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.

Baby Borrowers

I'd heard about the show Baby Borrowers and up until now found the idea a disturbing concept for a reality television show. It's clearly a way for NBC to further cash in on the teen pregnancy/celebrity baby boom lately. This bothers me not because it's exploiting teen pregnancies, but because I'm not sure that I'm okay with giving actual babies to teens who may or may not have the skills and desire to care for them properly even if they are shadowed by professional nannies. Babies are not toys, and the show has the very real potential to use them in this way.

Anyway, I find myself watching it tonight, I found some of the producers' choices interesting:

• While most of the couples chose to have the male go out to work, the show did not require this. Couples made the choice for themselves, and I was glad to see that the show incorporated such a open gender roles in the show. I was also glad to see that the show seemed to show very involved fathers. In fact, I would say that for the most part the guys were more emotionally invested than the girls.
  
• In the one episode I watched one of the teens mom's from each couple came by for 3 hours to help out. Nearly every mom ran in and picked up the borrowed baby and then gave the "see I told you, you did not really want a baby." Was this really necessary? Clearly the way that the show is edited, most of the teens are not enjoying the experience and most have already vocalized their change of heart. To bring an adult into to deliver this "moral" seems forced to me and co-opts the teens' voices.
  
• Early in the episode I was really disturbed by the fact that I felt that they were dividing the females as "good" and "bad" mothers. At the end of the episode, there were still females that were labeled as the mothers that were "checked out" "immature" and "selfish." This labeling was slightly negated by the fact that at least one of the "real" mothers talked about her own faults as a mother and how things aren't always perfect. The overall tone of the show still seems to be more critical of the women than the men. Several of the couples might be described as dysfunctional, but there seems to be more critique of the females' attitudes than the males' attitudes. While I realize that bad mothers can be described in lots of different ways, I find it interesting that the bad mothers in this shows are clearly defined as the adolescent mothers. Those who are described as "natural" mothers are those who can emotionally and financially navigate the family (one "bad" mother for example wastes money at the grocery store, while another insists that her husband forgo a paycheck in order to stay home and care for the children while she sits on the couch).
  

"If you mean time travelling bunnies, then yes"

"If you mean time travelling bunnies, then yes" these are my random thoughts on LOST...

I should have been working on school stuff today, but instead I rewatched the LOST season finale. I'd watched last Thursday when it aired, but due to other circumstances, I felt like I needed to rewatch when I was more focused.

When I lived in Springfield, there was a large LOST following that seems to have dwindled over the years. This year, I have gotten to watch periodically with two friends and chat about it via email with one or two more, but I don't feel like I've had the ongoing critical discussions that I had when I first started watching.

When I watched the finale, I felt like the beginning of the finale had moved away from that critical aspect to be more Rambo-like. Lost has always been violent--it started with a fiery plan crash, but I still have a hard time staying interested in the explosive laden mercenary who runs around as if he showed up on the wrong film set.

I don't think that I have any profound feelings or predictions about the series. I'm semi-shocked that when Jacob told Locke to "move the island," the prophesy turned out to be a literal instruction. I'm excited that the show appears to be turning back toward the science and mystery of the island and farther away from "exactly how bad are the people on the boat." In essence, I felt like we spent a little too much time on that question this season. At the same time, I realize that the boat (and the people on it) are an means to getting the Oceanic Six off the island and explaining this season's introduction of the flashforward.

A friend sent me an article in Slate that I found very interesting it's discussion of Lost's narrative arcs. Although the series is often known for raising more questions than it answer's, the author notes that it is the unreliable narrator of the flashback/forward that complicates what she sees as a otherwise simple storyline in order to prove that the writer's do have a masterplan. She describes the season's minus the flashes as:

Here's a breakdown of the first three years: 1) Are there other people on this island? 2) There are other people on this island. 3) Oh, my God, the other people on this island are way mean!

I'm not sure that I agree with the need to even have the debate as to whether the writers have a master plan or not. If they've committed to a seven season run, then they have to have a basic shell (at least something to sell to ABC), so all of the debate about changing things as they go along seems to be more the result of frustrated fans who can't get a clear picture of the rules of this world.

Other random thoughts about this season:

• I love the one liners. The writers have created some very quotable lines. My favorite is probably during Hurley surprise party when he walks in with a statue of Jesus ready to attack a burglar and his mom says "Jesus Christ is not a weapon"
• I'm getting tired of Jack. Everyone else seems to be working through their issues, but Jack's seem to be compounding.
• The whole Aaron is 5 weeks old is the most unbelievable thing I've heard yet on the show. I'll go with the giant wheel in the basement of the greenhouse before I'd believe that one.
• The pop-ups have gotten much better. When they were first introduced them, they had very basic info, but now they actually seem to offer some insights.