|
|
Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 9, No. 37 |
|
Echoes of 'The X-Files'
haunt new thriller series
of TheColumnists.com
So I'm glad I waited long enough to watch two episodes of Fox's "Fringe" before rendering my opinion of the new sci-fi/horror series. I was disappointed with the opening show, but the second episode brought me around to an entirely different point-of-view.
Some critics have hailed "Fringe" as the best new show of the season. You won't find me going there, not anymore. When I was being paid to review TV shows by my newspaper and the parent company's syndication operation, I had to watch every new show every fall. Now that I work for myself for the love of it, I routinely skip most of the new shows if they're the sort of thing I know I'd never watch in a million years.
So, I'll never see all the shows this season and won't be able to make any comparative judgments.
But I love sci-fi, horror and the thriller genre, so I would have watched "Fringe" just out of curiousity, if for no other reason. And I might have stopped watching after the first episode, which I found slow and too complicated, with characters I didn't much like.
Fortunately, the second episode started off with a bang and moved fast enough to keep me interested. Though I saw the ending coming well in advance, I thought the hour was stylish and tense and the characters added some dimension I hadn't noticed the first time around.
"Fringe" is about a secret FBI investigation of some strange phenomena that seem to be linked in some obscure fashion. We viewers know that the mysterious corporation known as Massive Dynamics, which manufactures advanced weapons systems, among other things, is probably behind all the weird goings-on. The company's boss, played by the normally loveable Blair Brown ("The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd"), has "sinister" written all over her, so that makes her the weekly villainess.
In the first episode, which I thought was unnecessarily dense and confusing, we got to know FBI Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), whose FBI boy friend was infected by something that killed everybody on a passenger jet liner that landed on auto pilot with nothing but corpses aboard. To find out whatever did this to all these people, the FBI decides to have Olivia connect with a once-brilliant scientist (John Noble) who's been locked up in an asylum for the past 20 years. In order to reach the scientist, she has to first pal-up with his estranged son (Joshua Jackson), who's always on the lam for various nefarious activities and doesn't want to be bothered.
I thought the premise was ridiculous and I didn't like any of the main characters, who struck me as ranging from unsavory to unattractive and back again.
But the second episode was much more exciting, involving a serial killer who removes the pituitary glands of young women after putting them in a paralyzed state in which they can tell what's being done to them, but can't do anything about it. The FBI has been after this guy for years, but he's now connected to the so-called "pattern" of phenomena when one of his victims is dumped at a hospital emergency room and dies from giving birth to a baby that ages into an 80-plus old man within half an hour.
Yes, I'd say that qualifies for a strange phenomenon--and it harks back to scientific experiments the asylum doctor was doing before everybody figured out he was nuts.
Now we know that Massive Dynamics is somehow behind all these weird events, but the FBI still hasn't quite worked that out.
All of it seems very "X-Files"-ish so far, which isn't the worst thing one could say about a new program. The fact that J.J. Abrams (ABC's "Lost") is the creator of "Fringe" and is executive producer of the show probably means it's going to be developing into something even better as it goes along.
However, I think they're going to have to warm up the characters a good deal before I'll want to associate with them on a steady basis. Torv doesn't do much for me as a leading lady and Jackson, who ultimately became rather insufferable when he was "Pacey" on The WB's "Dawson's Creek," is already insufferable on "Fringe." The lunatic character is also very hard to like and Torv's FBI colleagues all seem more sinister than interesting.
Here's an idea: Why not have Blair Brown's nasty character undergo brain surgery and emerge as somebody as nice as Molly Dodd? I could come back for more of that week after week.
In the meantime, if they can keep me interested as much as they did with episode two, I'll stick around a bit longer, hoping the writers and producers can whip "Fringe" into something worthy of the praise others already have given it.
©2008 by Ron Miller. The photos are courtesy of the Fox network. This column first posted Sept. 22, 2008.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|