Premiere Watch '08: Fringe

Fringe: Pilot


J.J. Abrams*, I'm ready for a new Alias. Lay it on me!

And, wow, Fringe presented the kind of pilot that only J.J. can deliver. Brilliant. A truly skillful combination of drama, action, mythology, humor, and evocative cinematography.

The foundation of the show is very Alias: a female agent in a powerful government agency unwittingly unlocks and gets sucked into a secret world a la Alice falling down the rabbit hole. What sets Fringe apart is the initial introduction of the "fringe science" concept, which opens a whole new and humongous can of worms: flesh melting chemicals, telepathic communications, earthquakes on cue, children who don't age, etc. A cornucopia of strange occurrences that are out of the reach of conventional scientific thought. Also known as a world that J.J. Abrams should have a lot of fun playing around in this season.

Alias and Lost certainly delved into the fringe (prophecies, moving islands, time jumping, etc.), but those shows introduced the stranger elements more gradually. Fringe unabashedly presented its sci fi elements right from the get go, which I appreciate. It's just that four years from now, if I'm going to be debating how islands move when you spin a wheel, how a constant works, if polars bears can travel through portals, how injecting the Passenger with green goo causes her to write secret info, why Irina's name is on the Rambaldi artifact, how Sydney fulfilled Rambaldi's prophecy, etc., etc., etc., then I'd like to know that now.

J.J. has promised that this show won't get bogged down in long-term mythologies, but with evil corporations and secret government groups and mind-bending realities, the traps have been set. We'll have to wait and see how it all goes down. Personally, I look forward to finding out.

Other thoughts:

• The opening scene was very reminiscent of Lost. I wonder if there were as many convicts and con artists on that flight as there were on Oceanic 815.
• Eew, at least no one barfed up goo on Oceanic 815. Eeeeeeeeew, or melted! Yuckkkkk.
• The opening credits montage is cool. The music is kind of A Beautiful Mind-esque.
• As soon as John told Olivia he loved her, I knew he was going to end up dead. This isn't the first J.J. Abrams pilot I've ever seen...
• Wow, the 3-D graphic that floats in the middle of the shot with the name of the location is super cool! An innovative update on Alias' black screen with flashing white letters.
• Whoa, the plane can land itself on autopilot. That's cool.
• Abaddon! He seems angrier on this show than on Lost. Less creepy though.
• The background music is very Lost--I kept expecting to see someone opening a hatch or something.
• After Olivia told John that she loved him, it was cemented that he was going to get killed, and two minutes later, he blows up. Yep. J.J., I know your tricks... Oh no, wait, he's just been exposed to some horrific chemicals and put into a drug-induced coma. Eeeesh. It's beginning to look like Sydney's Danny got off easy...
• Sorry, I'm not sure I'm going to buy Pacey as a guy with an IQ 50 points north of genius...
• Why do people keep calling this poor lady "honey" and "sweetheart"? It's offensive.
• Dr. Bishop: "I thought you'd be fatter."
  Peter/Pacey: "You thought I would be fatter? Excellent first words. Perfect."
• So the U.S. government and John's family don't mind that some institutionalized guy came in and took a slice out of him?
• In the face of this kind of horrific terrorism, why isn't everyone in the government running around like Olivia, panicked and following weird leads? Everyone else seemed awfully calm considering the 200 dead people on the plane.
• So why did Pacey go a bit crazy a couple of years ago?
• Peter/Pacey: "Right, because after 6 hours, that's when they're really dead."
• If I had a dollar for every time a female character on a J.J. Abrams show was put in a big tank of liquid with electrodes stuck on her head...
• Pacey: "Yeah, because bootlegging smack in the basement is just the picture of normalcy."
• How does she ask specific questions when her brain is hooked up to her boyfriend's brain if her consciousness is being ripped open by the drugs? I feel like she should have been given more instructions.
• I hope they don't need to get a conviction in a court of law for this chemical guy. "I saw him in a drug-induced state while my consciousness was connected to my solidified boyfriend's" is not going to hold up in court.
• Security's a little lax in the FBI apparently... Peter/Pacey can just wander into the room where the guy accused with killing 200 people is sitting? And beat him up?
• Ha ha, Peter/Pacey threatening the chemical guy was awesome. "No, you can't do this."
• Yea, a blood transfusion! Those are always fun! (See Sark in Alias' 1x21).
• Oh no!!! Olivia saved her boyfriend only to find out that he was a bad guy working with the chemical guy! I didn't see this one coming... Nicely played, J.J. I was seeing his character as a purely Danny Hecht figure, but he's actually kind of a mix between Danny and the Iceman. Very interesting.
• Nice chase scene.
• John's last words: "Ask yourself why Broyles sent you to the storage facility"? Dude, when you're dying, just spit out the important stuff--don't ask critical thinking questions; there's no time! (Honestly, I was a little confused as to why she was sent to the storage facility too, but I thought that was because I wasn't paying enough attention.)
• Well, I did end up being kind of right about John, because he's dead now...
• After John died, I totally expected as scene where Olivia storms into Broyles' office and demands to join his unit in the vein of red-haired Sydney barging into Sloane's office with the circumference, but it never happened. Instead she went to talk to Peter/Pacey to get him on board. Not that I blame her for going to see him; he is easy on the eyes, and she'd had a rough day.
• The show is certainly going to set up a will they/won't they situation with Olivia and Peter. I think it will be interesting to see how well that works. On Alias, it worked very well with Sydney and Vaughn (until the ill-advised post-Super Bowl episode ruined it) because they were agent and handler and thus unequivocally not allowed to get involved with each other. Olivia and Peter would seem to have fewer obstacles: he's not officially in the FBI, so there are no anti-fraternization rules.
• Oh no, another evil corporation, Massive Dynamic. How Darma Initiative/Hanso Foundation.
• "How long has he been dead?" "Five hours." "Question him." Awesome.

On a scale where Alias' flawless, world-rocking pilot episode scores a 10, I think Fringe falls only a little bit behind. In fact, it probably have scored higher if I'd never seen the Alias pilot and this was my first sojourn into the J.J. world, which seems so fresh and exciting the first time you jump in.

Premiere Rating: 9.0/10

*When I refer to J.J. Abrams, I mean him and the entire team of talented people who work with him.

(photos: fox.com/fringe)