Living On The Fringe...

In my push to catch up with the currently airing episodes of Criminal Minds, I had fallen a little behind on my other shows. Not much, because most were/are on their winter breaks, but some. I'm catching up with the shows, and I just caught up with Fringe. And for all my gushing on the show, I had no idea they could accomplish the impossible!

See, a few posts back, I wrote about my increasing frustration with television shows having the romantic entanglements of their characters take over the storyline of the show. Now, these shows are about people and people fall in or out of love, so romance is going to be involved. That's fine with me. I have no problems with that, so long as it's balanced with the overall story of the show.

In the post linked above, the biggest offender was Bones. But, another offender was Fringe. Starting with the startling revelation that Agent Dunham had feelings for Peter Bishop at the end of Season 2, the developing romance between Dunham and Bishop began taking over a larger portion of the show. Unlike, Bones, it never got to intolerable levels on Fringe, but given that producers of TV watch each other to gauge what's "hot" and trend towards that, it was worrying me.

When I watch a tv show, I always put myself in the universe of that show. So, right now somewhere in this country, Olivia Dunham and Peter Bishop (and the rest of the Fringe team) are running around doing what they do, trying to keep my sorry ass from dying in some weirdo experiment related to "The Pattern". So, I watch to see how it's going. When they start focusing on who's hooking up with who, I lose interest because it has no bearing on my life. Catching murderers or serial killers, or stopping the nuclear bomb, that affects me. Two people on the team deciding to "bump uglies" doesn't. That's their business. NOT mine. Until, I saw last Friday's episode of Fringe. That's when they did the impossible...

That's when Fringe made the romance between Peter & Olivia pertinent to my continued existence.

There's been an ongoing storyline this season about Peter and his connection to a machine that has some mysterious purpose. And that purpose is tied to Peter Bishop. For the bulk of this season, they've also focused on Peter's relationship troubles with Olivia, mostly because he was in love with the Olivia from the alternate universe, while thinking that it was the Olivia from THIS one. When the indigenous Olivia returned, their relationship got.... complicated.

In last Friday's episode, they revealed that the machine can destroy either this world or the alternate world depending on how Peter's mind is tuned. So, dear readers, you're probably asking how does Peter's mind get tuned? Well, there's the rub: Peter gets tuned by which Olivia he's in love with.

Nice, right?

And then just to twist the knife a little bit more, they also reveal that Peter still has feelings for the other universe's Olivia! So if Peter gets in that machine right now, we're all going to die! I didn't think it was possible, but now I care about who Peter ends up with. Since the me in the Fringe Universe is going to DIE if Peter picks the wrong one!!

J.J. Abrams, I salute you. You made me care about a romantic relationship between two fictional characters. You have accomplished the impossible. Touche, good sir. Touche.

Season Finale: Fringe

Compared to other, splashier finales going on this season, Fringe's season finale is very much subdued. It's not any less powerful or compelling, just more subtle. Kind of like the image I chose for this post. Pay attention to the reflections, dear reader. Cool, huh? In any case, on to the discussion of the Fringe season 2 finale!

The single most important lesson to be learned from the season 2 finale of Fringe is simple: NEVER FUCK WITH LEONARD NIMOY!! It doesn't matter what show he's on: Classic Trek, Mission: Impossible (yes, he was on the classic tv series), Star Trek:Next Gen, or Fringe, Nimoy ALWAYS kicks ass!! Case in point, the scene with the model 77 weapon. It's ONE level up, and it can blow up a CAR with a SINGLE SHOT! And that's not even taking into account the grenades!!

When I found out that these last two eps were going to take place in the Alternate Universe (AU), one of the MANY things I was looking forward to was the resumption of the friendly rivalry between William Bell & Walter. And I liked how they resumed their bickering like no time had passed. It was heartwarming to see them together again, and I INSTANTLY UNDERSTOOD how they could accomplish so much radical scientific inquiry. The scene that got to me was when Walter asked Bell why he removed parts of his brain. The pain & anguish that had always been bubbling under the surface came out in front of the ONE person who could understand what Bishop was, and how much less than that he sees himself now. Bell's revelation that Walter asked him to do it out of fear of what he was becoming, while predictable, was also an amazing moment. Which bring us to the death of Bell. Is it just me, or did you, dear reader, also get a strange echo of the end of Star Trek 2? I know that Nimoy has retired from acting, but it was a bit painful to watch him die again.

As for the rest of the cast of the AU, I loved them all! Agent Farnsworth was a bit freaky in her appearance, but it was cool. Seeing a strong willed, competent Walter was fantastic. Given the flashbacks of our side, I could see our Walter following suit. But the best part of going to the AU was seeing Charlie again!! I'm still of the opinion that the single, biggest mistake the producers of Fringe made was the death of Charlie. Seeing him again was such a cool bit. Peter's reaction to seeing him was great, but the best moment was Charlie and our Olivia in the car and the echo of the conversation she had in the beginning of the series where he brings up some very good points about law enforcement not being able to keep up with the new, more technologically advanced threats without more information. Seeing Olivia's reaction to that conversation was cool.

Speaking of Olivia, I hate to say this but the one sour note was her scene with Peter. Now, I'm not against them being together. Not in the slightest. But, things between them was on a slow burn that I was thinking was going to flare up in season 3. I can understand why she did it, but it just felt like it was way too fast. But that wasn't a big enough issue to damage my enjoyment of the episode. Especially given where she is at the end.

