Fringe: My half-season recap.

With Fringe (Fox Tuesdays), creator J.J. Abrams set out to answer one question: Is it possible to create a show that is more annoying than LOST? After giving Abrams the benefit of the doubt for 8 long episodes, I think that the answer is a resounding yes!

For those of you who don’t follow the series, this hour-long sci-fi drama follows the investigation of unexplained phenomena by a female FBI agent (Anna Torv, who’s biggest previous role involved voicing a character in a video game), a former scientist (John Noble) who went mad and was placed in an asylum, and his equally brilliant but cynical son (played by heartthrob Joshua Jackson). Picture a less credible version of the X-Files and you will have a good idea of what the show is all about. Up to this point, each episode has followed the same basic pattern:

A strange and disastrous event occurs.
Agent Dunham is informed of the event. (She usually gets emotionally involved!)
Dr. Bishop remembers something about his past research that can solve the case while arguing with his son. (This frequently leads to them realizing how alike they are, and thus, strengthening their tarnished relationship.)
A totally unbelievable experiment is conducted (i.e. talking to a dead person) in order to get the missing clues.
The perpetrator is arrested but nothing is explained.
The show finishes with an unexplained twist…fade to credits.

The general goal of each episode, much like LOST, is to answer just enough questions to string the viewer along week after week, while at the same time leaving the big questions unanswered and creating tons of new ones.

This technique worked wonders for the X-Files for many seasons and works to some extent for LOST. However, in my opinion it doesn’t work in the case of Fringe because Fringe lacks what both of the other shows excelled in: Having characters that the viewer actually cares about! Whereas we ached to see Mulder’s beliefs be confirmed or to see what would become of the Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle, Anna Torv’s lifeless portrayal of Agent Olivia Dunham leads us to not care whether she lives through each episode. X-Files was nothing without David Duchovny. LOST would be nothing without Matthew Fox. However, in watching Fringe you get the sense that if the whole cast was mysteriously replaced one episode, you would barely notice, and the show might be better off because of it. In my opinion, the key to a sci-fi/mystery driven drama series is creating characters we want to get to know and either love or hate, characters we feel strongly about, and scripting out sub-plots (romance, vengeance, personal quest) that will immerse the viewer in the lives of those characters so that we can forget the fact that we will never know the mystery behind a disappearing deserted island or little green men. It is because of this lack of character development and intriguing side stories that Fringe is, to quote a popular internet expression, the epic fail.

In closing, I will admit that it took me a season to really fall in love with the X-Files and I am still not convinced by LOST. I hope that Fringe will prove me wrong and that by the end of this season I will feel attachment with the cast, or at least feel more deeply immersed in the story. I don’t expect to see the next Duchovny who is, in my opinion, one of the greatest TV actors of all time. But I would at least like to see Torv show the least bit of emotion and see the relationship between Walter (Noble) and Peter (Jackson, the most talented actor on the show) evolve and take more prominence. Please Charlie Conway, don’t let me down.