Weeksy’s Review : Fringe 101

“Fringe”
Written by J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman
Directed by Alex Graves

On-board Flight 627 from Hamburg to Boston, one of the passengers isn’t feeling too well. After taking a shot from his Insulin injector, not only is he still not feeling well, but the rest of the plane’s passengers are beginning to feel a bit ill as well – by ill I mean basically melting in their seats.

When the plane lands at Logan Airport (on Auto-Pilot…. I have no idea if that’s technically ridiculous or not – it’s explained away very briefly that Boston Airport has the only system in the US that allows for a Passenger plane to land on Auto-Pilot), a taskforce of FBI Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) & fellow Special Agent John Scott (Mark Valley) go onboard to begin their looky-loo into what exactly has gone wrong.

When the investigation leads to Agent Scott being hospitalized and placed in an induced coma (slowly suffering the same fate as the passengers), Olivia must enlist the help of the brilliant, but institutionalized, Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble), and his estranged son Peter (Joshua Jackson). Together, they must work fast to find a cure for John’s illness, and also to find the man responsible for unleashing the virus in the first place.

OK – so when it comes to “Fringe” the incredible hype that has built very quickly has had two regular comments posted across the net – “Best pilot since ‘Lost’”, or “Best pilot since ‘Heroes’”. The truth is that “Fringe” is neither – the truth is, well in the words of another show – The truth is out there, and that’s exactly what “Fringe” is – an updated “X-Files”, and as such, it’s pretty much on par with an updated version of that. Towards the end of the pilot, task force leader Phillip Broyles (Lance Reddick, formerly of “The Wire”) informs Olivia of an increasing series of unexplainable events known in inner circles as “The Pattern”, and implores her to join his team to begin proper investigations. It just so happens that when you have a recently freed wacky Doctor & his genius IQ son at your side, such investigations might be expected as the show continues.

The good news (at least for me) is that I loved “The X-Files”, and as such, the opener of “Fringe” was right up my alley, and filled with enough interesting twists & turns to make it a definite “one to watch” going forward – it’s great to see Joshua Jackson back on screen in a new (bound to be a hit) show, and with the team of J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman seemingly becoming the new saviors of “Quality” network television – there’s no doubt that “Fringe” is going to become Fox’s next big thing when it launches this September.