by Joe Murray

Created on: September 15, 2008   Last Updated: September 20, 2008

"Fringe" opens auspiciously enough, like "LOST," in a Cold Opening that recalls the line "It was a dark and stormy night" on a mysterious spooky airliner, Lufthansa Flight 627, out of Hamburg bound for Chicago, when a mysterious contagion ripples through the passenger cabin, a condition that presents with projectile vomiting - major projectile vomiting - after which the skin and tissues rapidly melt a la "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Fortunately, the pilot hits autopilot, the plane lands itself safely at O'Hare Int'l (modern planes can do that) and before you can say HAZMET an alphabet soup of Federal agencies cordon off the plane to take a poke inside.

Created by J. J. Abrams (screenwriter of "Regarding Henry," producer of "Cloverfield" and "LOST"), "Fringe" carries the recombinant DNA of "LOST" and Chris Carter's "X-Files." There is a obscenely powerful and titanically rich corporation, Massive Dynamic, fronted by a mysterious unnamed dragon lady (Blair Brown, still hot at 60), the series set pieces imbued with retro science, faulty lights (even to the point of exploding), artfully arranged sets evoking the moodiest of German abstractionism, and the usual switcheroos, double-crosses and blind alleys.

Dead center of the narrative is FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv, an Australian export) who, with her partner and secret lover, Agent John Scott (Mark Valley), are summoned to O'Hare Int'l by an irritatingly prickly Homeland Security Chief Phillip Broyles (Lance Reddick). Viewed from the outside the interior of the plane seems a nasty mess of spattered blood and vomit which calls for major isolation protocols and bio-suit action.

Inside, it doesn't get much better. Everything organic but the passengers' skeletons have liquefied, though shots of the corpses are abbreviated, reflecting no doubt an editorial decision regarding the pilot's 8 pm debut.

A search for the culprit exposes Agent Scott to an exotic cocktail of chemicals and lands him in a similar predicament, with gelatinized see-thru skin. "He's not contagious," his doctor explains to Olivia, but he's been put into a medical coma to have his body temperature lowered to slow a process that is eventually going to kill him. And before you can say "Mad Scientist," Olivia recruits one, though not before a plot-padding detour to Iraq (Iraq?) to pick up the Mad Scientist's estranged son and all-around polymath, Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson), who eventually takes on the Han Solo function of the franchise, and

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next Page >>