Fringe - Season 3

I realized during this season that Fringe is actually the best drama currently on a network, at least as far as ones I watch. It's actually gotten to a point where it might be the only one I watch at all when this Fall comes around, unless something new looks enticing. How pathetic is that? Not to be insulting towards Fringe, but it's just not consistently good enough to be the best hour-long show airing on one of the five most watched channels. Still, season three was their best job yet, and while it got into some really oddball material as it wore on, is still featured a compelling central story and some of the best acting by a whole cast on TV. And though I doubt the show will make it past its fourth season, I'm definitely going to be sticking with it until it does end up getting axed in favor of something starring a sassy doctor or whatever.

When the show came back last year, it began with what was probably the best single stretch of episodes it has had yet, bouncing back and forth between the two universes at the core of its plot, exploring regular Fringe-style mysteries with the bonus of fleshing out an interesting alternate view of how the world could be and an exciting running story featuring a couple of mismatched Olivias. After that resolved the show slowed down a bit, and had a couple of clunkers here and there, but also some really outstanding stuff as well. You can make a comparison between Fringe and another show produced by JJ Abrams, Lost, when you look at what it does well and what it sometimes doesn't. I really liked the weird sci-fi stuff on Lost, but a true resolution of a lot of it was ignored in favor of really wrapping up the characters well, and Fringe also succeeds when it puts the burden of its stories on the strong central figures at its core. Olivia, Peter, and especially Walter are all heavily damaged people with unbreakable links between them, and when that's the focus, it's often a much better series than when it's just some weird pseudo-science thing going on.

Even worse is when the show goes quasi-mystical on top of that, as it did with a somewhat misguided arc near the season's end, and in a few places they may have taken it too far. But I guess when a show gets bumped to a bad time slot and its ratings continue to dwindle - the writers forget about pleasing everyone and just try anything that comes to mind that seems like it could be cool. Not everything is, but enough works out that the experimentation is always interesting. It hasn't yet produced the kind of fevered genius that say, Dollhouse's imminent cancellation brought about, but it's clear from the season finale that they're not afraid to try things. In some ways it was a bad episode, using a cop-out to explain a season-long riddle and resorting to a couple tired pulp sci-fi cliches. But it also showed what works about the show on a very basic level, reestablished their skill at creating whole new settings out of nothing, had some more great character work, and had a great final moment that hints at a potentially mind-bending season four. I've always wished that Fringe could have more fun with itself, and they definitely showed signs of that here. If they combine that with a less wishy-washy stance on science versus fantasy and more consistent writing, it could really earn that best network drama title.

Also, here are my recaps for the episodes when I was filling in this season:
Os
Stowaway
Bloodline

Fringe - Season 2

Fringe's first season got better as it went on, and luckily the second was more consistently like the end than the beginning. There's still a mix of random monster-of-the-week episodes along with the more plot-relevant ones, but they tend to do a better job of tying the former kind in with the overall story, and it's a bit more balanced. Fringe is still fun when it's just creating a mini-mystery with an unusual sci-fi twist, I just happen to think most of the important episodes are better. The continue to develop the alternate universe and establish it as a source of trouble, and the show is at its most fascinating when it's the focus.

What's interesting to me is how they treat some often quite-pulpy science fiction ideas with all the seriousness of a police procedural. I'm sure it's something that's been done before with shows I haven't seen, but it's that mix of influences that gives it a unique feel among what I watch. It doesn't matter if an episode is about people going murderously insane because someone's been removing pieces of their brain it works because it gets treated as seriously as any regular crime. There was a couple weird things though. Somehow an episode from the first season got lost in the shuffle and wasn't aired until the middle of the second, but it was totally out of place because a dead character just showed back up out of nowhere. At that point, it's better to avoid confusing the audience and just stick it on a DVD. And with all they're doing with Walter, it's taking away from the effectiveness of still portraying him as a wacky mad scientist. If you're going to turn him into a real tragic figure with a painful past, you're not going to get as many laughs having him do things like eat Twizzlers while performing an autopsy. You can't have it both ways.

Still though, most of that stuff was really great. They show how Walter's actions led to troubles with the other universe, and in a way he's kind of responsible for everything that happens in the show. He performed the experiments with strange drugs on Olivia and the other kids, he was the first to cross between worlds and cause the problems that make them want to come over here. A lot of it is hard to blame on him, but the whole show is sort of about him trying to atone for his past transgressions. He's by far the most interesting figure in the series, which is a good because a show that relied on Olivia all the time just wouldn't be very good. I'm not going to blame Anna Torv because she was a lot more fun as her alternate self, but compared to the other main characters she's pretty boring. The finale was interesting if not able to fully capitalize on what they built up, and leaves a few cliffhangers that should be a lot of fun to watch play out in the Fall.

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.