Fringe
So flist, you who know all, what were/are your thoughts on the tv show Fringe? I'd especially like to know these thoughts in conjunction with your thoughts on either Alias, Lost or both.
A bunch of people say that Fringe was really good, but my thought is that these people also thought Lost was good, and yet the hype and obsession around Fringe never reached the level that it seemed to be around Lost.
For the record, I don't hate Lost . . . yeah, no, wait, I kind of do hate Lost. I only watched one season of it, so hating it is perhaps not fair, but it reminded me so much of Alias that the investment didn't seem worth it.
I also don't hate--oh, who am I fooling, I really do dislike Alias, but in a different way, because I gave Alias all of the chances. I knew it was silly and stupid insofar as realism, but I was in love with Victor Garber's character and his relationship with Jennifer Garner's character, and I was deeply interested in the slowly unfolding overarching sci fi plot.
After watching two and a half seasons I began to realize that there were a bunch of great ideas in the show but poor execution and even poorer follow-through. The characters never grew beyond their complicated, nuanced premise; the plot was a series of cheap tricks employed to keep you on the edge of your seat without ever delivering the narrative satisfaction that justifies such suspense--there was no overarching narrative, despite textual insistence that there would be.
I had to give up on Alias after four seasons, which was a great big waste of time to me. After the first season of Lost, I realized that the same thing was happening there, only on a larger scale. Worse, there was no Victor Garber. From what I've heard from other viewers, it's probably a good thing I gave it up.
So, having now experienced my vitriol aimed in Abrams' general direction--would I like Fringe?
A bunch of people say that Fringe was really good, but my thought is that these people also thought Lost was good, and yet the hype and obsession around Fringe never reached the level that it seemed to be around Lost.
For the record, I don't hate Lost . . . yeah, no, wait, I kind of do hate Lost. I only watched one season of it, so hating it is perhaps not fair, but it reminded me so much of Alias that the investment didn't seem worth it.
I also don't hate--oh, who am I fooling, I really do dislike Alias, but in a different way, because I gave Alias all of the chances. I knew it was silly and stupid insofar as realism, but I was in love with Victor Garber's character and his relationship with Jennifer Garner's character, and I was deeply interested in the slowly unfolding overarching sci fi plot.
After watching two and a half seasons I began to realize that there were a bunch of great ideas in the show but poor execution and even poorer follow-through. The characters never grew beyond their complicated, nuanced premise; the plot was a series of cheap tricks employed to keep you on the edge of your seat without ever delivering the narrative satisfaction that justifies such suspense--there was no overarching narrative, despite textual insistence that there would be.
I had to give up on Alias after four seasons, which was a great big waste of time to me. After the first season of Lost, I realized that the same thing was happening there, only on a larger scale. Worse, there was no Victor Garber. From what I've heard from other viewers, it's probably a good thing I gave it up.
So, having now experienced my vitriol aimed in Abrams' general direction--would I like Fringe?

no subject
Yeah, what cest_what said. I bought a cheap second-hand copy of S1 thinking it would be fun to marathon with my roomie, and we stalled out after ep 2 and never went back. Ep1 has people melting to death with their faces falling off, ep2 has the pregnancy horror and also SURPRISINGLY long and intense torture-porn scenes of terrified female victims tied to a chair and knowing they're about to die.
There was also lot of super, super interesting sci-fi stuff, and cool characters, and interesting character interactions among the cast... but all that other stuff made it really un-fun, on the whole. IDK, maybe if you're not particularly bothered by body-horror.