Fringe (new JJ Abrams show) : Mad scientist, flesh eating virus, a cow and talks with the dead

I thought this was a good and entertaining program! I have to admit the main reason I watched it was bcz of the several-times-a-night ad on Coast to Coast AM. "We're having a FRINGE party!" Looks like YOU just invited the whole nation!"

Wasn't too crazy about...angry-looking Mr. Puffycheeks BUT I think he will get better. I thought it was really, really good for a PILOT. Has anyone ever seen a not-crappy pilot? (Twin Peaks fans are not allowed to say Twin Peaks pilot (man are they ever biased)). I didn't watch Futurama for years bcz I hated the first episode. That was stupid! They get all the origin story shit out of the way in a pilot. I wish shows beginned ned in media res, but it's America. What do you expect?

NB I have never seen any J.J. Abrams thing ever.

It was fun to make joeks about when the lady would turn into an ape & bust out of the tank. Also, "How do they drive down that ROAD when it has the word BOSTON floating around, blocking all the traffic?" That joke didn't even sustain the whole episode, but I had a hard time not making it & it will be a challenge in the future. I enjoy a bad running joke for about 70x longer than most humans.

yeah that was a really bad graphic design/whatever choice.

I was glad they at least took a chance.

"Where are we here in Baghdad? The building under the giant capital letter Q."

Twin Peaks pilot r0x0rz though!! And wtf Futurama pilot did too u r taking wtf pills. Sports Night had a bang-up pilot, as did Freaks & Geeks.

What did I say.

Something kinda wrong IIRC.

They do that "look at this word on this beach" thingy on Heroes! except Fringe's is in 3D.

JJ doesn't have a good track record for being the long-term showrunner, he's really ADD when it comes to storytelling.

Yep. Abrams is great for starting ideas and he's a genuinely bankable name, so anything with him involved is practically guaranteed to get people on board. he's not the showrunner on Fringe - Jeff Pinker (exec producer/writer on Lost) is.

oops that would be Jeff PinkNer.

Weird, I thought the lady was great and Pacey was terrible, and scientist dude was fine for me.

Totally agreed. Oh, J.J. Abrams, when will you stop miscasting late 20s/early 30s-ish male leads? He seems to do great with older actors, but younger ones are totally hit and miss... (see: Cloverfield, Michael Vartan)

Show is kind of weak, but I'll give it some time, I guess. The other new show I've been watching, Sons of Anarchy, seems more promising so far.

how was cloverfield miscast?

I know arguably you're not really supposed to like the actors, but I found them all pretty unbearable. Especially the ones you were "supposed" to root for in the end.

I'll give this show a couple more episodes, but it seems pretty nondescript in a Threshold sort of way.

More to the point, I liked this show better when it was on ten years ago and called The X-Files

Fun Facts:

* Leading Lady is Rupert Murdoch's niece.
* Pilot cost $10.5 million.
* Ratings it got were a 6.6/10, which is not great at all... but next week it starts to follow "House," which rates very well.

I agree that the leading lady isn't all that great. Sometimes it felt like she was completely out of it. Mad scientist is ok, I just wish he had kept his beard all the time. I liked it when he was having a good time eating chinese, watching spongebob. The love interest to be between Bishop's son and leading girl felt a bit forced. I actually liked the 3d words floating around and was all giddy when the camera went through one of the O's in Boston.

freckle faced leading lady was hot, ok?

She seems like a sweet person & I think, for TV, she's a totally decent actress.

Redhead bitch w/cyborg arm was bitchin'g, yes?

Leading lady sometimes reminded me of Cate Blanchett. She is hot, though there were a few shots of her where she looked weird. Bitch with cyborg arm was awesome. I really liked those bits, cyborg arm, see-through body...

Jibe except for your fondness for stupid 3D push-through letters (hello Alias again!!!!), we are of a mind.

Mad scientist is ok, I just wish he had kept his beard all the time.

