" as a fresh take on the plot. For me, it was Dr. Walter Bishop that kept the narrative going. Quite frankly it was a little slow until they got Dr. Bishop out of his prison/mental hospital and back to the basement of Harvard. Exploring the mind that is capable of incredible discoveries with the potential for incredible harm is a much more interesting story than exploring secret government agencies that are constantly trying to deny and cover up their real "work."

At this point, I'm still on the fence about whether or not I will continue watching. I think it has the potential to be a really great show. If Abrams can capture the CSI/crime drama and the sci-fi X-files crowd at the same time, the show will be brilliant. I worry that at least in the pilot, the show was trying to do too many genres and as a result was a little choppy and disconnected in addition to being slow. I'm willing to give it another go, however, because pilots generally do get better.

In less scholarly analysis, I really like the cow. I was worried that we were going to see some experiments on the poor cow, but at least in this episode the cow requested in the following clip does nothing more than take a trip through a crowded Harvard hallway and watch cartoons with the mad scientist and his estranged son.