Lower Decks

The following review contains spoilers for Fringe through the current episode, “Pilot”, originally broadcast 9/9/08

There’s something to be said about familiarity. Wait, I meant there’s many things to be said about it. J.J. Abrams, by all rights, should have been familiar to TV audiences long before Lost, but Felicity was on a sub-network and Alias was a cult favorite, so the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 were his big introduction to the grand stage, when everyone started noting his name for the record. Lost made him familiar. He probably never dreamed it would be a bad thing.

Turns out it is, in a way. He became in-demand. He began to find how easy it is to find work when everyone knows your name. The problem is, he’d already proved that he could find work on his own, the problem is, the work he found when he could still be considered anonymous seemed to find itself. Felicity was one thing. It was a distinctively WB project. Alias, as I said, was a cult favorite. Lost, a cultural phenomenon, sprung from an idea that wasn‘t even his own, that in someone else‘s hands wasn‘t original at all. Since Lost, he has launched a few more shows, but they haven’t caught on, straight relationship dramas the public was no longer interested in. So when Fox announces Fringe, everyone begins to suspect he’s got the next big idea again. It becomes the most hyped show of the fall 2008 season. Lightning’s gonna strike again, right?

Well, there’s that thing about familiarity. Fringe is like a mash-up of Alias and the Dharma Initiative elements of Lost, to those who have watched J.J. Abrams before, a show about a father and son, plus a girl, who find themselves deep into dark territory, science gone wrong, a conspiracy that must be stopped. It’s familiar, but the problem is, Anna Torv is not Jennifer Garner, is not Evangeline Lilly. Joshua Jackson is not Matthew Fox, Michael Vartan. Familiar, but not comparable. Abrams has exposed a predilection to a pattern, and the scary thought that the pattern, if not properly followed, might not actually work every time.

Fringe is not a bad show, it’s just something that walks this side of derivative. Alias was something like procedural, in that Sydney Bristow had a new mission every week, but there was never a question about Syd always being at the center of it, her daddy and Sloane issues, her budding relationship with Vaughn, even Marshall and Dixon always key elements of the plot. It wasn’t just about what she did, but why, and it wasn’t just to find something out. If the Dharma Initiative had been a key plot point in the pilot of Lost, or even a direct matter every week, fans would have revolted, would never have materialized. There’s a reason interest in the X-Files eventually evaporated, why Star Trek lost its appeal. There’s only so much of the same genre folk will accept.

Procedural shows are one thing. That’s why there’s always an endless crop of new variations each fall. Fringe doesn’t seem like it’s merely procedural. Its ideas about science in the modern world are worth exploring. But for Abrams, it may be a few figures off, if not a miscalculation, then not cast from the same magic as Alias or Lost. Given that Alias was always a cult show, and that Lost has rubbed its name off on its audience since the first season, this might actually be a good thing. Maybe fans, old fans or new, are ready for something like Fringe. It may be better than I think it is. That’s the thing about a TV show. It will always be around for at least two episodes, right? Either enough time to confirm beliefs, or enough to shatter them.

This one will likely get a season, and it’s my belief that it will be worth keeping an eye on.