Fringe – Season 1

I saw the pilot quite a while before the show went on air. I didn’t really like it. Dunno why. I didn’t start watching again until somewhere around midway through the second season which just wrapped up recently, when I suppose I was bored or something. As it happens, that episode would turn out to be one of the highlights of the season, in which a whole bunch of crazy whatsit happens. Kinda made me wish I’d been keeping up with the show. So, a few episodes later, I made myself buy the first season on Blu-Ray, and got watching. It’s been a good ride.

Fringe is very similar in premise to the much-loved X-Files of yore. However, it has much higher production values, and according to the bits of X-Files that I’ve seen, it seems to have a bit more of story-arc setup although it definitely has monster-of-the-week thing going on. Also Anna Torv is way hotter than Gillian Anderson ever was. Another difference, as far as I can see, is that Fringe is much more science-based than its predecessor, which often got into very mystical thingamajiggers. Still, the “science” is only just based in reality and relies on pretty nutso extrapolation to make it entertaining; and entertaining it often is.

The cast is quality. Anna Torv is of course the resident hottie FBI agent, and does a great job of communicating her emotions despite her somewhat immovable face. Walter Bishop (John Noble) is an old slightly bonkers mad scientist turned good guy with a mission to right the seemingly endless wrongs he’s committed in his forgotten past, and his son Peter (Joshua Jackson) is his reluctant caretaker and generally badass smart dude. His character as a whole is a bit blander than the rest of them though, I think. In a slightly lesser role we have an alumnus of The Wire, which is almost always a good sign; Lance Reddick plays a prominent Homeland Security agent who tells the main group what to do in his wonderfully commanding voice. There’s also a cow.

This first season’s main story arc has been quite slow and hasn’t really gotten very far. The episodes that I’ve seen from the second season seem to suggest that it keeps going at about the same pace. Still, it’s an interesting progression that could eventually become really frakking cool. It’s a bit of shame that I’ll have to wait several months to see more of it, but I’m committed to buying Season 2 when it’s available.