JJ Abrams, the creative TV wunderkind behind the hits Alias,
LOST and the recent Star Trek movie reboot, has hit the ball out of the park
once again with Fringe, his new police procedural with an SF/horror twist.
Actress Anna Torv stars as FBI agent Olivia Dunham, who--in the series’ pilot--finds
herself working a very strange case with Agent John Scott (Mark Valley, who
would marry Torv in real life), her partner and lover. The passengers and crew
on board an airliner have all been mysteriously exposed to an agent which has
melted the skin right off of their bodies. During their investigation, John is
exposed to the same agent, thanks to an explosion at a storage facility in a
suspect’s home made lab. The after effect leaves John’s skin translucent, and
his life hanging in the balance. Seeking out an expert in the medical/science
field, Olivia comes across Walter Bishop (John Noble), a genius who worked on
various fringe experiments back in the 1970s.
But Walter Bishop is locked away in a mental institution, and Olivia can’t speak
to him without the consent of a relative--so she tracks down Bishop’s grown son
Peter, a con man who’s busy looking for a gig in Baghdad, Iraq. With Walter now
freed--under Peter’s reluctant supervision--and supplied with his old lab,
Olivia then tries everything she can to save John’s life, only to discover that
she’s uncovered just the tip of the iceberg in a vast plot known as The Pattern,
which may involve the multi-billion dollar high tech corporation Massive Dynamic
that’s owned and run by the reclusive William Bell, a man who was once Walter’s
lab partner back in the 1970s. Fringe recalls the best aspects of the X-Files as
Olivia teams up with the Bishops to investigate creepy and spooky
occurrences--all with the SF twist of high tech gone amok.
It’s Australian actor John Noble’s superb performance as the charming and very off kilter Walter
Bishop that makes Fringe really worth watching. Freshly released from a 17 year
stint in a mental institution, Walter is a gentle, eccentric nut job with a love
for food--he’s always asking for Peter to get him specific things, like cotton
candy--and an absent-minded manner who keeps forgetting the name of his hapless
assistant Astrid (endearingly played with eager spunk by Jasika Nicole). Joshua
Jackson, better known to some from his stint on Dawson’s Creek, is very good here as
Peter, the wise-cracking younger Bishop who helpfully explains some of Walter’s
more freaky scientific concepts for Olivia (as well as the audience). And
newcomer Anna Torv (who also hails from Australia) does a great job at making
her Olivia a very engaging heroine.
JJ Abrams, no stranger to strong female characters, makes the Bishop boys stay
at home and offer scientific back up to Olivia, the rough and tumble FBI field
agent who hits the streets (sometimes literally) while she dodges bullets, death
rays, and whatever bizarre weapons the other side throws at her. After a steady
build up in the first half, which contained mainly stand alone adventures,
Abrams and crew finally get the mythology ball rolling first with
Bound, along with Bad Dreams,
a pair of superb episodes that drop some ominous hints about what’s coming down the pike. Fringe has some
crackling good writing, which easily elevates it above the countless X-Files
wannabes over the years, making it the first true successor to that classic
series. The fantastic regular cast, which also includes Lance Reddick (The Wire),
Kirk Acevedo (A Band Of Brothers) and Blair Brown, also help to make this series
extremely watchable.
I reviewed the well-packaged DVD set of this series, which contains all twenty episodes in an
easy to handle slipcase. There are commentaries and deleted scenes on selected
episodes, and just about every episode has a short feature that discusses its
making. But the real joy in owning this set is the collection of twenty episodes
themselves, which starts out as a strange police procedural that becomes even
more stranger as it goes on. Inspired by the science-gone-amok films of David
Cronenberg, along with the genre-bending aspects of Altered States, Fringe
transforms itself into a thoroughly gripping, intense and very well-thought out
science fiction drama that’s become a must-see. If only all SF/horror TV shows treated
their audience with the same level of intelliengence and sophistication
as Fringe.
--SF
Main Review Page | TV Reviews |Fringe: The Complete First Season
