Fringe is rapidly becoming one of my favourite new TV shows. I caught up with the first two seasons in the last months and have just finished the last episode (“6995 KHz”) of season 3. The reviews of the show by Scott at Polite Dissent were very entertaining to read during my catching up. He is mostly very critical of the science and medicine in the episodes. And while it’s sad to see a science–fiction show taking rather big liberties with a lot of scientific concepts I choose to ignore the scientific mistakes, because I think it would hamper my enjoyment of watching the show.

The show also restored my faith in the creative skills of J.J. Abrahams and I’m confident Fringe will continue to be awesome as long as Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof stay the hell away from the overall plot arc. That particular duo is of course responsible for the absolute cluster fuck that was Lost Season 6. Although the final season of that series, the finale especially, seemed to resonate pretty well with the American viewers, it sure didn’t do anything for me. Season 5 was of course pretty so-so, especially when it dealt with the absurd love… er… rectangle involving Kate, Juliet, Saywer and Jack, but it was still entertaining though. The meandering Season 6, however, turned out to be a self-absorped affair which, among other things, spent episodes just moving characters from one location to another. It was a rather nonsensical conclusion to seasons of questions and mystery, which all of a sudden didn’t matter at all, the series was always all about the characters — or that’s what Cuse and Lindelof kept telling fans.

Anyway, Fringe has the delightful characteristic the first three seasons of Lost also had: a sense of direction and purpose. The show’s concept and mythology might not be the most original, but as a whole it just works. Fringe started out almost like a 21st century X-Files, but soon started to rely more heavily on the background mythology itself, instead of just serving another monster-of-the-week episode. The quality of the first season was a bit shaky, the first few episodes being a bit hysterical and grating at times. But it has wonderful episodes like “In Which We Meet Mr. Jones” and “The Arrival” as well, which fully embrace the pulpiness of Fringe’s premise and run with it.

Most of the key events in the plot seem to have been preplanned, instead of having been made up ad hoc, or at the start of each season. So having a late second season episode tie into concepts introduced in the beginning of the first season, because they were obviously set up to do so in retrospect, is a joy to watch. Foreshadowing is a great narrative technique and sadly only J. Michael Straczynski managed to pull it consistently on television with Babylon 5.¹

The show is consistently great towards the season finales, but started very, very strong in the first few episodes of the third season. The main actors — Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson and John Noble² are consistently great. Jackson’s character took a little time to fully develop, though. In a lot of the first episodes his main contributions amount to just being skeptical of everything and asking Olivia (Anna Torv) if “she’s still ok” after being shot at or attacked by various sentient genetic deformities. Torv’s character, Olivia, has undergone some radical changes in the third season which is a great thing to watch.³

Hopefully the show’s creators get to fulfil their wish of making six seasons of Fringe. Ratings are down in America, which is never a good thing… For now it’s still airing every thursday on the American Fox network.

1. A shame Londo Mollari’s hairstyle never came into fashion after it was first introduced. ↩
2. He of the rather absurd “I’m Denethor and I’m just having a quiet meal, here, fuck the war”-scenes in the third Lord of the Rings movie ↩
3. It also serves a testament against all the people who claim Anna Torv’s portrayal of Olivia is too cold and emotionless and conveniently arrive to the conclusion that she just can’t act at all. ↩