Geekshow

TV Review: Fringe

“How come when nobody knows and it doesn’t make sense, they come to us?”

I have to admit, Fringe is the first J.J. Abrams series I have watched. As many of you may know by now, I’ve never watched Lost, and while Alias did seem like a show I’d like at the time, I never got around to catching up on it.

That’s not to say that I wasn’t a little nervous jumping into one of Abrams’ series. I know people who watch Lost and are simultaneously entranced and frustrated by it. But I’d read Fringe would be different: the viewer would not have to follow it religiously to be able to stay involved with the story. And while I’ve no doubt that is the case with Fringe compared to Lost, I see a show that can be watched carefully to truly enjoy its nuances and overall arc.

If you haven’t watched it, Fringe is the story of a division of Homeland Security that focuses on cases that revolve around the areas of “fringe” science: teleportation, regeneration, suspended animation, etc. The division is aware of an international “Pattern” that seems to be in effect, making the world at large someone’s lab.  There is also a morally ambiguous corporation, Massive Dynamic, which tends to be connected to each case, and the “Pattern.”

The story itself revolves around an agent of this division, Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv). This character by far has been the most controversial of the show. Very cold and apathetic from the beginning, Agent Dunham has been a hard character to root for. Over the season she has slowly melted and become much more personable and at times, even jovial. She’s finally a character the viewer can like.

There could be two reasons for this. Either originally the writers tried to write her as a tough woman and missed the mark by a country mile, or, as I hope the case is, to show character growth. In the first episode, Olivia goes from euphoric love, to seeing the man she is getting engaged to (her partner) nearly blown apart, to later discovering this same man may be a traitor not only to her, but his country as well. That sure is a lot for one character to go through in the matter of one episode. We learn she can be single-mindedly determined, but this determination ends up shutting her down.

As the series progresses, we see pieces of the old Olivia shine through. However, it is not until the introduction of her sister and niece that she finally comes out of her shell. At this time, also, she is finally able to let go of her former lover and partner and gain some closure to that part of her life.

So was that supposed to be the character arc all along, or did the show runner hear the complaints of fans who had trouble getting behind his main character?  Maybe a little of both – we’ll probably never know. Regardless, she’s now a character the viewer can get behind and actually like.

You can’t talk about Fringe without discussing the Bishops. Walter Bishop (John Noble) is the brilliant scientist whose original work seems to be the origin of many of the “Pattern’s” experiments, and who has been locked away in a mental institution after a lab accident killed his assistant. Walter is a big focus for the show, not only because of his inane ramblings which tend to mean more than they seem (or nothing at all), but because his past is still so mysterious, the viewer is unsure of how it all relates back to him. He is undoubtedly, however, the comic relief of the series.

His son is Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson), who is needed to get his father out of the institution to help Olivia in the premiere episode. Peter’s past seems to be a legally ambiguous one. He has various shady contacts that he uses throughout the series to help the increasingly strange and unique cases faced by the Fringe Division.

Fringe is a unique series in that you get out of it however much you put in. If you just occasionally watch, you get a good creepy show in the vein of X-Files stand-alone episodes. If you watch each week casually, you get a pretty decent story with some good twists and turns that make continued watching enjoyable. Or, you can pick apart each episode for hidden clues, play the ARG, and follow the “Where’s Waldo” version of the show by watching for The Observer, a pale man in black fedora and trench that appears in every episode. For that, I give Abrams credit for making a show so user-friendly.

Personally, I fall into the middle viewer category. I watch weekly to follow the overall arc, but that’s about it. And the beauty of it? I don’t feel I’m missing anything by not following the ARG or watching for clues (though I do admit it’s fun to watch for The Observer!). I feel like this show is kind of like those Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books from my childhood – you pick your favorite way to watch the show and follow along.