Fringe - Season 1

The premise of another crazy sci-fi show from the creator of Lost got me excited for Fringe, though it didn't turn out as good as I expected. Still, it was mostly enjoyable from week to week, and improved noticeably in multiple ways as it got closer to the conclusion of its first season. We already know a second is on the way so apparently it was successful enough, and I hope it continues to grow into something really interesting as it goes on. The main reason to watch it at first was just to hear the voices of John Noble from the third The Lord of the Rings movie and Lance Reddick from The Wire every week, who I could listen to talk for hours, but you can't blame the show for not having intriguing stories, just maybe not exploring those concepts to their full potential.

Most episodes follow the same basic formula. There's the cold open that shows the mystery of the week unfolding, which usually has an interesting hook and is often simply the best made scene in the show, then special agent Olivia Dunham and her ragtag team bounce back and forth between decent detective work and decent supernatural medical stuff for a while until they catch the bad guy in time for a few minutes of character development and hints at a continuous plot. Seemingly unrelated cases do sort of come together into one large conspiracy by the end, and there's a solid conclusion to some dangling plot threads along with a couple twists and revelations in the last episode.

I think the problem with the show is that it just doesn't go far enough with its big ideas. JJ Abrams gets credit for making his crazy nerdy ideas more mainstream-friendly than some other creators of televised speculative fiction, but they lose something in that translation. The show has a pretty bad habit of explaining anything close to a complex idea in an overly simple way that treats the audience like a bunch of morons, and if that's what it takes to keep most people watching, then that's a shame. I guess it's nice not having to worry about making it to another year, but the bigger fan base ends up also being less passionate. Anyway, Fringe is mostly worth checking out.