TV Review: Fringe

Ironically, the Fall's two most-talked about and anticipated series are miles away from each other. The first one, that I already talked about here, is the 90210 reboot. The second, is Fringe. What's that one about you ask? It is the new baby of J.J. Abrams, no other than (for those of you unfamiliar with this name) the man responsible for giving to television two of its best and most creative shows in the last decade: Lost and Alias... So you can imagine how much this newborn was much expected... So does it deliver?

Well, based on the 90-minute openning, I would rather think it does! This does not come that much as a surprise though because, as every television buff out there will tell you, J.J. Abrams is well-known for always putting a great deal of refinement in its pilot episodes and make them look like the are self-contained feature films (remember the Lost pilot with the plane crash??!). So visually, the Fringe pilot is as good as it gets and just looks amazing. Storytelling-wise, the premise also appears strong and well-built, though it is (again, some would say) about SciFi so if you're looking for a down-to-earth and believable series with no mystic elements, this is certainly not a show for you...

Concretely, the series starts when all the passengers on a plane die mysteriously (Geez, what's up with J.J. and planes, I wonder...) FBI agent Olivia Dunham investigates the events with the help of Peter Bishop and his scientific father that helps put some meaning to it, Dr. Walter Bishop. But they will begin to discover what really happened on Flight 627 and begin to uncover a larger truth... All these mysteries are going to be "explained" (sorry, could not find a better suiting word) by scientific elements of the much-debated fringe science, which, as it is explained in the show's first few minutes and as my BFF Wikipedia nicely puts it: "scientific inquiry departing significantly from mainstream theories". In other words, it's all that SciFi nonsense that real scientists do not recoginze as pure and real science (like vodoo science, reading into people's minds and the like).

The pilot episode really is self-contained and could be a movie as it really has a beginning, a middle and an end, though inevitably asking some burning questions towards the end to lay the foundations for the series at large. But it was an immensely satisfying and rewarding episode. It gives you a sense of not having wasted 90 minutes of your time watching the pilot since it was filled with action, suspense and great twist and turns while still leaving a lot of things in the dark to make you want to tune in next week (and all the weeks after that for that matter...). What I mean is that, contrary to a lot of pilot episodes (I even want to say, the vast majority...), the Fringe openning does not just introduce stories and characters that will become meaningful to you as time and episodes pass, it really starts right on telling you a first epic story from the very beginning that even gets resolved before the end credits roll out. It did to me what not a lot of shows can do only based on the series premieres. Truly, it felt like the first chapter of a movie trilogy or something, it didn't feel like a series pilot, neither visually nor narratively.

Once again, kudos to J.J. Abrams for delivering such an entertaining hour (and a half) of television. And even me of all people who is generally not a big fan of sicence fiction and cops shows, I was really pleased with this pilot. It was intriguing and interresting enough to keep me entertained all the way, and it was not like it's completely preposterous; I mean it's science fiction all right but smart one if you know what I mean! Even if I still bear some kind of reluctance to this genre in general...;-)

Now I just can't wait to see what more traditionnal and shorter episodes are going to look like, to see if they really keep up with the show's ambitious premise. Because let's be honest for one second: the show just cannot be that ride-thrilling experience every single week. So I want to see what the "real" Fringe is going to be. And I guess we'll see that starting next week. But for now, I'm sold. A-

Fringe, New Series: Tuesdays @ 9/8c on Fox.