09:00 Fringe
Fringe. Episode 2. "The Same Old Story" If I had to sum this show up in one phrase, it would be: "Not Good Enough."
The episode opens with a scene that looks and feels like something from The X-Files. A creepy man and a babe in a motel room. He's about to do something creepy to her when all hell breaks loose and he ends up rushing her to - and abandoning her at - the local hospital. Creepy, huh? At the hospital she grows suddenly pregnant and gives birth to something that makes the nurse scream.
Cue credits and a yawn from me.
Seriously? Is that what they are offering us? An X-Files rethread? Anyway, the episode then opens with one of the worst cases of exposition I have ever seen. Obviously these first few minutes were designed for people who didn't see the pilot the week before (and that's clever) but it's a ham-fisted attempt at telling us what happened before and who these people are.
And who are these people? Well, there's a mad scientist who's a lot like Greg House (rude and says what's on his mind) and a man/woman team who are meant to remind us of Mulder and Scully. And when they are all together in their bat-cave they are meant to remind us of the gang on Bones. So FOX are trying to duplicate the success of their other hits. Fair enough. Pity there's no trace of Lost or Alias in this to make it palatable.
Any promise from the pilot is missing here. Joshua Jackson fails to entertain, there is no action to speak of and the story is lame. Seriously? This is the opening story? Rapidly growing old? How many times have we seen that done on TV before? Bad enough to do it again, unforgivable to add nothing new to the idea. This is just a lame re-thread of better episodes from better TV shows.
And what's with all the pretty girls being tortured on-screen? Reminds me of another god-awful FOX show: The Inside. That, too, seemed to think I wanted to see women suffering bizarre deaths on-screen. Guess again, FOX!
The hour that this lasted was, itself, torture. It ended in a shoot out with the (dull) killer. The heroes found him using a method more stupid than any of the crazy stuff Chloe does on 24, and the show tried to interest me with some sort of nonsense about the corporation that are the real bad guys in all this. Blair Brown is terrific, but the script sucks.
How is it that more people are watching this than The Sarah Connor Chronicles?
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Fri, Sep 19, 08 - Fringe