YES!!

I liked it when he was having a good time eating chinese, watching spongebob.

OMG YES.

The love interest to be between Bishop's son and leading girl felt a bit forced.

Welcome to JJ Abrams' world!

More time needs to be spent on cyborg lady's assistant, i.e. her with the barely onscreen but nonetheless hueg rack.

Never having seen Alias, I did not know that JJ was a fan of such stuff. Actually, I cant remember anything like it in Lost (except for the opening credits). My fondness for those silly letters arises from the fact that everytime the camera went through a letter I secretly hoped for it to crash INTO them. Forced love interests are indeed a typical Abrams fare (at least they are in Lost) but not from the first episode onwards!

Redhead bitch w/cyborg arm was bitchin'g, yes?

It's the lady from The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. Am I the only person who remembers that show?

Walter Bishop definitely the best character on this show. LET'S MAKE SOME LSD! I love that he's basically playing the same deranged old dude he did in Lord of the Rings, only a FRINGE SCIENTIST instead of a STALWART STEWARD OF GONDOR.

I really didn't like the pilot when I saw it last week, but weirdly it's grown on me over the week. I'm actually sorta looking forward to it tonight. Is this usual with Abrams' stuff? It sucks during the watching, but you recollect it fondly later?

is joshua jackson playing george clooney or what

Damn, how the hell did they get away with that gory shit, the surgeries, the eyeball (UGH), on public TV? I was seriously turned off by it. The rest of the episode was okay, I guess.

Didn't seem any more graphic than any given House episode.

the eyeball was totally loltastic

This was awful. First episode wasn't great or anything, but it wasn't this bad. I don't even mind the clunky-as-fuck exposition of the first 5 minutes. The dream-sequence pregnancy thing? Yeah, I saw Aliens. The last image from the eye? I saw Wild Wild West too.

Felt like they were already out of ideas.

That played-out jaded horseshit stance where folks show off that they've watched movies and TV shows and read books and remember things from them and act like hot shit when they find these things in other movies / shows / books? Yeah, I liked it better when they didn't share.

Expected Chris Carter, got Joss Whedon.

Clearly, I really will watch Lance Riddick in anything.

Lance is class.

xxpost

I'm not one for "I've seen this done elsewhere", nor do I think calling back upon Wild Wild West is anyway anyone can consider themselves hot shit. The point is really that a writer (or writers) should do well enough for someone not to notice. The eye thing has been done many, many times before, and it is usually a pretty cheap trick when someone's written themselves into a hole/can't be bothered to come up with something better. And the Aliens gag was weak.

I think I just find the world they've set up to be jarring and inconsistent. I don't mind being derivative, certainly not of genre tropes in a genre show, but they've got to help the viewers a bit. If you want to make a campy sci-fi/horror show, then do it. If you want a scary, serious thriller, then do that. There is no sense of humour in this show as far as I can tell, unless the cow thing was meant to be funny.

Kerm OTM, but at least Whedon seemed to have a sense of humour. He would willingly acknowledge from the get-go that the Hellmouth and Willow's hacking abilities was just an easy out for the writers, who were more interested in character anyway. I was hoping for a quality X-files deal, and I'll take a campy paranoid fantasy in its stead, but I can't be bothered with some inconsistent series aiming for somewhere in the middle, especially when it's as dull as this one.

I think I'm just disappointed, really. Hopefully it will get better, but I'm worried that it feels like they ran out of ideas in the second episode. Sorry if I offended you David R.

for the record, other than the seatwarmer gag I'm really really failing to see the whedon in this.

Didn't seem any more graphic than any given House episode.

Still dig Blair Brown, Lance Reddick and John Noble, but the other actors still have a ways to go. The pilot already lowered my expectations about the monster-of-the-week plots, I agree with the mediocrity as Gukbe describes.

