One New York Life

I got the Entourage bandwagon pretty late. It kind of lost me last season, though, and I had big hopes for the season premiere. Unfortunately, it was another installment of “Vince doesn’t want to do something, E and Ari give him a pep talk, Vince reluctantly does it.” On the plus side — hot naked chicks.

Here’s to hoping next week is better.

JJ Abrams has become quite the sci-fi sweetheart. Following the glorious success of LOST, Abrams has been given the reigns of the Star Trek franchise and was handpicked by Stephen King to bring The Dark Tower to the big screen for the low licensing fee of $1. Abrams’s latest television product is Fringe, a sci-fi drama on Fox starring Dawson’s Creek alum Joshua Jackson. Just in case we need to be reminded that it’s an Abrams’ show, the opening shot is of an airplane in turbulence. Sadly, it’s NOT an Oceanic Flight, which would have been an excellent callback.

The Good

• It’s definitely sci-fi. I like sci-fi. It looks like it’s going to broadly explore some of the things the X-Files only touched on in early season (telekinesis, mind powers, etc) and then eschewed entirely for their broad, overreaching government and alien conspiracy storylines.
• It looks like it will be an episodic show that has some season-long storylines. I like this format.
• Once you get over the moderate absurdity of the Dr. Bishop character, he’s pretty interesting and likable. Thus far, the most likable one on the show. He doesn’t care about what’s going on around him. See problem. Solve problem. I can appreciate that.

The Bad

• Let’s be clear… this is definitely NOT the X-Files. I mean, it’s Homeland Security instead of the FBI, the woman instead of the man is the lead, one of the two isn’t an agent, and it’s about Fringe science — NOT extraterrestrials.
• It’s a bit TOO Abrams-y. I understand that comparisons to LOST are unavoidable, but the music types, how they cut, the way things are shot — everything screams LOST. When they’re about to cut to commercial, they use the same panicky violin music. There was one particular shot going to commercial with the cutaway shot on Lance Reddick (Matthew Abbadon on LOST) with the shrieky violin music and it literally could have been a shot from LOST.
• I find it eminently amusing that Dr. Bishop has been institutionalized for 17 years, but is able to come out of the asylum and, not only is lab at Harvard still intact (they’ve been using it for storage), but they happily allow him to use it.
• Did Joshua Jackson always have a weirdly stilted delivery or is this new for this show?

The Rest
One of the characters early on makes reference to “The Pattern” without fleshing it out. At first, I thought it was going to be typical Abrams “make reference to something and then define it 10 episodes later” — but it wasn’t. Turns out, “The Pattern” is the point of the show. I kind of want to like this show, but I’m not sure whether or not I really want to get into another giant, cloying conspiracy show where someone’s going to be chasing after a mysterious pattern for N seasons.

That said, the last fifteen minutes of the pilot sold me. They drew closed the story for the current show and dropped hints of ongoing story lines. I’m OK with this, I think. If the gigantic, cloying conspiracy is a background issue to the week-to-week episode, I think I’ll enjoy it.

To recap for those reading along at home, in Season 1 was a 22-episode heist movie about 8 guys escaping prison. Season 2 gave us the US Marshal’s manhunt of the Fox River Eight across the United States. As I guess more people are like me and enjoyed the 22-episode heist move, the end of Season 2 saw Billick, Scoffield, T-Bag, and Mahone thrown in to a Panamanian prison with the assumption that they would, you know, escape.

The season was halved last year because of the writer’s strike, so instead of getting a 22-episode heist movie I instead got a 13-episode heist movie. It worked for me, I guess, but it was much like any other sequel. Not quite up to the bar set by the first movie but with moments all it’s own. It’s at about this point in the series that I realized how much the plot line is exactly similar to 24. They do something… and something goes wrong, which makes them do something else, which also goes wrong, which makes them do something else, which inexplicably goes wrong by some kind of wrath of God bad luck. This is not to be confused with 24′s plot of finding a witness, who gets shot but who gives a clue to another witness who gets shot. However, they do both share the wrestling ideal that everyone’s looking to turn on everyone else.

