I love sci-fi.  Movies, TV shows, novels, comics, whatever.  If its sci-fi, I’m interested.

I’m also a big fan of J.J. Abrams.  Not of everything he’s done, mind you.  (I certainly was never interested in Felicity, and despite sampling episodes during each of the five seasons of its run I just could never get into Alias.)  But I adore Lost, and I also really enjoyed Mission Impossible III (which Abrams directed) and Cloverfield (which he produced).

And so it was that I tuned in to the first two hours of J.J. Abrams’ new series, Fringe.  

Its been getting a lot of hype, so most of you probably know what its about, but just in case: the series features an FBI agent named Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) who, during the circumstances of the pilot, finds herself paired up with sort-of-sketchy Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) and his kooky-but-brilliant father, Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble, who played Denethor in The Return of The King).  Together, they investigate all sorts of strange and paranormal events, which have been nicknamed “the pattern.”

Abrams, along with writers & executive producers Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman (who together wrote Transformers and the script for the upcoming Star Trek re-launch, which is being directed by Abrams), have stated that, in creating this show, they were inspired by Robin Cook’s Coma, Twin Peaks, Real Genius, and Croenberg’s The Fly among other things…but if you think the description (a male and a female investigate paranormal phenomenal) sounds a lot like The X-Files, you’re not alone.  Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  The X-Files was great, so more television like that would be OK in my book.  But for Fringe to be enjoyable it would need to re-create some of what made the X-Files so enjoyable, while at the same time being new and different enough that viewers won’t feel “been there, done that.”

So does Fringe succeed in that?

While I really wanted to like it, I must say that, so far (I’ve seen the first two episodes that have aired), it doesn’t.  The lead actors are all likeable, and there’s an interesting dynamic between them.  But so far they don’t have a lot of life — they’re more vehicles for the weird, paranormal stories than they are interesting, three-dimensional characters in their own right.  Which is fine — but I can’t help but think back to our first glimpses of Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in the pilot of The X-Files (it helps that I’ve recently re-watched the first season of the show, as I wrote about here a few weeks back).  They both seemed so REAL, such interesting and distinct characters — really unlike anyone… [continued]