Maybe it's because I live near Boston. But I really have to wonder what J.J. Abrams was thinking, putting a horrific opening sequence aboard a jet bound for Logan Airport, on a show that premieres two days before the anniversary of 9/11/01. The fact that it's an incoming flight on which all the passengers die in terror doesn't really change the annoyance factor. Was he just not thinking, or was he actually trying to invoke the terror of that day? I don't know, but I just wanted to mention that up front. Now back to our regularly scheduled review.
With the likely exception of Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse," no new TV show has gotten more hype this season than J.J. Abrams' "Fringe." The enigma artist behind "Alias" and "Lost," Abrams is said to have whipped up yet another fabulous mythology combining global conspiracy with the supernatural. But despite a bravura opening sequence - not snakes on a plane, but a verrrrrrrry bad virus - "Fringe" comes off as a second-rate "X-Files" imitation. There's very little in it that won't have veteran TV watchers thinking, "Been there, done that."
SPOILER ALERT. STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS.
Start with that plane sequence. It's a rough approach to Boston's Logan Airport, but one dude is having a much worse flight than everyone else. He's got some sort of terrible plague, and even a desperate self-injection of antidote doesn't slow the progress of the disease. He's...mellllllllllllllting, and pretty soon everyone else is, too. When the co-pilot's face goes, you may actually scream, at least because you're grossed out, if not terrified.
The plane lands itself - because, you know, everything works perfectly at the airlines these days - and the government's most secret high-tech emergency units converge on the runway to assess the mess inside. Among those summoned is Anna Torv as FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham, who just happens to be wrecking the sheets in a motel with Special Agent John Scott, played by Mark Valley, when both of their cell phones go to Bat Signal. Eventually, after they take a moonwalk inside the very spooky flying graveyard, the government burns the plane right there on the runway. Because even if they don't know what killed all those people, or whether flames will solve the problem or make it worse, it's fun to burn stuff. And Agents Dunham and Scott scamper off to check out a nearby storage unit with a connection to First Melting Guy.
Now, to make viewers suspend their disbelief, you need some basic operational credibility. But we're supposed to believe they just send a couple of agents in street clothes to check out the suspicious storage unit. In this day and age?! Homeland Security would have sent, like, 87 guys with M-16s and a Hazmat truck. But no, Abrams just sends Agent Hotsheets and Agent Handsome Guy. Needless to say, they almost get blown to crap, the bad guy gets away, and Agent Handsome Guy ends up with a bad case of the melting disease.
Then things get weird. And even less credible.
Turns out that, to save Agent Melting Handsome Guy, and oh yeah the rest of the world, Agent Dunham needs the help of Dr. Walter Bishop, a scientific super-genius from Harvard. The only problem is, the genius has been in a mental hospital for 17 years. So how does she get to him? Well, most TV shows would simply send her to the asylum with a Baseless Screenwriter-Issued Warrant to talk to the guy. In the real world, Homeland Security would drive her up there with about 87 guys with M-16s and just march right in and take him.
Either way works. But what we definitely would not do is fly all the way to frigging Baghdad to blackmail the crazy doc's ne'er-do-well son into flying all the way back to Boston with us to sign the piece of paper neccessary to get us into the old man's padded cell! I mean, c'mon.
It was right around this point that I lost interest in "Fringe," even though the estranged son, Peter Bishop, is played by Joshua Jackson, aka Pacey of "Dawson's Creek" fame. I briefly perked up when they finally got into the asylum and John Noble came on as Dr. Looneytunes. He's got a great from-the-depths-of-madness glare. But as soon as they shaved off his Saddam-Hussein-in-the-spiderhole beard, he got a lot less scary. And when the three of them reluctantly formed a Mulder-Scully-and-Mulder's-dad investigative team, the show lost its last little bit of mojo.
Since every TV drama now has to have a mythology, an overarching conspiracy to tie together the weekly mysteries, we learn that the melting disease is just part of a pattern of strange events worldwide. So our brave trio will be tracking down "fringe science" worldwide in weeks to come. But first they've got to save the now-comatose Agent Melting Handsome Guy. And old crazy Dr. Bishop has a plan! He wants to dust off his old lab, and get some LSD and Ketamine, and give it to the lovely Agent Dunham, so she can make a telepathic connection with A.M.H.G.
Mad Doc's resentful son has his doubts: "The man who was just released from a mental institution wants to give you a drug overdose, stick a metal rod into your head and put you naked into a rusty tank of water!?" It doesn't make any sense, but Dunham is game for it - anything to save her boyfriend. "Excellent!" says the now giddy Mad Doc. "Let's make some LSD!"
I have to admit my interest briefly perked up again here. The words "naked" and "LSD" appearing on the same page of script are going to have that effect regardless of the circumstances. But the sequence that follows is mostly familiar from "Altered States" and, sadly, Torv only strips down to her very modest women's-Olympic-soccer-style skivvies. Needless to say, she meets Agent Melting Handsome Guy somewhere in a hallucinatory desert and gets the info she needs to save him.
After they stop Agent Handsome Guy from melting, the rest of the episode is a quick trip through Standard Investigative Claptrap. Mandatory doublecross, mandatory foot chase, mandatory meeting with mysterious biggie who may be behind the mandatory global conspiracy. Blair Brown is a hoot in her one scene as the mysterious biggie - she's apparently part terminator - and Lance Reddick ("Lost") adds his signature air of enigmatic menace as an FBI boss.
But "Fringe" is like a junkyard cyborg, made up of recycled spare parts from a bunch of other, sleeker shows. A few melting faces and a couple of good LSD jokes aren't enough to make up for its general lameness.
Never mind the cheap 9/11 tie-in.
Well, ABC's Wednesday-night power trio got its butt kicked. I told you that "Pushing Daisies" and "Dirty Sexy Money" had been hurt by the writers strike during their first season, as had "Grey's Anatomy" spinoff "Private Practice." But Wednesday night's numbers were even worse than expected, with "Daisies" down 55 percent and the other two losing roughly a third of their audience from season to season. Also bloodied by the ratings is Fox's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," which some say will be shut down very soon, with ratings down a third from its so-so numbers last season. If so, I'll very much miss Summer Glau as the "good" terminator Cameron (right).
