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This year, it seems like very few TV shows managed to cross the end-of-season finish line intact. Throughout the season, show after show disappeared without a trace—dramas, sitcoms, quirky hour-long fantasies…gone. Meanwhile, a team of FBI agents, a misguided genius, and a mental patient continued to go about the business of solving other inexplicable occurrences each week on Fox.
Created by frequent collaborators J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci, Fringe follows a team of agents and scientists who work for the FBI’s Fringe Division—in conjunction with Homeland Security—to investigate unusual cases.
As the series opens, an international flight lands on autopilot at Boston’s Logan Airport—and every person on it is dead. While chasing a suspect, FBI Agent John Scott (Mark Valley) is contaminated with a mix of chemicals and left for dead. His partner, Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), is able to find one man who might be able to save him: Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble), a scientist who once conducted unusual experiments in his Harvard lab. There’s just one problem: Dr. Bishop has been held in a mental hospital for the last 17 years—and the only person who can grant access is his son, Peter (Joshua Jackson), a brilliant misfit with a questionable past.
After Agent Dunham convinces Peter to have Walter released, the three start working together to investigate plane crashes, mysterious deaths, jail breaks, and more—all of which seem connected to “The Pattern,” a series of unexplained phenomena that are taking place in increasing frequency. And the deeper they probe their cases, the more they seem to come back to Massive Dynamic, a powerful corporation owned by Walter’s old partner, William Bell.
Late in the first season of Fringe, Walter explains déjà vu as a flash from a parallel life in a parallel universe. But the kind of déjà vu you’ll experience while watching this gripping sci-fi series has nothing to do with a parallel universe. Instead, it’s a flash from the ‘90s, when you and your friends gathered around the TV to join FBI Agents Mulder and Scully on their quest to examine the country’s unexplained phenomena.
Though Fringe comes at each case with a more scientific outlook than The X-Files—which generally (despite Scully’s skepticism) tended to take an aliens-did-it approach—the effect is the same. Fringe is eerie and mysterious, filled with grand scientific conspiracies that connect one episode to the next. At times, it’s pretty gory, gruesome stuff, but it’s also intense and suspenseful—and completely addictive. Each episode offers some answers—but it also poses new questions—and the more you watch, the more mesmerizing (and gripping) it becomes. In fact, as the season progresses, it only gets better.
As with The X-Files, though, the ongoing mysteries may be fascinating, but the characters make the show entertaining. Each one has a clouded past, yet each is remarkably likable. Liv is tough and hard-working, determined to solve each case—no matter what it takes. Peter, on the other hand, is cynical and sardonic—a frustrated skeptic of his father’s work. Walter, meanwhile, breaks up even the show’s most stressful moments with his quirky comic relief. He could be brilliant—or he could just be crazy—but his obsessions, observations, and one-liners always entertaining.
If you missed the first season of Fringe as it aired, you’re probably better off—because, in watching it on DVD, you don’t have to wait a whole week for the next episode to air. Instead, you can watch them back to back, building up to the second season premiere later this month.
So if you lost one of your favorite shows last season (or if you miss the glory days of The X-Files), I recommend giving Fringe a try. It’s not for the weak of heart (or stomach), but this spine-chilling sci-fi thriller is guaranteed to have you hooked in no time.
DVD Review:
The seven-disc DVD release of the first season of Fringe comes loaded with extras. Each episode includes a Deciphering the Scene feature, which offers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of that particular episode. There are also a number of other extras along the way—more making-of features that offer fans a closer look at the show.
If the DVD is your introduction to the series, though, you might be frustrated by spoiler warnings that appear on features throughout the set. You’ll want to watch them as you go, but you’re warned to wait to view them until after you’ve watched every episode in the season—then you’ll have to go back through every disc to find those features back. As a courtesy to newbies, then, it probably would have worked better if those features had been saved for the last disc—or even an extra features-only disc.
Still, fans of the series will be thrilled by the collection—and newcomers will whip through it in no time. So don’t let this one slip by unnoticed; pick it up before the next season begins.
