Pilot Season – Fringe

The important thing to realise about this highly-anticipated, big budget pilot from JJ Abrams (Alias, Lost, What About Brian?) is that the show is just a bit shit.

Okay, perhaps that is a tad harsh. The show is by no means terrible, but this is a horribly bloated pilot that has such great production values and style that it covers up the fact that the series so far is a little bit under-developed. They are issues that can perhaps be straightened out as the series kicks off, but as it stands, Fringe is wonky.

So, what’s it about?
As this is a genre show in a post-Buffy world, our hero is a lithe blonde lady. In this instance, she works as an FBI agent. Her partner (in both senses of the term) is infected with some form of disease while they investigate an unusual happening in an aircraft and so she goes in search of a crazed scientist and his son (the only person who can make sense of his father) to find a cure. Said scientist apparently specialises in ‘Fringe’ science, including diverse fields like mind-control, teleportation, invisibility, and re-animation. Along the way they discover the involvement of the mysterious science company Massive Dynamics.

Who’s in the darn thing?
The show actually has a solid cast. The star of the show is Australian actress Anna Torv, a NIDA graduate who had appeared in Secret Life of Us and Young Lions. Torv makes for a solid lead, though does perhaps lack the charm needed to carry a genre show like this.

The supporting cast and guest-stars are really quite wonderful. Boston Legals Mark Valley takes on the role of the wounded partner, proving that the guy really should be fronting his own show by this point. Lance Reddick of The Wire appears, adding strong gravitas to a show which might seem exceedingly dull without his presence. Oz’s Kirk Acevedo, likewise, grounds the series nicely as a fellow FBI agent.

The one weak point in the cast is perhaps the marketings strongest sales point. Dawsons Creek star Joshua Jackson co-stars as the scientists son. Jackson is a fun TV actor, but gosh is he a little out of place on this series. The dialogue doesn’t seem authentic coming from his lips and his very presence makes the show seem a little bit cartoony, in a bad way.

What happens in that crucial first episode?
A diseased man kills an airplane worth of passengers in the sky in a very impressive opening scene and a task-force from multiple agencies is formed to investigate. The head of the investigation team seems aware as to what may be taking place, but instead is letting his personal issues with the shows protagonist get in the way.

The protagonists partner is infected with the disease during the investigation, meaning the case is now personal. Protagonist finds a scientist and his son to help, they discover the involvement of an evil scientific corporation, a cure is found. The pilot concludes with our protagonist being drafted into a new FBI division that investigates ‘fringe’ scientific cases.

That’s right folks, this show looks to be The X-Files 2.0.

Is it actually any good?
I went in with high expectations. All the buzz on the program had been good and JJ Abrams has a great track record of producing compelling television. Unfortunately, the show simply feels a little half-baked. The rationale for this disparate group to stay together at the end of the pilot feels forced and hackneyed. Joshua Jacksons character lacks relevance to any of the events of the series, instead shoe-horned in simply to provide the show with an additional male lead. And considering how very X-Files the opening sequence seemed, the fact that the shows continued premise evokes so much of what that show had been about, the entire premise simply feels tired.

That said, the production values are high and the show looks gorgeous. The show makes use of a great in-scene title-card effect that is novel. Considering the pilot reportedly cost US$10 million to produce, one would expect the show to have a high production standard.

With any luck, show-runner Jeff Pinkner will rein the show in and iron out the glitches. The two-hour pilot didn’t sell the show as effectively as needed, but rather felt bloated and exposed its weak points. Perhaps the regular one-hour format will keep the show on track.