Fringe

[lettered]

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?

Comments

[goodgriefcharlie]

You might find newredshoes's post How to get hooked on Fringe in 10 hours to be of interest. (The post has very few spoilers, mostly related to the structure/plotlines, but she talks about them in pretty vague terms so all but the most spoiler-avoidant people should be okay.) She gives a list of episodes that are central to the mytharc of S1/S2 and that give you a good sense for who the characters are, and it was really helpful for me in determining whether I wanted to watch the full series or not. I did end up going back and watching the whole thing from S1 to mid-S4 (and then life interfered and I didn't end up catching the final part; still haven't, actually, as I got dragged down into a different fandom black hole :D). I know not everybody is okay with watching out of order like that, but it was very helpful for me to get through some of the rough patches in S1/S2 because I already loved the characters; also, knowing what was coming allowed me to catch the double-meaning of some innocuous comments people make in the first season that are actually subtle details leading up to a larger reveal later on, details that I probably wouldn't have noticed if I had just watched straight through.

Also, it's worth mentioning that Anna Torv is amazing and watching her bring to life several distinct versions of Olivia is definitely one of the highlights of the show.