Fringe – The Pilot

The pilot can be watched here online:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/33786/fringe-pilot#s-p1-so-i0

Fringe is a detective show with a conspiracy theory in the background. Conspiracy TV has two components: information about the conspiracy gets revealed piece by piece to the protagonist(s) and gives the satisfaction of finishing a jigsaw puzzle as the pieces fall into place, and the conspiracy causes tension as the protagonist(s) find out that some people they trusted turn out to be bad guys and some they suspected turn out to be good guys. As more information about characters and their relation to the conspiracy become known, a viewer can look back to previous action and see it in a whole new way. The challenge of a conspiracy based series is to manage these two components well – reveal the conspiracy piece by piece in a believable way and make it satisfying to look back at what happened in Act One with the knowledge gained in Act Four and see why it makes sense in that context.

That’s what a well-done conspiracy series does; a poorly done series confuses the viewer and the gaps in internal logic and dramatic plausibility will drive him or her away.

Fringe centers on FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv). Special agent means in this case that she has an unlimited budget and no need to deliver reports to anybody at the FBI. She’s brought in to work on a mysterious case of an airplane that lands in Boston with all on board dead, reduced to skeletons and goo. Even though the Department of Homeland Security takes over the case and has an interagency task force to work on it, Olivia starts on her own and only interacts with the task force leader, Philip Broyles (Lance Reddick). She gets help along the way from mental hospital resident Walter Bishop (John Noble) and his ne’er-do-well genius son Peter (Joshua Jackson). They determine the case belongs to fringe science and they go to nontraditional methods to solve it.

Along the way, the conspiracy gets mentioned and it’s called The Pattern. We know it involves fringe science and Fortune 500 high tech company called Massive Dynamics led by Walter’s old Harvard lab mate. Broyles enlists Olivia to investigate and stop The Pattern and Olivia enlists Walter and Peter to help her in coming episodes.

Judging a show by it’s pilot is tough because the pilot has to introduce all of the main characters, establish their relationships, and get the story going. The budget is bigger and the writers have much more time to develop the script. The series is a paranormal based detective series with a conspiracy in the background. There’s a young boy-girl will-they-or-won’t-they couple who will solve crimes each week using “crazy” Walter and fringe science. Everybody else is suspicious, they can turn out to be good guys or bad guys. It shouldn’t take too many episodes to find out if the conspiracy is compelling or confusing.

The weak spot in the pilot is Anna Torv. The hair/makeup/wardrobe people made her a professional woman instead of a glamour girl and that works. The role calls for a real tough woman, one who threatens others and gets them to do her will. Torv’s performance was simply flat. The writers and directors will have quite a challenge making her plausible as a special agent and as a (platonic so far) romantic partner for Joshua Jackson.

In terms of a recommendation, the first episode should appeal to you if you’re a fan of paranormal and/or conspiracy detective series. If they don’t appeal to you, there will be nothing to see here.