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 Fringe

(March 30th, 2009.  Editor)               Anna Tory, Mark Valley, Joshua Jackson, John Noble, Blair Brown, Kirk Acevedo and Lance Reddick star in the science fiction drama Fringe, airing Tuesdays on FOX.

From J.J. Abrams ("Lost"), Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, the team behind "Star Trek," "Mission: Impossible III" and "Alias," comes a new series that will thrill, terrify and explore the blurring line between the possible and the impossible.

When an international flight lands at Boston's Logan Airport with no signs of life, FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Torv) is called in to investigate as part of an inter-agency task force. After her partner, Special Agent John Scott (Valley), is nearly killed during the investigation, a desperate Olivia searches frantically for someone to help, leading her to Dr. Walter Bishop (Noble), our generation's Einstein. There's only one catch: he's been institutionalized for the last 17 years, and the only way to question him requires pulling his estranged son Peter (Jackson) in to help.

When Olivia's investigation leads to multi-billion dollar corporation Massive Dynamic and its manipulative corporate executive, Nina Sharp (Blair Brown), our unlikely trio, along with Department of Homeland Security Agent Phillip Broyles (Reddick) and FBI Agents Charlie Francis (Acevedo) and Astrid Farnsworth (Nicole), will discover that what happened on Flight 627 is only a small piece of a larger, more shocking truth.

Chosen by Homeland Security Agent Phillip Broyles (Reddick), Olivia (Tory) assembles a task force to investigate The Pattern, a mysterious sequence of unexplained phenomena suggestive of someone or something performing experiments on the world. With the help of mad genius Walter Bishop and his estranged son Peter, she aims to bring high-tech criminals to justice, while defusing previously unimaginable threats to national security.

Those who remember and enjoyed The X-Files are certainly the target audience of this new science fiction fantasy drama. The comparisons between the two shows are obvious. That's not a bad thing. The X-Files enjoyed a long run because they tapped into a topic that was important to a large segment of the population. Fringe has that potential, as long as they maintain the high quality of the show and a focus on what gets them their success. The X-Files degraded into a soap opera that was more about the relationship of the two starring characters than it was about what made us interested in the first place. That is why the show left the air.

The challenge this new series needs to overcome, is that they must frustrate the audience week after week. Because of course, when your show is about answering a question, everyone knows there will be no solution to that question until the final episode. And only if they are successful enough to be allowed to make a final episode. So for the show to be a success, the audience must be satisfied with the tidbits and small clues that are revealed each week. The need to fill the rest of the hour is where the writers will get into trouble.

I am always hopeful when I see a smart, well-written TV show get a chance. I hope enough viewers find this show to keep it on the air during these early days in its run. In my opinion, this series could be bigger than The X-Files.  

 

Editor

 

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