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.

World War Z

Whenever Hollywood decides to take a book and turn it into a movie there are inherent dangers. You could wind up with a producer/director who decides that what the author wrote doesn't "really" work on the silver screen and they take certain...liberties.  Other times you get people involved who love the book so much that they hold true to it with such fervor that you almost feel inept as a member of the audience.

World War Z (WWZ) is somewhere in between. If you read, and really enjoyed the book, you might not like the direction the movie took since the book is more about the overall experience of surviving a zombie apocalypse told by myriad members of humanity. The movie is more singularly focused, meant to have  goal that audiences could get behind and root for.

The problem is that it never delivers on that goal.

Heroes are supposed to be people we care about; people we desire for victory because to watch them fail is to feel failure ourselves. Think back to the first time you saw Star Wars: A New Hop and Luke is making his attack run on the exhaust port. When Vader has him in his sights your heart skipped a beat! But then Han swooped in and saved the day and a feeling of relief and begrudging respect and affection came washing over you.

That's where WWZ falters. The story is all wheels spinning and now resolution. You're left with a feeling of incompleteness. The family characters, who in the end pick up an extra boy after his stupid parents get murdered, create little rooting interest. And when every situation creates drama, the drama starts to lose effectiveness as a plot narrative.

The writer never achieved what he set out to achieve: make me care about what Brad Pitt is doing. When he "discovers" a way to "battle" the zombies, the audience is less than overjoyed. Why? Not because we are heartless bastards, it's because the writer failed to bring us there.