TV show review: Fringe

Fringe - A Review

I want to get the easy stuff out of the way first, so I'll just say this: I love this show. It's got good writing, good plotting (a rare treat) and good acting. And, it's a sci-fi/mystery show. In short, everything I like in television wrapped up in one show. On the other hand, it's hard to review a TV show -- especially a new one, because it's hard to tell where it's going, and if it's going to stay at the quality level it was at when I reviewed it. Fringe hasn't even finished its first season yet. But I think I've seen enough to spread my opinion all over the interweb, where no one will care.

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Fringe really isn't a very descriptive title for a show, so you may be wondering what kind of show it actually is. For example, it's not a show about decorative borders, or diffusing light. It's actually a paranormal/sci-fi show. You know, one of the ones that features explosions and blood (or explosions of blood) quite frequently. Pretty basic stuff for modern TV. So, what's up with the title? In this case, fringe refers to fringe science, which, according to the show's opening sequence, is stuff like teleportation, dark matter, and reading minds. Basically, it's all the freaky stuff that no one understands or even thinks is possible. And it happens every show! Now, this isn't as inexplicable as it first seems. The show also has a very Lost-like feel, in that there's a lot of mysterious things going on in the background that the show wants you to believe that they'll solve one day. One of these is the Pattern, which is the way the show explains the fact that crazy stuff happens all the time. Apparently, someone (we know not who) is orchestrating these things for some purpose (we know not what). Oooh. Mystery. I like it. Frankly, even given all these things, the show would remain average at best were it not for the great characters that inhabit it. Since FBI agents are all, apparently, chosen mostly for their unnerving ability to not have a personality, they had to throw in a few other, more interesting, characters to flesh it out. Enter the mad scientist (played by John Noble, who was Denethor from LoTR) and his grumpily sarcastic son (played by someone else). As far as I'm concerned, their back-and-forth banter is lot of what makes this show worth watching. Crazy+sarcasm=win.

Like I said earlier, I love this show, and the direction it looks like they're taking it, which is not towards the incomprehensible complexity of Lost, but rather in a more Stargate-like direction, where there are long story arcs and lots of continuity between shows, but you don't have to have seen every show at least twice to 'get' the next one. In short, so far it's an epic win, 5 stars. Let's hope it stays that way.