Are they serious? The first episode is a joke and the second isn’t much better. I’ll watch it a bit more but if it doesn’t get better soon then I’m out.

You’ve probably seen it so I won’t retell the whole story. It starts off ok, a plane full of passengers infected with a face melting disease. Cool effects. Visually good. It definitely got my attention.

Anyway, the FBI is on the case and their investigation isn’t going great. Bugger. Here’s where it goes loopy.

The only person who can help them is a crazy old scientist, Walter Bishop, who has been in a mental asylum for 17 years. Of course, he needs his son as his guardian and so we are reintroduced to Joshua Jackson (or Pacey from Dawson’s Creek) as Peter Bishop. Ok, what’s next? Harold Bishop and his tuba?

The crazy scientist and his son (and guardian) helping the FBI. Of course no one else could help, had to be this nutcase.

Now I have heard comparisons of Fringe and The X-Files. Come on, I don’t think we would ever see Mulder watching Spongebob or Scully milking a cow. That’s what we get with Walter Bishop. A scattered man who can’t remember people he has met three times and needs to be sung to sleep. We also get the Magic Old Man Baby and the sharing of thoughts (Vulcan mind meld comes to mind, J.J. has spent too much time on Star Trek [which he better not stuff up] between a person in a coma and FBI agent Olivia Dunham, the main character.

Fringe tries to be sort of light hearted or charming while still being serious but it doesn’t really work for me. It seems quite intentional, I mean, we have Peter asking the questions we are all thinking throughout the show. He tries to point out how ridiculous it all is.

Of course we also have the obligatory super powerful corporation, Massive Dynamic [great name, not!], and its enigmatic owner, William Bell. Not sure of the true nature of Massive Dynamic yet but evil would be an obvious choice. [too obvious, perhaps]

There is bit more which I won’t go into but I am watching on free-to-air so I have only seen the first two eps. What I will say though is that I am not glad that I skipped Criminal Minds (and Special Agent David Rossi, the best voice on tv) to watch this.

Oh, and I love this image I found.