Definitely neither Chris Carter nor Joss Whedon. The former had really sharp character work every episode and the latter had a sense of humor. I think what really disappoints me the most is the female protagonist. I can't even remember her name she's so unmemorable. I don't know if she's just getting awful writing from the writers, or she's just a poor actress.

they really fucked themselves by starting this show off admitting there's a "pattern" to all of these things. oh, and the old guy just happened to work on anything involved in the pattern. magic computer can tell you EXACTLY where magic photo from dead girl's eye was taken. there weren't enough machinas in this episode for deuseses to be ex-ing from.

HOWEVER, i am still giving it a shot. but along with house tonight, this was kinda like fox's "ugh, come on, no way" tuesday.

I actually liked House tonight. But I don't think I've ever seen a House ep that I didn't enjoy.

The point is really that a writer (or writers) should do well enough for someone not to notice. The eye thing has been done many, many times before, and it is usually a pretty cheap trick when someone's written themselves into a hole/can't be bothered to come up with something better. And the Aliens gag was weak.

As you might've gathered, it didn't really chafe me quite as much, tho I can't recall the eye thing being done before, and you can't really do a pregnancy "gag" without inadvertently referencing "Aliens". But to each their own -- I've got plenty of reservations about this thing (including my fear that it's going to resort to having a WACKY SCIENCE GIMMICK for every episode) (oooh do cold fusion next!), but I'm not not enjoying it. One request, tho (since the show makers are of course reading this): more Kirk Acevedo.

BTW, Gubke, sorry for getting pissy w/ my earlier comment. (I blame the internet.)

They Macgyver defibrillator bit was just ridiculous.

the pregnant thing made me think of cronenberg's "shivers," but that's because "shivers" was on flix the day before yesterday.

more Kirk Acevedo

And maybe a Dean Winters cameo amirite?

This show would be better if it had Cate Blanchett in it instead of her doppleganger.

that's the name i was lookig for last night!

The only character in this show that is remotely endearing, entertaining or empathy inducing is Walter Bishop. This show sucks because all of the characters suck.

Yeah...I liked last night's episode way better than the pilot, but mainly just because they really didn't have enough story to fill out 90 minutes and it works much better as an hour. Walter Bishop is definitely the best part of the cast but he's treading a fine line of occasional, somewhat unexpected wackiness right now and that character could get tiresome or cheesy very quickly if they don't handle it right. Shows like this with a 'strong female lead' that don't bother casting a good actress or writing much of a personality for the character are so depressing.

So what is the playing god part, is the kid a clone of Walter or just otherwise genetically messed with?

The only character in this show that is remotely endearing, entertaining or empathy inducing is Walter Bishop

Statement fails to account for RIDDICK FACTOR

I'm annoyed by the LOST music being recycled.

Also, yes, Joshua Jackson is just a bizarre form of Pacey - does he have any way of delivering his lines beyond bored/upset/ironic?
"Yah dad, we sorta figured that out. OK? You can't retrieve images from eyeballs."

The show is pretty goofy - the previews made me yell "Don't steal from heroes!", and then my BF and I had a conversation about episodic series and, I dunno, chapter series..

I don;t know what the definitions are between the two. Episodic, to me, would imply episodes. But that's not the case?

I really loved this, bought the bluray box set, but still never managed to finish the last season (didn't care anymore), so I don't know how it all ends. I'm going to soldier on with the whole thing, one day. maybe.

haha, I even said it here in this thread 8 years ago - 15 minutes into the first episode of the last season I stopped watching.

