Fringe - "The Cure"

This week's episode of Fringe was a study in contrast. On the one hand, the cold open was one of my favorite things I've seen on this show in a while. It was hardcore and shocking and disturbing in a way that most of the super-science hasn't been in a while.

But then we got into the episode proper and things kind of turned into Criminal Minds again. We got a lot more Olivia backstory this week and I don't want this to come off as callous, but it felt very been-there-done-that. Shooting her stepfather when she was young was, I imagine, quite a terrible moment. And the fact that the guy still sends her cards is messed up. But its the kind of messed up that every character on every crime show ever is.

I would have been willing to get over that, if we didn't then get a half hour of "Olivia Dunham is a cop who doesn't play by the rules." It means she gets results, Broyles! I am so sick of that storytelling archetype and especially here it just seemed so bland and uninspired. So what if Olivia doesn't care about bureaucracy because she's so devoted to justice? And so what if the system is too corrupt for her to work within it? And let's not forget how ridiculous some of the procedure in this episode was (how could they have ever gotten a warrant to search that place)

What's especially frustrating is that there was a lot to like in this episode. The scene between Peter and Nina was interesting, especially since they seem to have made the same arrangement that Walter had with the Observer. I also wonder if Massive Dynamics wasn't even more involved in the research than they let on, since it seems like if there's any major conglomerate getting involved in super-science, it would be MD.

But ultimately, I want to watch a TV show to see something that at least feels new. There is nothing inherently wrong with three-camera sitcoms or crime procedurals. But there is something very wrong with blandness and right now I can't think of a better word to describe Fringe.

C-

Fringe - The Arrival

So, we've finally arrived at the first really big mythology episode. The show took a break from its procedural, mystery-of-the-week elements to give us one big sci-fi mindfrak. And I enjoyed it immensely.

At the center of this episode was a bizarre cylinder. Unless previous mysterious elements, this one gets absolutely no explanation and, just as mysteriously as it arrived, it leaves. This allows us to focus on the strange man known only as The Observer. The Observer is apparently Fringe's Cigarette Smoking Man, someone who has shown up at just about every Pattern related event and clearly knows a lot more than he's letting on. I'm intrigued by him, but as far as mysterious characters go, he seems pretty bland. There was also a lot of mindreading going on, between him and the weird device that the bad guy was using. Given how important that idea has been in past episodes too, I wonder how much this will factor into the show in the future.

This week also gave us some nice character moments, courtesy of Peter and Walter. The scene between Peter and Walter in the interrogation room was one of the best the show's done from a character perspective, and it was nice to see Walter finally get some character traits besides "crazy." Their last scene together where Walter talked about getting saved from the ice was quite good as well.

The biggest problem right now is that Olivia continues to be pretty much useless. I don't care about her dead boyfriend any more now that he's not dead. And as long as that's all that she's really got going on, she's going to continue to be boring.

So, was this a step in the right direction? I honestly don't know. I liked this episode more than the past couple, but I still don't find myself getting invested in the show. Perhaps I still haven't quite gotten enough information about The Pattern to wrap my head around it or perhaps I still don't really care about the people. Where the show goes from here will be crucial, I think. It seems like they're still feeling around and trying to find their way, but pretty soon they need to find something to make this show more compelling.

B

Catching Up: Fringe - "The Ghost Network"/Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia - "America's Next Top Paddy's Billboard Model"/"Mac's Banging the Waitress"

As the rather epic title of this post indicates, I'm a little behind, for which I apologize profusely. After this week I'll be dripping with free time and able to resume normal posting activities, but until then please just bear with me. Anyway, for the sake of catching up, I've combined these two posts into one, which kind of works out for me since none of these episodes was especially interesting.

Starting with Fringe, it seems that three weeks in the show has established its formula and is intent in sticking to it. This week, that formula involves gas that solidifies when in contact with the air (leading to the Jurassic Park-mosquito effect) and a person who thinks he's having premonitions of future events. In actuality, his brain is intercepting messages being sent on the ghost network by...somebody.

Ultimately, my two big problems with Fringe are still there. First, I think in trying not to make Lost, the show has overcorrected too far in the other direction. The lack of any sort of big picture is frustrating. Four hours into Lost, we had heard the monster, seen a polar bear, and discovered that the island heals people. Heck, four hours into Alias we knew SD-6 was evil, the CIA was good, and Milo Rambaldi was a crazy inventor. But four hours into Fringe, all we know is that something called The Pattern is happening and that Massive Dynamics is not to be trusted.

Second, and perhaps more important, is the issue of Olivia. Frankly, she is just not interesting and, so far, has contributed very little to the show. Even Peter has managed to get interesting, thanks to the snark and mysterious past, but Olivia remains mopey and bland. Yet the show essentially rests on the shoulders of a character that I couldn't care less about. The show could survive its formuliac nature and lack of any big picture if it had compelling enough characters, but as of right now, it does not.

Meanwhile, Sunny unleashed two more episodes on us last Thursday, one hilarious and one lame. "America's Next Top Paddy's Billboard Model" featured some truly funny moments, including the return of Green Man. In fact, I loved just about everything about the Sweet Dee/Charlie plotline. Meanwhile in the A-story, Frank and Mac searched for models for the bar's new billboard, in Mac's case it was a search that turned into a Bachelor-esque contest, complete with clover-shaped coasters to hand out to the winners. However, I thought Frank's antics were a little funnier, especially when he threw bleach at Dennis ("anything can happen on the runway") and his takedown of Dennis' photoshoot ("I'm no longer turned on by mules)

The second episode, "Mac's Banging the Waitress" was a rare miss, likely due to the fact that Dee and Frank were completely absent. The resulting episode had some funny ideas (both the "best friend" competition and the idea of Mac banging the Waitress were concepts that seemed solid) but no real laughs. Ultimately, it was an episode that sounded better in concept than in execution.

However, I'd say neither of them were real classics, and I think that so far this season has yet to match the inspired levels of hilarity and outright evilness that the previous seasons of the show have reached. Hopefully that will change with this week's episode (which looks all kinds of promising).

Fringe: B- Sunny - "Next Top Model": B+ Sunny - "Mac's Banging the Waitress": C-

Fringe - "The Same Old Story"

After seeing this week's episode I think I'm a lot clearer on where I stand on Fringe, which still seems to be figuring out exactly what kind of TV show it wants to be.

Starting with the opening sequence which was just killer (groan). The scenario is one we see opening TV shows a lot: mysterious man in a hotel with a woman up to no good. However, quickly we get to the twist when, in one of the freakest scenes I've ever seen on TV, the woman goes through the entire process of pregnancy in about a half hour and gives birth to a child who ages and dies before sunrise. It was shocking, creepy, and disturbing in all the best ways and it is a scene, perhaps even moreso than last week's airplane moment, that throws the gauntlet down and says that Fringe is willing to take some chances.

I also thought the character dynamics improved a lot in this episode. Peter seemed a lot more useful this time and his relationship with Walter is developing some genuine pathos, which is nice. Walter continues to be great (my favorite moment was him making popcorn during the climactic showdown), and Olivia is also becoming a little more human. The business with her partner is still not terribly compelling, but her relationship with Broyles and especially Sharp, whose Massive Dynamics gets more terrifying with each episode.

However, this episode also demonstrated how Fringe can go wrong, namely by becoming a sci-fi version of Criminal Minds. All the stuff with the serial killer murdering women in a gruesome way came straight off of the CBS assembly line and, while it turned out that he actually needed to grab their pituitary glands to survive, this week's story still seemed somewhat tired. I know Abrams and Co. have said they want to keep this show less dense than Lost, but that doesn't mean they need to go the obvious route.

The last ten or so minutes did a lot to redeem the episode, however. Olivia's conversation with Sharp made Massive Dynamics sound a whole lot more evil than they did last week. And from what Walter was saying to Olivia at the end, it sounds like Peter may be a clone. And the final scene was kind of touching (right now the Peter and Walter relationship may be the most interesting one the show has).

