Fringe starts weak. It starts very very weak. All of the show’s worst qualities parade about on the screen for the first five episodes of the season. Cheap one-liners from Joshua Jackson? You got it. Flimsy throwaway paranormal plots? You know it! Painfully overt exposition pandering to the lowest common denominator within the audience? Of course! Can Fringe be redeemed? It can be, but it doesn’t fully happen in the first season; but it starts the long process.
Fringe may be the antithesis of Heroes’ triumphant and heralded first season. Where Heroes shook critics with its novel approach to the superhero genre in a weekly televised format, Fringe underwhelms with a formula derived from the lesser moments of the X-Files. It starts horrendously weak with a pilot episode that would make the casual television viewer embarrassed, but it’s the momentum it gains halfway through the season that gives Fringe its raison d’etre – where it truly distinguishes itself by going in a new direction. The first few episodes deal with Agent Olivia (Anna Torv) and her induction into a super secret section of the FBI investigating worldwide phenomena nicknamed “The Pattern”. Helping her out is Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) and his father Walter (John Noble), a brilliant scientist who by all accounts is a little bit mad, in the way only scientists can be. Razor winged butterflies, brain-melting pop-up ads and gigantic parasitic slugs make up the selection of weekly oddities but they’re all just sideshows for the story that develops in the season’s latter half. A rather uninteresting plot revolving about Olivia’s ex-partner John Scott (Mark Valley) and takes the first half of the season to peter out before the real fun can begin, at which point Jared Harris steps in as a much more compelling menacing figure.
If it weren’t for the building of Torv and Noble’s characters you’d almost find the Fringe experience more rewarding if you skipped the first 10 episodes entirely. Unfortunately, if you do so you’ll miss some of Noble’s brilliance, but you’ll save yourself a good number of Jackson’s obnoxious one-liners. Jackson brings the series down more often than not and rarely is his character little more than a talking leash for the key player Walter. It’s almost worth skipping the pilot episode entirely as Jackson’s interjections are mindblowingly awful. Torv on the other hand isn’t bad, but she’s quite stoic and limits the character’s depth even with a set of episodes that would plumb her emotional depths.
The picture and audio make the show a brilliant experience in hi-def, and thus worth considering for a Blu-ray purchase. The drawback for the whole Fringe on Blu-ray experience is the show’s basic content. With only one decent half to the season you have to ask yourself if you’d rather buy it on DVD and save the Blu-ray consideration for the second season which will presumably start with the terrific premise that the first ends on. Just something to think about.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
Interestingly enough the set has an extra feature for each episode in the form of “Deciphering the Scene” which analyzes one particular scene and how it was filmed or what it means for the series as examined by “experts” in a few chosen scientific fields. Otherwise you have production featurettes covering the casting, special effects and a few other pieces. There’s a gag reel but its comedic value is overshadowed by the featurette on Gene the cow, who moos from the background of Walt’s lab in almost every episode.
The series has a selection of guest writers and directors to its credit, most notably Akiva Goldsman, J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. The first mauled the original Batman series, the second revived Star Trek and the final two have produced schlock that still has the Hollywood machine reeling. As much as J.J. Abrams seems to be a seal of quality at other times, here he’s responsible for the disappointing storyline of the season’s first half. Ironically, its Akiva’s episodes which hold the most promise out of all of them. What isn’t surprising? The god awful pilot was written by Orci and Kurtzman (and Abrams), no wonder it’s so painful.
"Fringe: The Complete First Season" is on sale September 8, 2009 and is rated NR. Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Television. Directed by Brad Anderson, Paul A Edwards, Fred Toye. Written by J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman. Starring Jared Harris, Anna Torv, Lance Reddick, Kirk Acevedo, John Noble, Joshua Jackson.
