Thanks to last year's Writers Strike, television as I knew it decided to curl up and die, leaving me with an ever-growing list of reality/game shows. Hole In The Wall, for example - if that's not a sign of the End Times, I'm not sure what is. Frankly, I blame the Hadron Collider for this. For one, it's very easy to see that whatever it's going to do once it really gets going, it's going to affect the past, and that's going to result in all this garbage on my TV. Secondly, it's becoming increasingly easier to blame just about anything on the Hadron Collider. For example, it will be magnetic fields from the Collider that causes Google Chrome to become self-aware, leading to our demise at the hands of the machines. See? It's not just easy - it's fun. We need something like the Hadron Collider, and I don't mean for scientific discovery. We need it as something to pin our fears on, to be the focus for a time when America, and likely the world, is feeling the squeeze of terrorism, global economics, and Dane Cook's movie career. Zing. But I do think that's true, that the Collider is a great way to vent frustration and concern - even though it sort of makes some people look like idiots of the Flat Earth variety. I also though it was ironic that on the eve of the Hadron opening up a wormhole, Fox would premiere it's big sci-fi show, Fringe. And it opened with a bang - with an airliner filled with helpless folks who soon become what I like to call "People Soup". Damn. Aside from hoping for a great excuse to break the chains of America's Got Talent, I also follow the works of JJ Abrams closely, because I am an devout LOST fan, and hope for the best here. Abrams' newest baby is about our world reaching that point where science and technology are on a runaway course where progress becomes carnage, though it seems to me that's more about science without ethics. Who knows, though - maybe it's all run by an AI that's gone mad. So far, the show is promising. Storywise, it's got a good hook, and if it can keep the plotlines interesting (like the "Question him" moment at the end of the premiere), we could have a winner. I'm not so sure the early "X-Files Ripoff" statements were entirely fair, since this has less to do with aliens and more to do with rogue science - at least for now. My biggest gripe with Fringe is that the writing seems hit or miss. Sometimes it was rather smart, but sometimes the characters fell into easy clichés and hard-to-believe decisions. Take, for example, the show's lead character, Agent Olivia Dunham. What started for a few moments as a strong female lead was prone to stereotypical female reactions, like when she meets Peter Bishop in Iraq to ask for his help, and resorts to tearing up and giving the "I need to save someone I love" line. My wife, who liked the show up to that moment, let out a cynical laugh and rolled her eyes. I felt the same way. Dunham would later take part in an incredibly questionable experiment with a very crazy Dr. Walter Bishop that involved getting a device shoved in the back of her neck, taking LSD, and being locked in a water tank. All this to save a guy that she seemed somewhat apathetic about at the show's start. And Dr. Bishop walks the fine and dangerous line of becoming a truly obnoxious and unwatchable character. I think his madness largely came from his wily beard, because once he shaved he was much more tolerable - kind of like Samson, but with insanity, not strength...
The success of the show will largely depend on creating episodes that play off what the premiere showed - which walked a fine line between today's horrors of science and far-out sci-fi, like Massive Dynamics' Nina Sharp, who has a very Terminator-esque (and totally bad-ass) robotic arm that goes lightyears beyond what we have available to amputees today. It's sort of like the weirder parts of LOST, but with even a touch more crazy. I'm also already hooked on the whole "Pattern" thing, almost as if it's 2008's answer to the numbers. What is the pattern? What does it all mean? Who the hell would do these horrible things to so many innocent people, and more importantly, why? I want to know more about the whole thing. With any luck, they'll slide in a few sly nods to LOST. Well, a guy can dream, right? In the end, it's largely good stuff, and it's a great excuse to try and put mindless reality programming behind me. If you didn't watch Fringe, I suggest you check in as soon as possible - it looks like this show might start to form quite a mythos, one you're going to need to get into on the ground floor if you want to keep up.
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