JJ Abrams' FRINGE on Fox

[tomorrow]

I enjoyed it.

The openning was sick. The discussion of how the deprivation chamber experiment would happen was hilarious. The bad guy element was lacking IMHO however... uncharacterized really. The whole thing with the boyfriend at the end was a tad to predictable. Nonetheless for a pilot, not bad.

I'll be watching again simply because the three primary characters came across really well to me. The plot well... its pretty clear its going to be a kind of X-Files riff but with a somewhat different overplot. Which doesn't say much, as IMHO... the overplot of the X-Files rapidly developed into the flimsiest element of that show.

[Invictus]

I've gotta echo a sentiment fromGray Pumpkin; when I realized that one of the good guys was a bona fide Mad Scientist, it clinched it for me to give the show a chance. We'll see how it develops.

[Worldmaker]

I was impressed by the chemistry between John Noble and Joshua Jackson. Jackson did a pretty good job of playing "casually brilliant", Noble was fantastic at playing "batsh*t insane", and between the two, they did a good job riffing off of one another. Anna Torv's FBI-eye candy was a bit underwhelming, but at least she was competent (seriously... I got more from Kirk Acevedo's five minutes onscreen... he played the other FBI agent... the one that didn't tag along with the mad scentists or get turned into crystal sludge... than I did from an entire hour of her...)

There were some brilliant moments (why they had to have a cow in the lab, the mad scientist's discovery of and comments about Spongebob Squarepants, convincing Agent Eye-Candy to strip down and crawl into an isolation tank...) even if (as has already been pointed out) the story got off to a slow start.

I'm at least going to watch the next couple of eps, just to see if they could keep it up.

[Kit]

re-runs Sunday with extras

[Setothes]

I liked everything but Josh Jackson's character/acting. Loved the mad scientist, liked the local homeland security dude and was alright with the main character. (She came off just a little bit too dim next to the rest of the cast, as if everyone else was two steps ahead of her and pressuring her into everything. Pretty 'though, and she didn't have the perpetually surprised deer-in-headlights look of Gillian Anderson or the blonde from The Profiler.)

It felt *very* X-Files, down to the visuals, the screen-cuts and the music. Distractingly so. But not in a bad way, just kind of eerie, like I was watching an X-Files episode and, for some reason, Mulder and Scully were busy elsewhere.

Almost every time that Bishop Jr. opened his mouth, I wanted to smack him. I don't know if he *can* act, but I wish he'd at least *try.*

Massive Dynamics is a silly name (and since I watched it right after Eureka, makes me expect to see Stark and Alison), but gosh, they sure have a pretty corporate headquarters!

[Kit]

strong premiere

[Worldmaker]

strong premiere

Apparently opinions differ on Joshua Jackson's acting skills.

[kipling]

Strong premiere?

You might want to look at this critic's comments:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... on/columns

This information puts that 9 million viewers in perspective:

Fox noted it was the network's most watched drama premiere in two years, if you exclude most of its drama premieres of the past two years. Actually, what Fox said was that "Fringe" was its highest-rated drama series debut in two years "excluding premieres following sports and 'American Idol.' "

Since September 2006, all but three Fox dramas ("K-Ville," "Canterbury's Law" and "Drive") have launched after a sports telecast or "Idol."

Didn't see it, hope to see it Sunday for the rerun.

[MDSnowman]

Hehe for those of you wanting to read the above linked article allow me to give you the gist.

Fox made stupid programing decisions that probabaly hurt Fringe's ratings in comparison to other premieres for series which have crashed and burned.

[Dr Archeville]

Finally got to see this. Loved, loved, loved it!

I expect FOX to cancel it.

[Kit]

New ep tonight, The Same Old Story:

Olivia, along with Peter and Walter Bishop, investigates the strange death of a woman who had an even stranger child. The woman was pregnant for only hours, yet the baby she birthed was fully developed - and also aged eighty years in the span of a few minutes. Olivia asks Nina Sharp of Massive Dynamic for help.

