"Fringe" - September 9, 2008 episode - series premiere

I'd seen the billboard ads for "Fringe", and they'd looked interesting, so even though I really didn't know anything about the show and hadn't seen any footage of it, I figured I'd give it a shot. I like JJ Abrams, though I don't think he's the Golden Boy that many others seem to.

Normally, I'd do a synopsis of the show before launching into my comments. In this case, I'm going to forego that because I just didn't care enough, even though I did take notes.

By about half-way through the show, I was already bored and irritated with it. The paranormal stuff isn't my usual cup of tea, so that's probably why I was bored. Maybe the show would have been more interesting to fans of "The X-Files", which I am not. I've never seen an entire episode, I don't think I've even seen an entire scene, maybe just a snippet here and there. This show reminded me of what "The X-Files" sounded like, so since the previous show didn't interest me, it's probably not surprising that this one didn't either. On a side note, there were so many people who were absolutely floored and mystified that I didn't watch "The X-Files". For some reason, a lot of people just assumed that I would because I like science fiction. Well, I guess I don't really consider that science fiction, or at least, it's not a branch of science fiction that interests me.

I was a bit surprised at the level of gore in the beginning of the show, with the melting people - the co-pilot's plight almost reminded me of the "tear your face off in the bathroom" scene in "Poltergeist". I didn't think they could be that graphic on television during the 8pm hour.

When they showed the plane sitting on the tarmac, I wondered how it would have landed, so it was nice that they had the explanation about the auto pilot. I wonder if there really is such a system like that somewhere.

I thought the synapses tap idea was interesting, though I have no idea whether or not that would be actually possible. When John Scott killed the identical twin brother near the end, my first thought was that they had 6 hours to tap into the guy to find out who killed him. Well, that wasn't so much necessary, but the 6-hour deadline did come up at the end when they had an hour left to tap into Scott.

Part of my irritation came from how much I liked the boss guy, who was just so incredibly mean and condescending and demeaning to Agent Olivia Dunham. Oh, ok, we find out he's still pissed off about something she did. Yeah, the little matter of one of his buddies who had some kind of "momentary error in judgement" or something like that. So what if that little mistake destroyed the lives of three women? Hey, but he's got years of service behind him! That should have earned him *some* kind of free pass. Ummm, yeah, not so much.

When they got to the end of the show, and they showed the commercial for the fake corporation started by William Bell, the husband instantly shouted "the Dharma Initiative".

I thought the music was seriously overdone and heavy-handed. OK, in case you couldn't figure out the dramatic effect of a particular item, and the camera close-up wasn't a big enough hint for you, let's put some DRAMATIC MUSIC HERE to let you know. Yeah, ok.

Most of what irritated me were what I generally refer to as "look at me, I'm a director" moves. I like good, innovative camera work - as long as it adds to the story and feel of the show/movie and isn't just a show-off move. The first one was the camera zoom into the FBI lab that oh-so-cutely goes through an "o" in the lettering on the glass door. Ok, fine, I'll let that one go. And then, while we're making Dunham ready for her little dip in the psychedelic pool, let's just put the camera on a dolly and spin it around and around. Umm, ok, is that to simulate how she's going to be feeling? But for me, the absolute worst, absolute stupidest, piss-me-off move involved the location lettering. Instead of just having a blurb on screen to tell us where some particular thing is happening like normal people do, they had these big blocky letters. OK, fine, be artistic, whatever. But then, when they were in Baghdad, after you saw the letters from the sky, they cut to a shot from the ground, and hey, there's the outline of the letters still. Really? Seriously. Those letters are actually there in real life so that people looking up into the sky have part of their vision blocked because of the frickin' floating letters? Whiskey tango foxtrot.

And speaking of bad tech moves, did the ADR folks take a vacation day and random temps were working on a scene instead? After Scott dies and Dunham is being driven in the car by another FBI dude, the FBI dude is talking. I knew it sounded wrong, but it took a while for me to figure out why it was wrong. His voice was so obviously dubbed in because the ambient sound that went with the voice was like he was in a studio rather than in the car with her. My confusion came because I thought I was hearing a voice-over, which is exactly what it sounded like, and yet, the guy on screen driving seemed to be mouthing the exact same thing that the voice-over was saying. Then, I thought, ok, maybe the car is just cavernous and echoey. But then Dunham talked, and yep, she sure sounded like she was actually in the car, so what the hell was wrong with the guy's dialogue?

There were a few moments when I laughed, and there were bits here and there that I liked, but mostly, I just decided to tough out seeing the entire first episode, and now that I have, I'm done.

Before Scott died, he told Dunham to think about why the boss guy sent her to the storage shed. Hmmm, ok, interesting. I expect at some point, they'll answer that question. But I won't be around to find out the answer. Maybe the smoke monster made him do it.