So do I need to go through the whole first season to get it or can I start with S2E1 or at some other point?

suck it up & do the work! imo

jk do what u want but its not like s1 is bad. there are far worse things than formulaic ffs

S1 is fun, definitely wouldn’t skip.

the s1 finale was the first big WTF moment - season is definitely worth watching just to get there

I could tell we had lingering love for Fringe when My wife and I were watching The Last of Us and when Anna Torv showed up we both yelled “Bolivia!”

buuut if you wanna cheat cannonically you do so thusly:

hazy cosmic jedi (abanana)
Posted: July 15, 2010 at 7:04:22 AM
watch these
Season 1: 1 (pilot), 4, 5, 7, end of ep 8, 10, 14, 17, 19, 20
season 2: 1, 4, maybe 7, 8, 10, maybe 14, end of 15, 16 (Peter), 17, 18, 22, 23

The pilot is considerably more dramatic than even episode 2; I think it lightens in tone quite a bit, for the better, so don't give up yet. One thing I really liked is that mythology builds on little moments scattered through S1, and not always the ones you expect, so I don't think S1 should be skipped, although it is a bit monster-of-the-week

I miss Walter and Astrid together, there were such sweeties

IIRC the third season is fantastic, and then the fourth season goes back-to-basics in a somewhat unsatisfying way. Then the fifth season, the Days of Future Past season, is pretty good again.

That Peter Weller episode though :(

We started rewatching S1 and ended up bingeing almost the whole season today

Can report that it is all still v watchable, love this show so much

Also lots of good cameos: Betty Gilpin! Ebon Moss-Bacharach! Jared Harris! etc

Finally made it to S2e10 “Jacksonville” aka LETS FUCKING GOOO

truly this show still holds up so well, i fucking love it <3

But people living andcwaljingbunder suspended place names... were there ever accidents, like.

Walking under

So we have been bingeing this like crazy and are now about 5 episodes into Season 5

watching it back to back definitely made everything make a little more sense to me this time around, I felt way less confused by the timey-wimey shenanigans of Season 4 for sure.

some stray thoughts
- the Observers kind of suck? (pre S5 Nazification, I mean). Like they're just really not good at their jobs and just absolutely fuck up entire timelines every time they try to 'fix' something.
- that being said, Michael Cerveris as September is the ONLY convincing Observer, in terms of performance. Such a soulful delivery and he has such a lovely tone to his voice. All the other actors act like dead-eyed robots.
- big Fathers/Sons thematic energy throughout this show, like when you see it all lined up the whole show is really about Walter's love for Peter
- Lincoln Lee is still lovely
- Olivia/fauxLivia/third-timeline Olivia - how I sum this up to an extent: Peter would bone her in any timeline, basically LOL

also, most importantly

While i don’t mind the story of S5 & its quite exciting in its way — it does a thing I don’t like — they AGAIN re-maternalize Olivia, like they did in S1 “oh she’s too much of a cold fish lets give her a kid etc”

Olivia becomes much more of a overwhelmed-by-feels emo sidekick in S5 in this very boys-own-dystopian-verse which is kind of a bummer

While i don’t mind the story of S5 & its quite exciting in its way — it does a thing I don’t like — they AGAIN re-maternalize Olivia, like they did in S1 “oh she’s too much of a cold fish lets give her a kid etc”

This was one of my biggest disappoints with the last season; the show basically started off as the Olivia show, and then she gets turned into Lyra in the second and third HDM books.

yeah it’s a bit disappointing

esp w the September backstory reveal it’s like, ok huh it’s just dudes & dads all the way down then ok good

Yeah Peter even gets the last shot of the show iirc. Pacey gets a proper arc with closure, Olivia gets multiple soft reboots instead.

i wanted them to do more w Olivia & the Jones/Jared Harris character! their scenes in those early seasons were so electric

also that observer kid Michael?
his facial expression looked exactly like Eminem, could not unsee it

http://scifiempire.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Michael-played-by-Roman-Longworth-Fringe-Liberty.png

https://yve.ro/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/18-lucruri-interesante-despre-Eminem.jpg

my big takeaway:

these dads just need to grieve for their dead children & stop trying to time travel everytime a kid dies.

