At this point in his career, J.J. Abrams is a household name. Alias, Lost, Mission Impossible: III, Cloverfield — you can’t think of these properties without his name popping into your head. He has been involved with, if not always responsible for, some fantastic pieces of popular entertainment. The pilot for Lost, which he directed, is one of my favorite pilots ever. It’s intriguing, exciting, confusing in a way that makes you crave more, and often jaw-dropping. If you’re looking for a blueprint on how to start off an action-mystery-sci-fi show (and who isn’t), you would do well to study Lost’s pilot. Which is why I was incredibly excited when I managed to obtain a DVD and script for the pilot for JJ’s new show, Fringe…and why, despite several things that bothered me about the episode, I hold out hope that the show itself will develop into something more.
Before I get into the actual review below, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a couple of things. 1) I’ve been told by a few sources that the pilot I obtained is an early cut and not the pilot Fox will air. How significantly the show might change is an unknown, but whatever they alter could affect my opinion. 2) This is obvious, but this review will contain SPOILERS.
Let me just say that while it wasn’t all that I hoped, Fringe succeeds in many ways. It’s creepy, exciting, and lots of fun. The show takes its characters seriously, but still plays the more ridiculous stuff surrounding “fringe” science with a healthy dose of schlocky good humor.
All I knew before reading the script was what I had read online and in the trades: it was sci-fi show. It featured a female federal agent, a brilliant-but-crazy scientist, and his brilliant-but-troubled son. They would investigate “fringe” science and paranormal phenomena. Many people had compared it to The X-Files, and at first glance it’s easy to see why. Feds, paranormal goings-on — it’s even on Fox, the network The X-Files helped build. After seeing the pilot, however, I would say that it feels like we’re getting something closer to the Anti-X-Files. Or at least something in the middle.
Whereas Mulder and Scully were truly on the “fringe” of the FBI, relegated to basement offices and often receiving no help from anyone above them, our protagonists in Fringe seem well-funded and more-or-less on the inside, at least by the end of the pilot. Yes, there are conspiracy theories and mysterious forces (and groups) at work that our heroes will need to uncover, but it just doesn’t have that same us-against-the-world chip on its shoulder that X-Files always carried with it. Which, of course, isn’t the point. This show, despite what some will say, is not the X-Files, nor is it Lost, though it shares elements with both.
One of those Lost similarities is apparent from the first scene in the pilot. Tell me if this sounds familiar: we’re in an airplane flying through a storm with lots of turbulence… Thankfully this show goes in a completely different direction — one that’s just as thrilling and a lot creepier. Suffice it to say that something strange and unpleasant happens to the passengers, and the plane only touches down safely because it’s a new model that uses a computerized auto-pilot.
Next we meet our heroine Olivia (a just barely post-coitus Anna Torv) and learn that the man she’s with, John (Mark Valley), is another federal agent in her department, and that their superiors wouldn’t be too happy that two of their agents are sharing dingy hotel rooms and long speeches about love with each other. But very quickly Olivia receives a phone call about the mysterious incident on the plane, and she’s off to the scene to do…something. Which is one of the biggest problems with Fringe, in my opinion. Olivia hurtles from one scene to the next in the service of the plot, and we never get to really learn anything about her or what her job as “liason” is supposed to be, except that she loves John and does not love rapists.
Which brings me to Lance Reddick. No, Wire fans, Lt. Daniels is not a rapist in this show (thank goodness for small favors), but when he appears at the site of the plane as the agent coordinating the operation, he is immediately combative and antagonistic towards Olivia because (we eventually learn) in her previous position she put his best friend in military jail for a drunken binge and one “small lapse in judgment.” With three young women. Yikes. So clearly Reddick’s character is meant to be someone we hate, right? Not so fast. While he spends the first half of the pilot calling Olivia “honey” and “sweetie” and generally being a jerk, near the end he’s downright magnanimous and tells her how much she impressed him… and I get the feeling we’re supposed to like him. But how can you really like the man who treated our heroine like crap because she imprisoned his buddy who raped three women? Since I just can’t reconcile that, Reddick and Olivia butting heads just feels like manufactured drama to me, and adds little to the story.
Speaking of which…
The agents investigate the plane and hypothesize that some kind of terrorist chemical weapon must be responsible for the carnage inside. Shortly after, Reddick sends Olivia and John out on a tip that sounds completely bogus, but ends up leading them to something amazing: storage units that contain working laboratories with shaved ferrets and other assorted bits of creepiness. Olivia tries to call in backup, but her cell isn’t getting reception, so she leaves to make the call while John keeps looking around. As he does so, another storage unit with another creepy lab opens and a man exits. John and the man see each other, the man runs, and John races after him. Olivia tries to catch up, but luckily does not, since the man pushes a button on what looks like a USB drive in his pocket, which causes a huge explosion that engulfs John and slams Olivia into a wall.
Miraculously, John survives! But maybe not, since Olivia learns upon waking in the hospital that the explosion contained lots of strange chemicals from those labs. These chemicals are slowly killing John, so to prolong his life he has been put into a drug-induced coma. Also his skin is becoming translucent, which generally is not considered good.
Faced with the imminent death of her lover, Olivia hurries to… do research. Research that leads her to believe that Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble in what is by far the pilot’s best performance) might be able to help her. Back in the ’70s he did lots of weird experiments in “fringe” science, and seems to be the foremost expert in the subject. The only problem is that he apparently went crazy and has been in an institution for the last 17 years. Also, only a family member can get her in to see him, which doesn’t seem to make much sense when you’re talking about the feds putting him away, but just roll with it.
Bishop’s only living relative is his son, Peter (Joshua Jackson, who also enjoys calling Olivia by derogatory names), a brilliant vagabond who we’re told via voiceover once impersonated a professor and even had a few papers published, despite the fact that he dropped out of high school. Olivia has to go to Iraq and bring him back begrudgingly, but once she does, we’re off to the races: they free Dr. Bishop, reopen his old Harvard laboratory, and start using some of that awesome “fringe” science to track down the man from the lab and save John.
Telling you more would only spoil it, but suffice it to say that there’s fun to be had along the way, and at least one twist that I didn’t see coming. Overall, it has the same flaws that many big, story-driven pilots suffer from: insufficient time to get to know the characters and a lot of force-fed exposition to push us through the story.
Fringe isn’t the homerun that the Lost pilot was, but it is a solid base hit. I don’t know why I felt compelled to use the baseball analogy, but I do know that I will at least be giving Fringe a few more episodes to win my viewership.
Tune in to Fox tonight at 8/7 C, and tell us what you thought of the pilot in the comments.
Josh Roessler is one half of an aspiriting TV writing team in Los Angeles. You can read his TV spec scripts and other writing here. Josh also writes a blog called Boring Future Generations.
Related Stuff:
Juliana Weiss-Roessler is a writer living in Los Angeles. To read more of her writing, visit WeissRoessler.com. You can also follow her on Twitter: @jul_weiss. 
The rape side-plot was alluded to very vaguely — something like “those three women might disagree” with his dismissive attitude — but it wasn’t made terribly explicit. It’d be easy to miss with just one viewing. In fact, I had mostly forgotten it until this discussion.
I’m sure they’ll hit us in the face with it later. :-