Premiere Week 2008 - Fringe
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.