also: is it just me or was there some kernel of possibility that David Robert Jones was Olivia’s real father? like a story thread that they may have hinted but never picked up. i was v fixated on the way he said “that’s my girl” after she completed the lightbulb test originally

maybe it’s just me

anyway we finished the series

Fringe aka Dads: A Love Story is a very good series & 100% holds up

the worst part of the whole series was Peter turning himself into an Observer but even that wasn’t terrible bc the rest of the story was good. oh and Joshua Jackson’s cry-acting is a bit too much, still bringing the old Dawson’s heat lol

Give John Noble all his flowers, what a blessing he is to the series. Denethor The GOAT.

https://media.tenor.com/UtjjTDOuP1YAAAAC/dawson%27s-creek-basketball.gif

ahaha stone cold classic
RIGHT IN THE FACE

The entire series is on sale in the Apple TV store for $30. Heck of a deal if you don't mind all-digital

Just started back in with this on Max, having stopped midway through season 2. The season 2 episode with Peter Weller as a time traveler, "White Tulip," is fucking incredible. Noble and Weller have a scene together that might be the best thing I've seen, TV or movie, all year.

i love that episode so much, still hits as beautifully as it did the first time

watched a couple of these on pluto and . . . could do with fewer close-ups of walter's face. intrigued enough that i might start from the beginning though. the torv is grebt

it's worth a watch-through imo

otm highly recommend!

IIRC some of the effects shots in the first season are properly disgusting - I remember being impressed with that even if the show doesn't quite know what it is yet. Second and third seasons are really, really good - I seem to remember it shoots itself in the foot a bit trying to work out a new status quo when Pacey disappears (did he have a movie to do?) and never really recovers, while never falling off to the extent that Battlestar Galactica did.

My family keeps pushing me to watch the newsreader show that Torv's in, anyone seen it?

Yes! I thought it was really good but i have only seen the first season

lol one of the first episodes i saw on pluto was when torv was . . . supposed to be possessed by leonard nimoy’s character? and played it like all vocal fry all the time? none of which i realized and thought was simply awful

The first episode I saw of this show was the second one in season four back when it just came out. I enjoyed it enough to go back and watch the whole thing. It made things slightly confusing until I caught up

ok i've watched the first maybe eight episodes

a) so much body horror! eyes bleeding, organs boiling, heads bursting, pregnancy explosions, crab-like heart parasite, etc. it's a lot

b) i don't require scientific verity in my sci-fi shows but this shit is ludicrous. already they have *twice* had our protagonists read the thoughts of comatose or literally dead subjects bc electricity (yet for some reason only the hot chick had to get naked and submerged in water to do it hmm)

c) also supposedly a dude subjected himself to the crab-like heart parasite and almost died JUST IN CASE our hero went to germany, sweet-talked a terrorist and relied on dead-brain reading to learn a two-word catchphrase

d) acting is v. good, although peter has had to sell some shitty dialogue. john noble is grebt, but a little walter weirdness goes a long way, and i don't really need so many closeups of his face

e) i'm okay with the endless closeups of everyone else's face (although i do wonder what peter's grooming regime is to keep that precise pseudo-beard going eternally)

f) idk anything about tv production, but this seems expensive? lotta external shots, people running through cars, swat teams attacking buildings based on any of our protagonists' random whims

g) love how, based on a literal psycho's demand, they'll send critically injured patients or corpses to walter's lab with no supervision

h) lance reddick had hella presence

i) tbh i probably wouldn't be continuing with it if olivia/anna torv weren't so riveting (yes she's lovely, but honestly mostly acting-wise)

I think the Anna Torv casting is actually really crucial because she just grounds the show so well, and provides a good balance with whatever wonderful eccentricity Walter’s doing, or whatever emo-yearning Peter’s doing. I love Joshua Jackson but it’s very “The WB channel” school of acting. Torv is the secret third thing. she can think in closeup and be believable, or bring needed silence. She’s a wonderful actor.

otm

her smiles can mean almost anything!

Fringe is also a show that gets better in Seasons 2 and 3, when they figure out what the show is about.