Late to the Party: A Review of Fringe

I just finished the final episode of Fox's Sci-Fi thriller: Fringe. And if I had to sum it up in two words I would use: Rushed & Anti-climactic.

I realize I came late to the party on this show, as I am prone to do in this day in age as a man without DVR, Netflix is my best friend.  Doing so allowed me to watch Five Seasons in a matter of weeks (late at night a couple episodes at a time).  

Fringe sucked me in, as I'm sure it did many sci-Fi addict, with its cool X-Files type weirdness and Government conspiracy intrigue. But I knew the show was in trouble at the beginning of Season Two. I nearly gave up and quit watching because the storytelling and acting degraded so much from Season One.

To use a drug metaphor, incorrectly probably since I'm not a drug user and never have been, Season One was like that first hit and Season Two was the second hit you take just as you're coming down and it's not nearly as good.

It was clear that there was an over-arching story involved, something that everything was building towards, but it was so overt that the random, aside episodes, seemed tedious and almost haphazardly shoved into the rotation. 

For example: some HUGE piece of information would come out in an episode and the next ep would seem to infer that whatever had happened wasn't important because no one was talking about it.

Season Four practically required a masters degree in physics to follow since it was bouncing around from timeline to timeline and inter-dimensional exchanges of characters, etc.

I feel like in the vacuum left by LOST networks tried to grab hold of that audience who were sucked into a sci-fi show without even realizing it. Fringe was no different and Season Five finally unveiled the big plot: the Onservers had come to conquer us.

The problem with that story route is that its too predictable for American Tv. There was NO POSSIBLE WAY the good guys weren't going to win. Sure, some people died along the way and it was sad, but you knew they were going to pull it out.

X-files never really fulfilled its promise of Aliens. Not till the movie. LOST ended in a way people didn't understand (unless you'd been paying attention) and Fringe tried hard to be great and fell just a bit short.

I don't slight them for trying and I suspect uninspiring ratings continually threatened the stability of the shows story integrity: never knowing if you'll ever get to finish your overall plot is a scary thing, just ask Firefly fans.

Fringe stands alone, separate from shows like X-Files because it dared to reach beyond what people could perceive as possible and I applaud it for that.

If you've not seen the show, it's worth a watch. But know that you'll have to stomach some annoying episodes along the way. But if you watched Battlestar Galactica all the way through, you're already used to that.