Fringe – Series Premiere

Spoilers ahead

I just got done watching Fringe, and I have to say that I liked it. There’s some potential here. I do find several things interesting, and they parallel the show LOST to some extent.

The first, and most obvious: A plane figured prominently in both series premieres.

The second, there’s a conspiracy. That was also a pretty obvious one.

The third, there seems to be a bit of “some bad things started a long time ago, and we’re going to try and correct it” parallel too. In LOST, it’s Dharma and the experiments. In Fringe, it’s the work that Walter Bishop did and the Massive Dynamic is working on.

I was surprised when I first found out that Lance Reddick (who plays Broyles) was on the show. If he looks familiar, and he should if you’re a LOST fan, he plays Matthew Abbaddon.

As for tonight’s show:

When Olivia first left the motel room, and Agent Scott got his phone call, I thought for a split second that he was in on some bigger plot that she wasn’t aware of. When he answered the phone the way he did, I quickly dismissed it. I was surprised as everyone else probably was when things turned out the way they did for him.

Looks like the Bishops and Olivia are going to be a team. Not bad. Oh, and that assistant of Olivia’s… Was there some reason she didn’t say thing when she was on screen until the first hour of the show had passed, and Olivia was in the tank? Was that weird or what? She was just there, not saying a thing.

A couple of observations:

Olivia meeting Walter was very reminiscent of “Silence of the Lambs”, that sensory deprivation tank was straight out of “Altered States”, and the dream thing reminded me of Harry Potter’s pensive.

That “Zeno” on the kayak… did that mean something?

Did you know there’s a Massive Dynamic website?

That final message from Agent Scott… “Ask yourself why Broyle sent you to the storage facility”. Well, either it was because he already knew Olivia and Agent Scott (darn it…what WAS his first name?) were involved and wanted Scott exposed, he wanted to get rid of Olivia, or as a test to see how far she would go to find out what was going on.

Nice touch with the bumpers on the show before the commercials… The leaf at the end is the “talk to dead people/brain connection” lab. Wonder what the others do?

That’s it for now. I’ll leave you to think about “The Pattern”, and feel free to post a comment below to say what you thought of tonight’s show.

2 thoughts on “Fringe – Series Premiere”

  1. Scott’s first name was John, I believe.

    If you’ve watched Lost for any length of time, you had an idea what to watch for. From the first scene I wondered which of the two of them would end up dead or a bad guy. That Broyles let Olivia do all she did (and one has to assume he approved the funding for it) without a murmur led me to believe he knew more than he was letting on.

    Loved the pre-commercial bumpers, laughed when I saw the “commercial” for Massive Dynamics”, grossed out by the see-through skin.

    Did you notice the flickering lights – started in the plane, then at the storage facility, the mental institute and several other places? Walter looked up at the lights rather oddly when they turned them on at the lab, as well.

    Favorite line last night – Olivia to the younger Bishop – “I need you – you speak “Walter”

  2. Good catch on the lights! I remember that now; I’ll have to watch for more of that.

    The other parallel to LOST I forgot to mention was John’s death. They originally wanted to kill off Jack in the first episode of LOST, but the higher-ups didn’t think audiences would react well to it. On Fringe, they were able to take someone who looked like he was going to be a main character, and kill him off.

    I have to wonder what direction LOST would have taken if they HAD killed off Jack…

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