Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Improving Nicely - Fringe

When this first debuted several weeks ago, fast-tracked to Australian viewers no less, I was pretty skeptical - JJ Abrams has (in spite of his track record) created exactly one series I like which is Lost, and I could see this show becoming like Alias.

The first episode had it's moments most of them extremely gross with some sort of horrific virus infecting passengers on a plane and veered into total weirdness with the shock ending of the dead FBI agent (and traitor) being revived

Only the presence of Joshua Jackson somehow managed to keep the whole thing from going off the rails.

I took a break and then came back for tonight's ep 1.04 "The Arrival" the whole story revolved around a mysteries cylinder that burst from under the ground and was set to return to the earth in 48 hours, that's if some dude wielding a very mean looking gun doesn't get to it first.

In the midst off all this is a bald guy with no eyebrows who keeps showing up at these weird events and Peter (Jackson) wanting out and away from his father.

Let me not spoil too much for the VCR/DVR crowd by just saying that even though all the elements are strange it all held my interest for the hour and held together really well, the scenes between Jackson and Noble are very well done and one particularly creepy scene involving mind reading make this one worth your while to watch.

This final scene where we get a bit of backstory on this father/son science team is intriguing and marks a spot on a much larger canvas without us having to see the big picture - much like (the oft cited) X Files in it's best moments.

If you're like me and opted out after the grossness and unevenness of the pilot then now is the time to opt back in, Fringe is starting to get good!

No comments: