I’m on the Fringe with Fringe

FOX

Something’s just not right with J.J. Abrams’ latest baby. I’ve been watching Fringe for three weeks now, and something about the show just isn’t adding up to me. Unlike his more compelling shows, like Lost and Alias, Fringe just sits there like a lox and doesn’t offer any excitement whatsover. It’s to the point that I’m about to dump the show and watch The Mentalist instead.

And I think I’ve touched on the problem with the show: it’s mystery-of-the-week theme. Abrams and company wanted to have these mysteries in place so that viewers could jump into and out of the show and enjoy it without needing to know anything about The Pattern or any aspects of the show’s underlying mythology. But what we’re getting are bad Murder, She Wrote mysteries laid on top of tired corporate-government consipiracy theories that people were sick of before the first X-Files movie.

It feels like too many of the scientific mysteries can be cracked via one of two paths: a) a professor or scientist or other expert who just happens to teach/study/babble to themselves somewhere in the greater Boston area, and b) an experiment that crazy Dr. Bishop worked on at one time or another during his saner days. Sure, Bishop’s the key to cracking The Pattern because these experiments lo those many years ago are have what led to the usage of these unique weapons today. But, for Christ’s sake, I barely remember what I had for breakfast; how can this nutball remember the smallest pieces of experiments he did a quarter-century ago?

And does everything have to be tied back to Massive Dynamic? I know that they are they key to the Pattern conspiracy, but it would be nice if they went away from them for a case or two at a time, just to give everyone a break from Nina Sharp and her inherent creepiness.

No, the blanks on Fringe are filled in too quickly and too conveniently for my tastes, leaving the show flat and without the tension that it needs to succeed.

The producers have said that the investigation of The Pattern will take Agent Dunham and company out of the shadow of Fenway Park soon. But what they haven’t mentioned is whether they’re going to run across a mystery that stumps even Dr. Bishop for an episode or two. That would make for a tense, fun show, wouldn’t it?

Clacked by Joel Keller
on Sep 24, 2008 @ 17:03 EST5EDT