[Setothes]

Disjointed thoughts about last nights ep;

1) Massive Dynamics has it's own armies, in other nations.

Gosh, I wonder where they would get the soldiers, in other nations, that they could count on to not be overly loyal to their host nation? Why would they even drop that anvilicious tidbit if it didn't tie in to the focus of tonight's ep?

2) It's becoming more and more telegraphed that Massive Dynamics is behind most of this, and their attempt to hire FBI Lass away just seems terribly obviously a bribe to get rid of the inconvenience of her investigations. Hopefully that means that it's a red herring and Nina Sharpe isn't a bad-girl (why can I remember her name and not the main characters? Argh).

3) On the other hand, Bishop's kid failed to annoy me tonight, so that's a step up. He was almost, gasp, likable, singing his dad to sleep. Darn emotionally manipulative writers! I still want to dislike him, no matter what shenanigans they pull. :)

4) On the other, other hand, as much as I think Bishop is the funnest character on the show, I'm beginning to loathe seeing him on-screen, since everything that comes out of his mouth has to be repeated, in different dumbed-down words in the form of a question, by either FBI blonde, his son or the (really cute) assistant who helps them around the lab.

It's like an echo chamber;

Bishop "Something quirky, but easily understood."
Inquisitive NPC "Something quirky? Please 'splainy, for anyone in the audience who can't count to eleven without taking off their pants."
Explication NPC "Explication, in smaller words."

The only time I noticed they didn't bother to repeat something Bishop said multiple times is when they *really* didn't want you to think about what he was saying, because the 'science' was approaching Star Trek levels of hand-waving. 'Yeah Doc, muscle relaxants freeze signals in the optic nerve / 'neural pathways,' and yet leave it working enough for the relaxee to be able to see.'

5) My predictions;
Something bad is going to happen to the cute lab assistant / FBI lackey. I'll be sad.

The cow will inexplicably survive the season, despite a fire in the lab and contagion and some dubious medical experiments.

6) What I'd like to see;
Some cases that *aren't* part of 'The Pattern' and *don't* have anything to do with Bishop's past research.

Since FBI Lass seems to be calling her old boss for favors multiple times an episode, like he's her personal lackey, maybe he might get to call in her team for some quid pro quo-age. Then we'd get to see Bishop working to figure out something that he doesn't already know.

[Worldmaker]

Since FBI Lass seems to be calling her old boss for favors multiple times an episode, like he's her personal lackey, maybe he might get to call in her team for some quid pro quo-age. Then we'd get to see Bishop working to figure out something that he doesn't already know.

Was he her boss? I thought... just another agent.

[Kit]

Since FBI Lass seems to be calling her old boss for favors multiple times an episode, like he's her personal lackey, maybe he might get to call in her team for some quid pro quo-age. Then we'd get to see Bishop working to figure out something that he doesn't already know.

Was he her boss? I thought... just another agent.

I thought he was just another agent as well

[Dr Archeville]

1) Massive Dynamics has it's own armies, in other nations.

Gosh, I wonder where they would get the soldiers, in other nations, that they could count on to not be overly loyal to their host nation? Why would they even drop that anvilicious tidbit if it didn't tie in to the focus of tonight's ep?

While I do agree that MD's likely got some clone soldiers, I don't think it'd be so hard to find folks in a country who could be persuaded to fight for your corporation over the interests of their home country. That's what some mercenaries do, right? And defectors/dissidents?

The thing that's really got me curious are A) why Walter was so interested in Peter's eyes, and B) just what Walter told Peter off-camera (in his "unusually lucid state").

Also, I have to wonder why some folks write things like this, when the entire premise of the show is "there's science out there that the public has no clue about". (In Mage: the Ascension terms, Walter's clearly one of the Sons of Ether, and Massive Dynamics is the Technocracy.)