Notes From The Fringe

I say this as a warning to any female character in a pilot episode of a J.J. Abrams television program. If the guy you're romantically involved with tells you he loves you, he's toast.

Between that and the opening airplane scene, Abrams' new series Fringe definitely tipped its hat to his previous two hits, Alias and Lost. But the 800-pound, possibly genetically-modified gorilla in the room is clearly The X-Files. Abrams tried to distance expectations from that easy thumbnail sketch of his new show when it was first announced, but two episodes in, it's pretty reasonable to say that Fringe is pretty much just an updated version of the sci-fi conspiracy classic.

This (a) isn't necessarily a bad thing, and (b) doesn't mean there's a one-to-one mapping of all things Mulder and Scully. Most importantly, there aren't really any direct analogues to Mulder or Scully. Yes, there's a female FBI agent, and yes, there's a guy with crazy theories, but Olivia Dunham isn't a skeptic and Walter Bishop isn't an agent. Yes, there's a conspiracy, but it looks to be corporate and not governmental in nature.

And the characters aren't quite as compelling right out of the gate. We still don't have a good reason to care about Walter's son Peter, and Dunham has maybe just a little too much of that stereotypical TV show law enforcement gravitas to be truly be interesting, although Anna Torv is doing a nice job with what she's been given so far. I'm not entirely sure why she has such fondness for park benches, though.

There's also that classic sci-fi element of the fish out of water. With Walter Bishop having been in a mental institution for 17 years, they can give him that Vulcan-on-a-ship-of-humans fascination with modern culture.

So far it looks promising, and with a couple different series on the current dance card taking a break (Burn Notice, Monk, Top Gear), it'll probably stay in the rotation for now.