In the sequel, Scoffield is dropped in to a Panamanian prison and discovers that there’s a guy in there who he has to help break out. This guy, Whistler, is in Sona Prison for some undefined reason. Sona is much tougher than Fox River. It is simply prisoners kept inside a set of walls, surrounded by no-man’s land, surrounded by an electrified fence. There are no guards inside the walls. After a particularly bad riot the guards decided to leave the prisoners to themselves, only entering to do an occasional head-count. The prisoners have set up a dictatorship underneath the 4-life-sentenced Lechero, played by Robert Wisdom.

This is about the point at which this all-powerful, mysterious Company starts to get a little old. For three seasons now, they’ve created this far-reaching conglomerate. This Company, it’s revealed, managed to set-up Scoffield to have him placed in this prison so he could come up with a plan to break out Whistler. Meanwhile, let’s keep in mind that this Company, as it was revealed previously, is powerful enough to assassinate the president, fake the death of the Vice President’s brother for some inexplicable reason, have the Vice President placed in office, and fast-track some guy’s death sentence… but doesn’t have the resources to break a guy out of a Panamanian prison? Somehow, it’s easier or better to have Scoffield placed in the same prison, travel to the states to kidnap LJ (Lincoln’s son) and Sarah (Scoffield’s girlfriend), BRING them to Panama as hostages, and demand Scoffield break them out? This company is willing to kill anyone and everyone that gets in their way, yet they’re not willing to run a smash and grab at the prison and kill all the guards out of a helicopter? Really? Like… what’s the limit of what this company can do? They can assassinate the president but they can’t break a guy out of prison? It’s very confusing.

Oddly, I think the half-season arc actually HELPED this season. Maybe it’s because I don’t have much time off between watching these shows and I start to find the clinical bad luck somewhat annoying but you’d think just the law of averages would make the occasional thing go right, wouldn’t you?

Regardless, I enjoy the show. It just requires one of the highest “suspensions of disbelief” levels this side of 24 and Raw. And, for the first time, I can start watching it weekly. I don’t yet know what the storyline of season four is going to be. I hope it’s something beyond “Panamanian Manhunt”. I also hope they, like 24, realized that their plot has become kind of predictable and shake something up this season.

As of today, the Mets have 17 games remaining in the season. The lead they have over the Phillies is 1/2 what it was at this time last year. 3.5 games. Metsblog does not have the Magic Number counter like they did last year. In a week, the Magic Number counter won’t have the outline of the Phanatic creeping up on Mr. Met like it did last year.

I could make some sort of forced analogy here about the 17 remaining games coming on September 11th. I won’t. I will say that today should have been the day that the Mets and Yankees made up their rainout game in June. Mets/Yankees for the last time in the Stadium would have been a good thing today.

At this time last year, I had stopped watching the team. I was more intent on catching up with TV than I was about watching them knock the magic number down from 5 to 0. As it started to fall apart, I still didn’t watch. It was going to happen. In my stupid head, I’d decided that I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of making me nervous enough to watch. Their last 17 games featured 6 against the Nationals and 6 against the Marlins. On Saturday, John Maine pitched 7.6 innings of 1-hit ball. It was locked up. All they needed was one good start out of a Hall of Fame pitcher against a team 20 games under .500. One. Good. Start.

He got one out and gave up seven runs. The season was over on the last day — the Mets were out and the hangover started. A hangover that forced the Mets to get Johan Santana and wouldn’t end until about June 26th of the following year against the Yankees. Watching the team at the beginning of the year was frustrating. The were bad, mundane, and the manager couldn’t get them back.

There’s an argument about when the season turned. It could arguably be the day Jerry Manuel took over, benched Jose Reyes over his loud protests, and seemed to say “what you pulled with the other guy you’re not going to pull with me. If you suck, you will sit. I do not have “guys.” The team will be a meritocracy.” The team was down 6.5 when Manuel took over in LA and down 3 when they got home a week later. Going in to the All-Star break, they had a week of St. Louis and Philly, went 5-3, and were on their way. I have a cautious optimism for the Mets right now. It borders on confidence for the first time this season. They’re getting the kind of things that baseball teams who win things get. Inexplicably good play out of role-players. Career months from regulars. Crazy stretch pitching.

I look forward to the bullpen crushing my soul in October.