Ultimately Fringe succeeds when it puts its sci-fi foot before its crime procedural one. The scenes in the lab, the creepy opening and closing scenes, and anything involving Massive Dynamics or Walter works terrifically. However, its going to become increasingly difficult to get involved in the show if 20-30 minutes are dominated by stories as rote as this week. I'm not worried about it for now, since last week's mystery seemed a lot more unique than this one, and even The X-Files had its share of weak mysteries. However, as long as The X-Files remains a more apt point of comparison for the show than Criminal Minds then I think we'll be in good shape.

B-

Fringe - "Pilot"

Although making its debut tonight, the pilot episode of Fringe got out, making this early review possible (I'll avoid big spoilers as much as I can, but you may want to wait until after watching the show to read this). Since the writer's strike sabotaged pilot season this year, Fringe was the only new show that I was looking forward to (since Dollhouse doesn't come until January). And all in all, despite a being much slower than what we've come to expect from JJ Abrams, it did not disappoint.

Pitched as J.J. Abrams makes The X-Files (a description that's pretty on point), Fringe kicks off with a bang. We're on an airplane (again) where something horrible is about to happen. I don't want to give it away, but what happens on the plane is pretty messed up and starts off the show nicely. Unfortunately, after that things kind of grind to a halt to introduce us to the two main characters. First is Olivia Dunham, an FBI agent played by newcomer Anna Torv. Dunham certainly has potential to be interesting, but none of that potential really manifests itself as she goes through the expository motions that lead her to main character number 2: Dawson's Creek's Joshua Jackson (who, if we're being honest, will always be Charlie from The Mighty Ducks) Jackson is Peter Bishop, the conman son of a mad scientist named Walter whose knowledge of "fringe science" (which apparently is like pseudoscience, but crazier) is the only lead Dunham has. To break him out of his asylum, Olivia needs Peter's help. Jackson's charming enough, playing the voice-of-reason type character, but again he doesn't actually contribute much of value to this particular episode.

If it sounds like I'm being too hard on Fringe, that's because the first hour is somewhat tedious to get through. But if you make it to the second, you'll be rewarded with all kinds of great stuff. John Noble dominates the show as Walter Bishop, who really kicks things into motion when he attempts to have Olivia blend her subconscious with that of her unconscious partner (a scheme which involves her dropping acid and submerging herself in a tank of water). Its also here where we begin to get an idea of what the big picture might be: something called The Pattern. The Pattern is a series of crazy, unexplained phenomena, almost as if someone (or something) is using the entire planet as some kind of laboratory. That someone may be Massive Dynamics, a Dharma Initiative-style corporation whose founder has ties to Walter. In many ways, this represents the most interesting tweak to The X-Files formula: no longer is the government the primary concern. Instead it seems that to be a genius with a desire for a massive conspiracy in the 21st century requires one to go into the private sector. Its the Walter-Massive Dynamics-Pattern relationship that drives the show, although I'd be remiss not to point out the presence of the always awesome Lance Reddick. Reddick is somewhat underutilized here (except for one scene where he basically lays out the concept of the show), but he's clearly going to be around for a while and his interactions with Anna Torv were quite strong.

Once it starts getting into the crazy science and corporate conspiracies, it seems like Fringe finds its legs. The show suffers from being the shadow of Abrams' other two greater, paradigm shifting intros (Alias and Lost), but both of those shows also suffered in the long run from having less malleable premises. Abrams and Co. are dealing with some interesting ideas here and the show sets up a dynamic between its three leads that should develop well over time.
Grade: B

P.S. In case you haven't been following the Fringe ARG (I don't know about you but I always find those things take up too much time for too little reward), but this post on io9 summarizes the coolest part. As long as they can come up with crazy stuff like this, I'll be watching every week.

Previews: Lost, Heroes, and Fringe

With Grey's Anatomy (here on known as The Sad Doctor Show) having its finale this week, Lost returns next week for a two hour season finale. Here is a preview of what's to come.

Heroes has released a teaser for Season 3. Hopefully it will be better than Season 2. The preview looks pretty darn good:


Lastly, J.J. Abrhams has a new show coming to Fox next season called Fringe. Here is a trailer for the show.