There are a couple of other things that I find interesting about the finale, though. First, I liked how they showed where the encased in amber tech came from and, more importantly, WHY they use it. That was a expertly subtle way of explaining that. It also bodes well for the series that they took the time to actually answer that particular question.

The other interesting thing about this finale is the apparent change in format of the show. Prior to the last few eps of this season, the show was basically a police procedural with a sci-fi twist. Ever since Peter found out he was from the AU, they've slowly stepped away from the procedural format into a more traditional drama style. The change raises some interesting questions. Is the show going to drop the procedural aspect? There's enough of a background in the mythology of the show that they could do that. Or was it just the nature of this particular story that required the departure from the procedural format? Given the infiltration of AU Olivia into our Fringe division, going back to the procedural format would bring some intriguing questions of loyalty.

In the end, Fringe gave a fantastic entry for their season 2 finale, hitting all the right marks (including one minor thing to gripe about) and leaving us primed and ready for season 3. I, for one, can't WAIT for next season!! It's going to be EPIC!

Back On The Fringe

On the subject of returning television, another of my favorite shows returned to the airwaves last week: Fringe. I didn't realize how much I missed this show until I watched last week's episode. Fringe is truly one of gems of current television. J.J. Abrams, in my book, is 3 for 3 in the tv dept. I was a big fan of Alias, loved Lost while he was a part of it, and now Fringe! Parasites, blinking lights, alternate universes, teleportations and other things just beyond the event horizon of modern scientific knowledge spun into a thrilling narrative that, for me, goes just past compulsive to being a moral imperative!

For all of season one, Fringe was my WTF show. Every single episode for 20 episodes, there was a point in the episode where I stare at my tv in consternation (or horror, or fascination) and all I can say is, "What the fuck". (Season 2 is ongoing, so hasn't gotten a rating yet.) In a landscape being increasingly taken up by the banality of reality tv, it is encouraging to find that there are people in the television industry willing to produce solid, intelligent programming. Not to mention programming that can be so consistently mind-boggling in its writing. And its not just the stories that work so well. J.J. Abrams has a proven track record of pulling strong talent into his shows, and he hasn't stopped with Fringe. The actors he chose for Fringe are inspired.

Anna Torv, plays FBI agent Olivia Dunham. She gives the character a unique mix of strength, cold calculation, compassion, and creepiness that makes her performances exceedingly intriguing to watch. John Noble is frustratingly wonderful in his bizarrely random performance as Dr. Walter Bishop, Fringe's nearest local equivalent to Doc Frankenstein. And in the part of Peter Bishop, son of Walter and Doc Frankenstein Jr, is Joshua Jackson, who is rapidly repairing the damage done to his career by Dawson's Creek. While these three are the stars of the show, the two hidden gems in the show are Lance Reddick (Agent Philip Broyles) and Kirk Acevedo (Agent Charlie Francis).

Reddick, initially comes across wooden and off-putting, but during the course of the two seasons the show, Reddick has breathed a stalwart power into the role giving a necessary authoritative grounding in reality to the show. Acevedo is the real surprise, though. He took a role that essentially was FBI Agent #2, and made him an essential part of the show. The actor's latino, though, so it's only to be expected that he'd be good. It was also good to see a latino as a good guy for a change. Unfortunately, his character was killed off.

There are those who say that Fringe is just a bad rip-off of The X-Files. Superficially, I could agree with that statement. But upon a more rigorous examination of the two shows, it becomes MORE than obvious that Fringe has a much grander scope than X-Files. In limiting itself to dealing with extra-terrestrials and the government conspiracies surrounding them, the X-Files locked itself into a small subset of story telling ideas, the motivations of the characters further limited the range of events X-Files could cover, which is why the show lost most of its power when THE main character, Fox Mulder, was taken out the show. Dana Scully couldn't maintain the show without completely violating the basic tenets of either her character by turning her into a believer instead of informed sceptic, or the show by expanding past extra-terrestrials into other arenas of science fiction which would have turned it into Fringe. What made the X-Files work, aside from Mulder's obsession, is the tight focus of the show, which gave an air of claustrophobia that enhanced the conspiratorial nature of the show.

Fringe works in exactly the OPPOSITE way. The scope of the show is criminal events dealing with areas of science that have not been properly vetted and are considered to be on the edge, or "out there". Go back in time far enough, and the PC I'm currently working on would fall into that category, as would the glasses I wear, cars I've driven, activities I've participated in. In fact, last week's ep took place in the 1985, and in an extra bit of coolness, they modified the show's intro to reflect the fringe science of the day. Things like: Personal computing, DNA profiling, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, laser surgery, in vitro fertilization, stealth technology, virtual reality. Amazing what's come about in just 25 years, isn't it? In the end, that's basically my point. Fringe isn't just about aliens, abductions, losing time and the other bits of sci-fi associated with that phenomenon. Fringe also covers genetic manipulation, medical experimentation, cryogenics, dark matter research, hypnosis, and many other pieces of science and sci-fi.

There's also no compulsion from any main character driving the show, theoretically ANY and ALL of the cast can be replaced and show could still go on just as believably in just as thrilling and compelling a fashion. All of this makes Fringe a much more versatile show than the X-Files could have ever been. Not better, just more versatile.